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Title: The Yosemite

Author: John Muir

Release Date: December, 2004  [EBook #7091]
[This file was first posted on March 9, 2003]
[Date last updated: August 28, 2006]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE YOSEMITE ***

Produced by Dan Anderson and Andrew Sly.
Thanks to the John Muir Exhibit for making this eBook available.
http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/

The Yosemite
by John Muir

Affectionately dedicated to my friend,
Robert Underwood Johnson,
faithful lover and defender of our glorious forests
and originator of the Yosemite National Park.

Acknowledgment

On the early history of Yosemite the writer is indebted to Prof. J. D.
Whitney for quotations from his volume entitled "Yosemite Guide-Book,"
and to Dr. Bunnell for extracts from his interesting volume entitled
"Discovery of the Yosemite."

Contents

   1. The Approach to the Valley
   2. Winter Storms and Spring Floods
   3. Snow-Storms
   4. Snow Banners
   5. The Trees of the Valley
   6. The Forest Trees in General
   7. The Big Trees
   8. The Flowers
   9. The Birds
  10. The South Dome
  11. The Ancient Yosemite Glaciers: How the Valley Was Formed
  12. How Best to Spend One's Yosemite Time
  13. Early History of the Valley
  14. Lamon
  15. Galen Clark
  16. Hetch Hetchy Valley
  Appendix A. Legislation About the Yosemite
  Appendix B. Table of Distances
  Appendix C. Maximum Rates for Transportation

Chapter 1
The Approach to the Valley

When I set out on the long excursion that finally led to California I
wandered afoot and alone, from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico, with a
plant-press on my back, holding a generally southward course, like the
birds when they are going from summer to winter. From the west coast
of Florida I crossed the gulf to Cuba, enjoyed the rich tropical flora
there for a few months, intending to go thence to the north end of South
America, make my way through the woods to the headwaters of the Amazon,
and float down that grand river to the ocean. But I was unable to find a
ship bound for South America--fortunately perhaps, for I had incredibly
little money for so long a trip and had not yet fully recovered from
a fever caught in the Florida swamps. Therefore I decided to visit
California for a year or two to see its wonderful flora and the famous
Yosemite Valley. All the world was before me and every day was a
holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's
wildernesses I first should wander.


Arriving by the Panama steamer, I stopped one day in San Francisco and
then inquired for the nearest way out of town. "But where do you want to
go?" asked the man to whom I had applied for this important information.
"To any place that is wild," I said. This reply startled him. He seemed
to fear I might be crazy and therefore the sooner I was out of town the
better, so he directed me to the Oakland ferry.


So on the first of April, 1868, I set out afoot for Yosemite. It was the
bloom-time of the year over the lowlands and coast ranges the landscapes
of the Santa Clara Valley were fairly drenched with sunshine, all the
air was quivering with the songs of the meadow-larks, and the hills were
so covered with flowers that they seemed to be painted. Slow indeed was
my progress through these glorious gardens, the first of the California
flora I had seen. Cattle and cultivation were making few scars as yet,
and I wandered enchanted in long wavering curves, knowing by my pocket
map that Yosemite Valley lay to the east and that I should surely find
it.

The Sierra From The West

Looking eastward from the summit of the Pacheco Pass one shining
morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still
appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the
Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of
pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one
rich furred garden of yellow Compositœ. And from the eastern boundary
of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with
light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
Along the top and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt
of snow; below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension
of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt
of rose-purple; all these colors, from the blue sky to the yellow
valley smoothly blending as they do in a rainbow, making a wall of light
ineffably fine. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called,
not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten
years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its
glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming
through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the
flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls,
it still seems above all others the Range of Light.


In general views no mark of man is visible upon it, nor any thing to
suggest the wonderful depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its
magnificent forest-crowned ridges seems to rise much above the general
level to publish its wealth. No great valley or river is seen, or group
of well-marked features of any kind standing out as distinct pictures.
Even the summit peaks, marshaled in glorious array so high in the sky,
seem comparatively regular in form. Nevertheless the whole range five
hundred miles long is furrowed with cañons 2000 to 5000 feet deep, in
which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in which now flow and sing the
bright rejoicing rivers.

Characteristics Of The Cañons

Though of such stupendous depth, these cañons are not gloom gorges,
savage and inaccessible. With rough passages here and there they are
flowery pathways conducting to the snowy, icy fountains; mountain
streets full of life and light, graded and sculptured by the ancient
glaciers, and presenting throughout all their course a rich variety of
novel and attractive scenery--the most attractive that has yet been
discovered in the mountain ranges of the world. In many places,
especially in the middle region of the western flank, the main cañons
widen into spacious valleys or parks diversified like landscape gardens
with meadows and groves and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty
walls, infinitely varied in form are fringed with ferns, flowering
plants, shrubs of many species and tall evergreens and oaks that find
footholds on small benches and tables, all enlivened and made glorious
with rejoicing stream that come chanting in chorus over the cliffs and
through side cañons in falls of every conceivable form, to join the
river that flow in tranquil, shining beauty down the middle of each
one of them.

The Incomparable Yosemite

The most famous and accessible of these cañon valleys, and also the one
that presents their most striking and sublime features on the grandest
scale, is the Yosemite, situated in the basin of the Merced River at an
elevation of 4000 feet above the level of the sea. It is about seven
miles long, half a mile to a mile wide, and nearly a mile deep in the
solid granite flank of the range. The walls are made up of rocks,
mountains in size, partly separated from each other by side cañons, and
they are so sheer in front, and so compactly and harmoniously arranged
on a level floor, that the Valley, comprehensively seen, looks like an
immense hall or temple lighted from above.


But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in
its walls seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose;
others, absolutely sheer or nearly so for thousands of feet, advance
beyond their companions in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to
storms and calms alike, seemingly aware, yet heedless, of everything
going on about them. Awful in stern, immovable majesty, how softly these
rocks are adorned, and how fine and reassuring the company they keep:
their feet among beautiful groves and meadows, their brows in the sky,
a thousand flowers leaning confidingly against their feet, bathed in
floods of water, floods of light, while the snow and waterfalls, the
winds and avalanches and clouds shine and sing and wreathe about them
as the years go by, and myriads of small winged creatures birds, bees,
butterflies--give glad animation and help to make all the air into
music. Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced,
River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the
onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance
meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one
mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw
her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.

The Approach To The Valley

Sauntering up the foothills to Yosemite by any of the old trails or
roads in use before the railway was built from the town of Merced up the
river to the boundary of Yosemite Park, richer and wilder become the
forests and streams. At an elevation of 6000 feet above the level of the
sea the silver firs are 200 feet high, with branches whorled around the
colossal shafts in regular order, and every branch beautifully pinnate
like a fern frond. The Douglas spruce, the yellow and sugar pines and
brown-barked Libocedrus here reach their finest developments of beauty
and grandeur. The majestic Sequoia is here, too, the king of conifers,
the noblest of all the noble race. These colossal trees are as wonderful
in fineness of beauty and proportion as in stature--an assemblage of
conifers surpassing all that have ever yet been discovered in the
forests of the world. Here indeed is the tree-lover's paradise; the
woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering masses of
half sunshine, half shade; the night air as well as the day air
indescribably spicy and exhilarating; plushy fir-boughs for campers'
beds and cascades to sing us to sleep. On the highest ridges, over which
these old Yosemite ways passed, the silver fir (Abies magnifica) forms
the bulk of the woods, pressing forward in glorious array to the very
brink of the Valley walls on both sides, and beyond the Valley to a
height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above the level of the sea. Thus it
appears that Yosemite, presenting such stupendous faces of bare granite,
is nevertheless imbedded in magnificent forests, and the main species of
pine, fir, spruce and libocedrus are also found in the Valley itself,
but there are no "big trees" (Sequoia gigantea) in the Valley or about
the rim of it. The nearest are about ten and twenty miles beyond the
lower end of the valley on small tributaries of the Merced and Tuolumne
Rivers.

The First View: The Bridal Veil

From the margin of these glorious forests the first general view of the
Valley used to be gained--a revelation in landscape affairs that
enriches one's life forever. Entering the Valley, gazing overwhelmed
with the multitude of grand objects about us, perhaps the first to fix
our attention will be the Bridal Veil, a beautiful waterfall on our
right. Its brow, where it first leaps free from the cliff, is about 900
feet above us; and as it sways and sings in the wind, clad in gauzy,
sun-sifted spray, half falling, half floating, it seems infinitely
gentle and fine; but the hymns it sings tell the solemn fateful power
hidden beneath its soft clothing.


The Bridal Veil shoots free from the upper edge of the cliff by the
velocity the stream has acquired in descending a long slope above the
head of the fall. Looking from the top of the rock-avalanche talus
on the west side, about one hundred feet above the foot of the fall,
the under surface of the water arch is seen to be finely grooved and
striated; and the sky is seen through the arch between rock and water,
making a novel and beautiful effect.


Under ordinary weather conditions the fall strikes on flat-topped slabs,
forming a kind of ledge about two-thirds of the way down from the top,
and as the fall sways back and forth with great variety of motions
among these flat-topped pillars, kissing and plashing notes as well as
thunder-like detonations are produced, like those of the Yosemite Fall,
though on a smaller scale.


The rainbows of the Veil, or rather the spray- and foam-bows, are
superb, because the waters are dashed among angular blocks of granite
at the foot, producing abundance of spray of the best quality for iris
effects, and also for a luxuriant growth of grass and maiden-hair on
the side of the talus, which lower down is planted with oak, laurel
and willows.

General Features Of The Valley

On the other side of the Valley, almost immediately opposite the Bridal
Veil, there is another fine fall, considerably wider than the Veil when
the snow is melting fast and more than 1000 feet in height, measured
from the brow of the cliff where it first springs out into the air to
the head of the rocky talus on which it strikes and is broken up into
ragged cascades. It is called the Ribbon Fall or Virgin's Tears. During
the spring floods it is a magnificent object, but the suffocating blasts
of spray that fill the recess in the wall which it occupies prevent a
near approach. In autumn, however when its feeble current falls in a
shower, it may then pass for tear with the sentimental onlooker fresh
from a visit to the Bridal Veil.


Just beyond this glorious flood the El Capitan Rock, regarded by many as
the most sublime feature of the Valley, is seen through the pine groves,
standing forward beyond the general line of the wall in most imposing
grandeur, a type of permanence. It is 3300 feet high, a plain, severely
simple, glacier-sculptured face of granite, the end of one of the most
compact and enduring of the mountain ridges, unrivaled in height and
breadth and flawless strength.


Across the Valley from here, next to the Bridal Veil, are the
picturesque Cathedral Rocks, nearly 2700 feet high, making a noble
display of fine yet massive sculpture. They are closely related to El
Capitan, having been eroded from the same mountain ridge by the great
Yosemite Glacier when the Valley was in process of formation.


Next to the Cathedral Rocks on the south side towers the Sentinel Rock
to a height of more than 3000 feet, a telling monument of the glacial
period.


Almost immediately opposite the Sentinel are the Three Brothers, an
immense mountain mass with three gables fronting the Valley, one above
another, the topmost gable nearly 4000 feet high. They were named for
three brothers, sons of old Tenaya, the Yosemite chief, captured here
during the Indian War, at the time of the discovery of the Valley in
1852.


Sauntering up the Valley through meadow and grove, in the company of
these majestic rocks, which seem to follow us as we advance, gazing,
admiring, looking for new wonders ahead where all about us is so
wonderful, the thunder of the Yosemite Fall is heard, and when we
arrive in front of the Sentinel Rock it is revealed in all its glory
from base to summit, half a mile in height, and seeming to spring out
into the Valley sunshine direct from the sky. But even this fall,
perhaps the most wonderful of its kind in the world, cannot at first
hold our attention, for now the wide upper portion of the Valley is
displayed to view, with the finely modeled North Dome, the Royal Arches
and Washington Column on our left; Glacier Point, with its massive,
magnificent sculpture on the right; and in the middle, directly in
front, looms Tissiack or Half Dome, the most beautiful and most sublime
of all the wonderful Yosemite rocks, rising in serene majesty from
flowery groves and meadows to a height of 4750 feet.

The Upper Cañons

Here the Valley divides into three branches, the Tenaya, Nevada, and
Illilouette Cañons, extending back into the fountains of the High
Sierra, with scenery every way worthy the relation they bear to
Yosemite.


In the south branch, a mile or two from the main Valley, is the
Illilouette Fall, 600 feet high, one of the most beautiful of all the
Yosemite choir, but to most people inaccessible as yet on account of its
rough, steep, boulder-choked cañon. Its principal fountains of ice and
snow lie in the beautiful and interesting mountains of the Merced group,
while its broad open basin between its fountain mountains and cañon is
noted for the beauty of its lakes and forests and magnificent moraines.


Returning to the Valley, and going up the north branch of Tenaya Cañon,
we pass between the North Dome and Half Dome, and in less than an hour
come to Mirror Lake, the Dome Cascade and Tenaya Fall. Beyond the Fall,
on the north side of the cañon is the sublime Ed Capitan-like rock
called Mount Watkins; on the south the vast granite wave of Clouds' Rest,
a mile in height; and between them the fine Tenaya Cascade with silvery
plumes outspread on smooth glacier-polished folds of granite, making a
vertical descent in all of about 700 feet.


Just beyond the Dome Cascades, on the shoulder of Mount Watkins, there
is an old trail once used by Indians on their was across the range to
Mono, but in the cañon above this point there is no trail of any sort.
Between Mount Watkins and Clouds' Rest the cañon is accessible only to
mountaineers, and it is so dangerous that I hesitate to advise even good
climbers, anxious to test their nerve and skill, to attempt to pass
through it. Beyond the Cascades no great difficulty will be encountered.
A succession of charming lily gardens and meadows occurs in filled-up
lake basins among the rock-waves in the bottom of the cañon, and
everywhere the surface of the granite has a smooth-wiped appearance, and
in many places reflects the sunbeams like glass, a phenomenon due to
glacial action, the cañon having been the channel of one of the main
tributaries of the ancient Yosemite Glacier.


About ten miles above the Valley we come to the beautiful Tenaya Lake,
and here the cañon terminates. A mile or two above the lake stands the
grand Sierra Cathedral, a building of one stone, sewn from the living
rock, with sides, roof, gable, spire and ornamental pinnacles, fashioned
and finished symmetrically like a work of art, and set on a well-graded
plateau about 9000 feet high, as if Nature in making so fine a building
had also been careful that it should be finely seen. From every
direction its peculiar form and graceful, majestic beauty of expression
never fail to charm. Its height from its base to the ridge of the roof
is about 2500 feet, and among the pinnacles that adorn the front grand
views may be gained of the upper basins of the Merced and Tuolumne
Rivers.


Passing the Cathedral we descend into the delightful, spacious Tuolumne
Valley, from which excursions may be made to Mounts Dana, Lyell, Ritter,
Conness, and Mono Lake, and to the many curious peaks that rise above
the meadows on the south, and to the Big Tuolumne Cañon, with its
glorious abundance of rock and falling, gliding, tossing water. For all
these the beautiful meadows near the Soda Springs form a delightful
center.

Natural Features Near The Valley

Returning now to Yosemite and ascending the middle or Nevada branch of
the Valley, occupied by the main Merced River, we come within a few
miles to the Vernal and Nevada Falls, 400 and 600 feet high, pouring
their white, rejoicing waters in the midst of the most novel and sublime
rock scenery to be found in all the World. Tracing the river beyond the
head of the Nevada Fall we are lead into the Little Yosemite, a valley
like the great Yosemite in form, sculpture and vegetation. It is about
three miles long, with walls 1500 to 2000 feet high, cascades coming
over them, and the ever flowing through the meadows and groves of the
level bottom in tranquil, richly-embowered reaches.


Beyond this Little Yosemite in the main cañon, there are three other
little yosemites, the highest situated a few miles below the base of
Mount Lyell, at an elevation of about 7800 feet above the sea. To
describe these, with all their wealth of Yosemite furniture, and the
wilderness of lofty peaks above them, the home of the avalanche and
treasury of the fountain snow, would take us far beyond the bounds of a
single book. Nor can we here consider the formation of these mountain
landscapes--how the crystal rock were brought to light by glaciers made
up of crystal snow, making beauty whose influence is so mysterious on
every one who sees it.


Of the small glacier lakes so characteristic of these upper regions,
there are no fewer than sixty-seven in the basin of the main middle
branch, besides countless smaller pools. In the basin of the Illilouette
there are sixteen, in the Tenaya basin and its branches thirteen, in the
Yosemite Creek basin fourteen, and in the Pohono or Bridal Veil one,
making a grand total of one hundred and eleven lakes whose waters come
to sing at Yosemite. So glorious is the background of the great Valley,
so harmonious its relations to its widespreading fountains.


The same harmony prevails in all the other features of the adjacent
landscapes. Climbing out of the Valley by the subordinate cañons, we
find the ground rising from the brink of the walls: on the south side to
the fountains of the Bridal Veil Creek, the basin of which is noted for
the beauty of its meadows and its superb forests of silver fir; on the
north side through the basin of the Yosemite Creek to the dividing ridge
along the Tuolumne Cañon and the fountains of the Hoffman Range.

Down The Yosemite Creek

In general views the Yosemite Creek basin seems to be paved with
domes and smooth, whaleback masses of granite in every stage of
development--some showing only their crowns; others rising high and free
above the girdling forests, singly or in groups. Others are developed
only on one side, forming bold outstanding bosses usually well fringed
with shrubs and trees, and presenting the polished surfaces given them
by the glacier that brought them into relief. On the upper portion of
the basin broad moraine beds have been deposited and on these fine,
thrifty forests are growing. Lakes and meadows and small spongy bogs
may be found hiding here and there in the woods or back in the fountain
recesses of Mount Hoffman, while a thousand gardens are planted along
the banks of the streams.


All the wide, fan-shaped upper portion of the basin is covered with a
network of small rills that go cheerily on their way to their grand fall
in the Valley, now flowing on smooth pavements in sheets thin as glass,
now diving under willows and laving their red roots, oozing through
green, plushy bogs, plashing over small falls and dancing down slanting
cascades, calming again, gliding through patches of smooth glacier
meadows with sod of alpine agrostis mixed with blue and white violets
and daisies, breaking, tossing among rough boulders and fallen trees,
resting in calm pools, flowing together until, all united, they go to
their fate with stately, tranquil gestures like a full-grown river. At
the crossing of the Mono Trail, about two miles above the head of the
Yosemite Fall, the stream is nearly forty feet wide, and when the snow
is melting rapidly in the spring it is about four feet deep, with a
current of two and a half miles an hour. This is about the volume of
water that forms the Fall in May and June when there had been much snow
the preceding winter; but it varies greatly from month to month. The
snow rapidly vanishes from the open portion of the basin, which faces
southward, and only a few of the tributaries reach back to perennial
snow and ice fountains in the shadowy amphitheaters on the precipitous
northern slopes of Mount Hoffman. The total descent made by the stream
from its highest sources to its confluence with the Merced in the Valley
is about 6000 feet, while the distance is only about ten miles, an
average fall of 600 feet per mile. The last mile of its course lies
between the sides of sunken domes and swelling folds of the granite that
are clustered and pressed together like a mass of bossy cumulus clouds.
Through this shining way Yosemite Creek goes to its fate, swaying and
swirling with easy, graceful gestures and singing the last of its
mountain songs before it reaches the dizzy edge of Yosemite to fall 2600
feet into another world, where climate, vegetation, inhabitants, all are
different. Emerging from this last cañon the stream glides, in flat
lace-like folds, down a smooth incline into a small pool where it seems
to rest and compose itself before taking the grand plunge. Then calmly,
as if leaving a lake, it slips over the polished lip of the pool down
another incline and out over the brow of the precipice in a magnificent
curve thick-sown with rainbow spray.

The Yosemite Fall

Long ago before I had traced this fine stream to its head back of Mount
Hoffman, I was eager to reach the extreme verge to see how it behaved in
flying so far through the air; but after enjoying this view and getting
safely away I have never advised any one to follow my steps. The last
incline down which the stream journeys so gracefully is so steep and
smooth one must slip cautiously forward on hands and feet alongside the
rushing water, which so near one's head is very exciting. But to gain a
perfect view one must go yet farther, over a curving brow to a slight
shelf on the extreme brink. This shelf, formed by the flaking off of a
fold of granite, is about three inches wide, just wide enough for a safe
rest for one's heels. To me it seemed nerve-trying to slip to this
narrow foothold and poise on the edge of such precipice so close to the
confusing whirl of the waters; and after casting longing glances over
the shining brow of the fall and listening to its sublime psalm, I
concluded not to attempt to go nearer, but, nevertheless, against
reasonable judgment, I did. Noticing some tufts of artemisia in a cleft
of rock, I filled my mouth with the leaves, hoping their bitter taste
might help to keep caution keen and prevent giddiness. In spite of
myself I reached the little ledge, got my heels well set, and worked
sidewise twenty or thirty feet to a point close to the out-plunging
current. Here the view is perfectly free down into the heart of the
bright irised throng of comet-like streamers into which the whole
ponderous volume of the fall separates, two or three hundred feet below
the brow. So glorious a display of pure wildness, acting at close range
while cut off from all the world beside, is terribly impressive. A less
nerve-trying view may be obtained from a fissured portion of the edge of
the cliff about forty yards to the eastward of the fall. Seen from this
point towards noon, in the spring, the rainbow on its brow seems to be
broken up and mingled with the rushing comets until all the fall is
stained with iris colors, leaving no white water visible. This is the
best of the safe views from above, the huge steadfast rocks, the flying
waters, and the rainbow light forming one of the most glorious pictures
conceivable.


The Yosemite Fall is separated into an upper and a lower fall with a
series of falls and cascades between them, but when viewed in front from
the bottom of the Valley they all appear as one.


So grandly does this magnificent fall display itself from the floor of
the Valley, few visitors take the trouble to climb the walls to gain
nearer views, unable to realize how vastly more impressive it is near by
than at a distance of one or two miles.

A Wonderful Ascent

The views developed in a walk up the zigzags of the trail leading to
the foot of the Upper Fall are about as varied and impressive as those
displayed along the favorite Glacier Point Trail. One rises as if on
wings. The groves, meadows, fern-flats and reaches of the river gain
new interest, as if never seen before; all the views changing in a most
striking manner as we go higher from point to point. The foreground
also changes every few rods in the most surprising manner, although the
earthquake talus and the level bench on the face of the wall over which
the trail passes seem monotonous and commonplace as seen from the bottom
of the Valley. Up we climb with glad exhilaration, through shaggy
fringes of laurel, ceanothus, glossy-leaved manzanita and live-oak, from
shadow to shadow across bars and patches of sunshine, the leafy openings
making charming frames for the Valley pictures beheld through gem, and
for the glimpses of the high peaks that appear in the distance. The
higher we go the farther we seem to be from the summit of the vast
granite wall. Here we pass a projecting buttress hose grooved and
rounded surface tells a plain story of the time when the Valley, now
filled with sunshine, was filled with ice, when the grand old Yosemite
Glacier, flowing river-like from its distant fountains, swept through
it, crushing, grinding, wearing its way ever deeper, developing and
fashioning these sublime rocks. Again we cross a white, battered gully,
the pathway of rock avalanches or snow avalanches. Farther on we come
to a gentle stream slipping down the face of the Cliff in lace-like
strips, and dropping from ledge to ledge--too small to be called a
fall--trickling, dripping, oozing, a pathless wanderer from one of
the upland meadow lying a little way back of the Valley rim, seeking
a way century after century to the depths of the Valley without any
appreciable channel. Every morning after a cool night, evaporation being
checked, it gathers strength and sings like a bird, but as the day
advances and the sun strikes its thin currents outspread on the heated
precipices, most of its waters vanish ere the bottom of the Valley is
reached. Many a fine, hanging-garden aloft on breezy inaccessible heights
owes to it its freshness and fullness of beauty; ferneries in shady
nooks, filled with Adiantum, Woodwardia, Woodsia, Aspidium, Pellaea,
and Cheilanthes, rosetted and tufted and ranged in lines, daintily
overlapping, thatching the stupendous cliffs with softest beauty, some
of the delicate fronds seeming to float on the warm moist air, without
any connection with rock or stream. Nor is there any lack of colored
plants wherever they can find a place to cling to; lilies and mints,
the showy cardinal mimulus, and glowing cushions of the golden bahia,
enlivened with butterflies and bees and all the other small, happy
humming creatures that belong to them.


After the highest point on the lower division of the trail is gained it
leads up into the deep recess occupied by the great fall, the noblest
display of falling water to be found in the Valley, or perhaps in the
world. When it first comes in sight it seems almost within reach of
one's hand, so great in the spring is its volume and velocity, yet it is
still nearly a third of a mile away and appears to recede as we advance.
The sculpture of the walls about it is on a scale of grandeur, according
nobly with the fall plain and massive, though elaborately finished, like
all the other cliffs about the Valley.


In the afternoon an immense shadow is cast athwart the plateau in front
of the fall, and over the chaparral bushes that clothe the slopes and
benches of the walls to the eastward, creeping upward until the fall is
wholly overcast, the contrast between the shaded and illumined sections
being very striking in these near views.


Under this shadow, during the cool centuries immediately following the
breaking-up of the Glacial Period, dwelt a small residual glacier, one
of the few that lingered on this sun-beaten side of the Valley after the
main trunk glacier had vanished. It sent down a long winding current
through the narrow cañon on the west side of the fall, and must have
formed a striking feature of the ancient scenery of the Valley; the
lofty fall of ice and fall of water side by side, yet separate and
distinct.


The coolness of the afternoon shadow and the abundant dewy spray make a
fine climate for the plateau ferns and grasses, and for the beautiful
azalea bushes that grow here in profusion and bloom in September, long
after the warmer thickets down on the floor of the Valley have withered
and gone to seed. Even close to the fall, and behind it at the base of
the cliff, a few venturesome plants may be found undisturbed by the
rock-shaking torrent.


The basin at the foot of the fall into which the current directly pours,
when it is not swayed by the wind, is about ten feet deep and fifteen to
twenty feet in diameter. That it is not much deeper is surprising, when
the great height and force of the fall is considered. But the rock where
the water strikes probably suffers less erosion than it would were the
descent less than half as great, since the current is outspread, and
much of its force is spent ere it reaches the bottom--being received on
the air as upon an elastic cushion, and borne outward and dissipated
over a surface more than fifty yards wide.


This surface, easily examined when the water is low, is intensely clean
and fresh looking. It is the raw, quick flesh of the mountain wholly
untouched by the weather. In summer droughts when the snowfall of the
preceding winter has been light, the fall is reduced to a mere shower of
separate drops without any obscuring spray. Then we may safely go back
of it and view the crystal shower from beneath, each drop wavering and
pulsing as it makes its way through the air, and flashing off jets of
colored light of ravishing beauty. But all this is invisible from the
bottom of the Valley, like a thousand other interesting things. One must
labor for beauty as for bread, here as elsewhere.

The Grandeur Of The Yosemite Fall

During the time of the spring floods the best near view of the fall is
obtained from Fern Ledge on the east side above the blinding spray at a
height of about 400 feet above the base of the fall. A climb of about
1400 feet from the Valley has to be made, and there is no trail, but
to any one fond of climbing this will make the ascent all the more
delightful. A narrow part of the ledge extends to the side of the fall
and back of it, enabling us to approach it as closely as we wish. When
the afternoon sunshine is streaming through the throng of comets, ever
wasting, ever renewed, fineness, firmness and variety of their forms are
beautifully revealed. At the top of the fall they seem to burst forth in
irregular spurts from some grand, throbbing mountain heart. Now and then
one mighty throb sends forth a mass of solid water into the free air
far beyond the others which rushes alone to the bottom of the fall with
long streaming tail, like combed silk, while the others, descending in
clusters, gradually mingle and lose their identity. But they all rush
past us with amazing velocity and display of power though apparently
drowsy and deliberate in their movements when observed from a distance
of a mile or two. The heads of these comet-like masses are composed of
nearly solid water, and are dense white in color like pressed snow, from
the friction they suffer in rushing through the air, the portion worn
off forming the tail between the white lustrous threads and films of
which faint, grayish pencilings appear, while the outer, finer sprays of
water-dust, whirling in sunny eddies, are pearly gray throughout. At the
bottom of the fall there is but little distinction of form visible. It
is mostly a hissing, clashing, seething, upwhirling mass of scud and
spray, through which the light sifts in gray and purple tones while
at times when the sun strikes at the required angle, the whole wild
and apparently lawless, stormy, striving mass is changed to brilliant
rainbow hues, manifesting finest harmony. The middle portion of the
fall is the most openly beautiful; lower, the various forms into which
the waters are wrought are more closely and voluminously veiled, while
higher, towards the head, the current is comparatively simple and
undivided. But even at the bottom, in the boiling clouds of spray,
there is no confusion, while the rainbow light makes all divine, adding
glorious beauty and peace to glorious power. This noble fall has far the
richest, as well as the most powerful, voice of all the falls of the
Valley, its tones varying from the sharp hiss and rustle of the wind
in the glossy leaves of the live-oak and the soft, sifting, hushing
tones of the pines, to the loudest rush and roar of storm winds and
thunder among the crags of the summit peaks. The low bass, booming,
reverberating tones, heard under favorable circumstances five or six
miles away are formed by the dashing and exploding of heavy masses
mixed with air upon two projecting ledges on the face of the cliff, the
one on which we are standing and another about 200 feet above it. The
torrent of massive comets is continuous at time of high water, while
the explosive, booming notes are wildly intermittent, because, unless
influenced by the wind, most of the heavier masses shoot out from the
face of the precipice, and pass the ledges upon which at other times
they are exploded. Occasionally the whole fall is swayed away from the
front of the cliff, then suddenly dashed flat against it, or vibrated
from side to side like a pendulum, giving rise to endless variety of
forms and sounds.

The Nevada Fall

The Nevada Fall is 600 feet high and is usually ranked next to the
Yosemite in general interest among the five main falls of the Valley.
Coming through the Little Yosemite in tranquil reaches, the river is
first broken into rapids on a moraine boulder-bar that crosses the lower
end of the Valley. Thence it pursues its way to the head of the fall in
a rough, solid rock channel, dashing on side angles, heaving in heavy
surging masses against elbow knobs, and swirling and swashing in
pot-holes without a moment's rest. Thus, already chafed and dashed to
foam, overfolded and twisted, it plunges over the brink of the precipice
as if glad to escape into the open air. But before it reaches the bottom
it is pulverized yet finer by impinging upon a sloping portion of the
cliff about half-way down, thus making it the whitest of all the falls
of the Valley, and altogether one of the most wonderful in the world.


On the north side, close to its head, a slab of granite projects over the
brink, forming a fine point for a view, over its throng of streamers and
wild plunging, into its intensely white bosom, and through the broad
drifts of spray, to the river far below, gathering its spent waters and
rushing on again down the cañon in glad exultation into Emerald Pool,
where at length it grows calm and gets rest for what still lies before
it. All the features of the view correspond with the waters in grandeur
and wildness. The glacier sculptured walls of the cañon on either hand,
with the sublime mass of the Glacier Point Ridge in front, form a huge
triangular pit-like basin, which, filled with the roaring of the falling
river seems as if it might be the hopper of one of the mills of the gods
in which the mountains were being ground.

The Vernal Fall

The Vernal, about a mile below the Nevada, is 400 feet high, a staid,
orderly, graceful, easy-going fall, proper and exact in every movement
and gesture, with scarce a hint of the passionate enthusiasm of the
Yosemite or of the impetuous Nevada, whose chafed and twisted waters
hurrying over the cliff seem glad to escape into the open air, while its
deep, booming, thunder-tones reverberate over the listening landscape.
Nevertheless it is a favorite with most visitors, doubtless because it
is more accessible than any other, more closely approached and better
seen and heard. A good stairway ascends the cliff beside it and the
level plateau at the head enables one to saunter safely along the edge
of the river as it comes from Emerald Pool and to watch its waters,
calmly bending over the brow of the precipice, in a sheet eighty feet
wide, changing in color from green to purplish gray and white until
dashed on a boulder talus. Thence issuing from beneath its fine broad
spray-clouds we see the tremendously adventurous river still unspent,
beating its way down the wildest and deepest of all its cañons in
gray roaring rapids, dear to the ouzel, and below the confluence of
the Illilouette, sweeping around the shoulder of the Half Dome on its
approach to the head of the tranquil levels of the Valley.

The Illilouette Fall

The Illilouette in general appearance most resembles the Nevada. The
volume of water is less than half as great, but it is about the same
height (600 feet) and its waters receive the same kind of preliminary
tossing in a rocky, irregular channel. Therefore it is a very white and
fine-grained fall. When it is in full springtime bloom it is partly
divided by rocks that roughen the lip of the precipice, but this
division amounts only to a kind of fluting and grooving of the column,
which has a beautiful effect. It is not nearly so grand a fall as the
upper Yosemite, or so symmetrical as the Vernal, or so airily graceful
and simple as the Bridal Veil, nor does it ever display so tremendous
an outgush of snowy magnificence as the Nevada; but in the exquisite
fineness and richness of texture of its flowing folds it surpasses
them all.


One of the finest effects of sunlight on falling water I ever saw in
Yosemite or elsewhere I found on the brow of this beautiful fall. It
was in the Indian summer, when the leaf colors were ripe and the great
cliffs and domes were transfigured in the hazy golden air. I had
scrambled up its rugged talus-dammed cañon, oftentimes stopping to take
breath and look back to admire the wonderful views to be had there of
the great Half Dome, and to enjoy the extreme purity of the water, which
in the motionless pools on this stream is almost perfectly invisible;
the colored foliage of the maples, dogwoods, Rubus tangles, etc., and
the late goldenrods and asters. The voice of the fall was now low, and
the grand spring and summer floods had waned to sifting, drifting gauze
and thin-broidered folds of linked and arrowy lace-work. When I reached
the foot of the fall sunbeams were glinting across its head, leaving all
the rest of it in shadow; and on its illumined brow a group of yellow
spangles of singular form and beauty were playing, flashing up and
dancing in large flame-shaped masses, wavering at times, then steadying,
rising and falling in accord with the shifting forms of the water. But
the color of the dancing spangles changed not at all. Nothing in clouds
or flowers, on bird-wings or the lips of shells, could rival it in
fineness. It was the most divinely beautiful mass of rejoicing yellow
light I ever beheld--one of Nature's precious gifts that perchance may
come to us but once in a lifetime.

The Minor Falls

There are many other comparatively small falls and cascades in the
Valley. The most notable are the Yosemite Gorge Fall and Cascades,
Tenaya Fall and Cascades, Royal Arch Falls, the two Sentinel Cascades
and the falls of Cascade and Tamarack Creeks, a mile or two below the
lower end of the Valley. These last are often visited. The others are
seldom noticed or mentioned; although in almost any other country they
would be visited and described as wonders.


The six intermediate falls in the gorge between the head of the Lower
and the base of the Upper Yosemite Falls, separated by a few deep pools
and strips of rapids, and three slender, tributary cascades on the west
side form a series more strikingly varied and combined than any other
in the Valley, yet very few of all the Valley visitors ever see them or
hear of them. No available standpoint commands a view of them all. The
best general view is obtained from the mouth of the gorge near the head
of the Lower Fall. The two lowest of the series, together with one of
the three tributary cascades, are visible from this standpoint, but in
reaching it the last twenty or thirty feet of the descent is rather
dangerous in time of high water, the shelving rocks being then slippery
on account of spray, but if one should chance to slip when the water is
low, only a bump or two and a harmless plash would be the penalty. No
part of the gorge, however, is safe to any but cautious climbers.


Though the dark gorge hall of these rejoicing waters is never flushed by
the purple light of morning or evening, it is warmed and cheered by the
white light of noonday, which, falling into so much foam and and spray
of varying degrees of fineness, makes marvelous displays of rainbow
colors. So filled, indeed, is it with this precious light, at favorable
times it seems to take the place of common air. Laurel bushes shed
fragrance into it from above and live-oaks, those fearless mountaineers,
hold fast to angular seams and lean out over it with their fringing
sprays and bright mirror leaves.


One bird, the ouzel, loves this gorge and flies through it merrily, or
cheerily, rather, stopping to sing on foam-washed bosses where other
birds could find no rest for their feet. I have even seen a gray
squirrel down in the heart of it beside the wild rejoicing water.


One of my favorite night walks was along the rim of this wild gorge in
times of high water when the moon was full, to see the lunar bows in the
spray.


For about a mile above Mirror Lake the Tenaya Cañon is level, and
richly planted with fir, Douglas spruce and libocedrus, forming a
remarkably fine grove, at the head of which is the Tenaya Fall. Though
seldom seen or described, this is, I think, the most picturesque of all
the small falls. A considerable distance above it, Tenaya Creek comes
hurrying down, white and foamy, over a flat pavement inclined at an
angle of about eighteen degrees. In time of high water this sheet of
rapids is nearly seventy feet wide, and is varied in a very striking way
by three parallel furrows that extend in the direction of its flow.
These furrows, worn by the action of the stream upon cleavage joints,
vary in width, are slightly sinuous, and have large boulders firmly
wedged in them here and there in narrow places, giving rise, of course,
to a complicated series of wild dashes, doublings, and upleaping arches
in the swift torrent. Just before it reaches the head of the fall the
current is divided, the left division making a vertical drop of about
eighty feet in a romantic, leafy, flowery, mossy nook, while the other
forms a rugged cascade.


The Royal Arch Fall in time of high water is a magnificent object,
forming a broad ornamental sheet in front of the arches. The two
Sentinel Cascades, 3000 feet high, are also grand spectacles when the
snow is melting fast in the spring, but by the middle of summer they
have diminished to mere streaks scarce noticeable amid their sublime
surroundings.

The Beauty Of The Rainbows

The Bridal Veil and Vernal Falls are famous for their rainbows; and
special visits to them are often made when the sun shines into the spray
at the most favorable angle. But amid the spray and foam and fine-ground
mist ever rising from the various falls and cataracts there is an
affluence and variety of iris bows scarcely known to visitors who stay
only a day or two. Both day and night, winter and summer, this divine
light may be seen wherever water is falling dancing, singing; telling
the heart-peace of Nature amid the wildest displays of her power. In the
bright spring mornings the black-walled recess at the foot of the Lower
Yosemite Fall is lavishly fine with irised spray; and not simply does
this span the dashing foam, but the foam itself, the whole mass of it,
beheld at a certain distance, seems to be colored, and drips and wavers
from color to color, mingling with the foliage of the adjacent trees,
without suggesting any relationship to the ordinary rainbow. This is
perhaps the largest and most reservoir-like fountain of iris colors to
be found in the Valley.


Lunar rainbows or spray-bows also abound in the glorious affluence of
dashing, rejoicing, hurrahing, enthusiastic spring floods, their colors
as distinct as those of the sun and regularly and obviously banded,
though less vivid. Fine specimens may be found any night at the foot of
the Upper Yosemite Fall, glowing gloriously amid the gloomy shadows and
thundering waters, whenever there is plenty of moonlight and spray. Even
the secondary bow is at times distinctly visible.


The best point from which to observe them is on Fern Ledge. For some
time after moonrise, at time of high water, the arc has a span of about
five hundred feet, and is set upright; one end planted in the boiling
spray at the bottom, the other in the edge of the fall, creeping lower,
of course, and becoming less upright as the moon rises higher. This
grand arc of color, glowing in mild, shapely beauty in so weird and huge
a chamber of night shadows, and amid the rush and roar and tumultuous
dashing of this thunder-voiced fall, is one of the most impressive and
most cheering of all the blessed mountain evangels.


Smaller bows may be seen in the gorge on the plateau between the Upper
and Lower Falls. Once toward midnight, after spending a few hours with
the wild beauty of the Upper Fall, I sauntered along the edge of the
gorge, looking in here and there, wherever the footing felt safe, to see
what I could learn of the night aspects of the smaller falls that dwell
there. And down in an exceedingly black, pit-like portion of the gorge,
at the foot of the highest of the intermediate falls, into which the
moonbeams were pouring through a narrow opening, I saw a well-defined
spray-bow, beautifully distinct in colors, spanning the pit from side
to side, while pure white foam-waves beneath the beautiful bow were
constantly springing up out of the dark into the moonlight like dancing
ghosts.

An Unexpected Adventure

A wild scene, but not a safe one, is made by the moon as it appears
through the edge of the Yosemite Fall when one is behind it. Once, after
enjoying the night-song of the waters and watching the formation of the
colored bow as the moon came round the domes and sent her beams into the
wild uproar, I ventured out on the narrow bench that extends back of the
fall from Fern Ledge and began to admire the dim-veiled grandeur of the
view. I could see the fine gauzy threads of the fall's filmy border by
having the light in front; and wishing to look at the moon through the
meshes of some of the denser portions of the fall, I ventured to creep
farther behind it while it was gently wind-swayed, without taking
sufficient thought about the consequences of its swaying back to its
natural position after the wind-pressure should be removed. The effect
was enchanting: fine, savage music sounding above, beneath, around me;
while the moon, apparently in the very midst of the rushing waters,
seemed to be struggling to keep her place, on account of the
ever-varying form and density of the water masses through which she was
seen, now darkly veiled or eclipsed by a rush of thick-headed comets,
now flashing out through openings between their tails. I was in
fairyland between the dark wall and the wild throng of illumined waters,
but suffered sudden disenchantment; for, like the witch-scene in Alloway
Kirk, "in an instant all was dark." Down came a dash of spent comets,
thin and harmless-looking in the distance, but they felt desperately
solid and stony when they struck my shoulders, like a mixture of choking
spray and gravel and big hailstones. Instinctively dropping on my knees,
I gripped an angle of the rock, curled up like a young fern frond with
my face pressed against my breast, and in this attitude submitted as
best I could to my thundering bath. The heavier masses seemed to strike
like cobblestones, and there was a confused noise of many waters about
my ears--hissing, gurgling, clashing sounds that were not heard as
music. The situation was quickly realized. How fast one's thoughts burn
in such times of stress! I was weighing chances of escape. Would the
column be swayed a few inches away from the wall, or would it come yet
closer? The fall was in flood and not so lightly would its ponderous
mass be swayed. My fate seemed to depend on a breath of the "idle wind."
It was moved gently forward, the pounding ceased, and I was once more
visited by glimpses of the moon. But fearing I might be caught at a
disadvantage in making too hasty a retreat, I moved only a few feet
along the bench to where a block of ice lay. I wedged myself between the
ice and the wall and lay face downwards, until the steadiness of the
light gave encouragement to rise and get away. Somewhat nerve-shaken,
drenched, and benumbed, I made out to build a fire, warmed myself, ran
home, reached my cabin before daylight, got an hour or two of sleep,
and awoke sound and comfortable, better, not worse for my hard midnight
bath.

Climate And Weather

Owing to the westerly trend of the Valley and its vast depth there
is a great difference between the climates of the north and south
sides--greater than between many countries far apart; for the south wall
is in shadow during the winter months, while the north is bathed in
sunshine every clear day. Thus there is mild spring weather on one side
of the Valley while winter rules the other. Far up the north-side cliffs
many a nook may be found closely embraced by sun-beaten rock-bosses in
which flowers bloom every month of the year. Even butterflies may be
seen in these high winter gardens except when snow-storms are falling
and a few days after they have ceased. Near the head of the lower
Yosemite Fall in January I found the ant lions lying in wait in their
warm sand-cups, rock ferns being unrolled, club mosses covered with
fresh-growing plants, the flowers of the laurel nearly open, and the
honeysuckle rosetted with bright young leaves; every plant seemed to be
thinking about summer. Even on the shadow-side of the Valley the frost
is never very sharp. The lowest temperature I ever observed during four
winters was 7° Fahrenheit. The first twenty-four days of January
had an average temperature at 9 A.M. of 32°, minimum 22°;
at 3 P.M. the average was 40° 30′, the minimum 32°. Along
the top of the walls, 7000 and 8000 feet high, the temperature was, of
course, much lower. But the difference in temperature between the north
and south sides is due not so much to the winter sunshine as to the heat
of the preceding summer, stored up in the rocks, which rapidly melts the
snow in contact with them. For though summer sun-heat is stored in the
rocks of the south side also, the amount is much less because the rays
fall obliquely on the south wall even in summer and almost vertically
on the north.


The upper branches of the Yosemite streams are buried every winter
beneath a heavy mantle of snow, and set free in the spring in
magnificent floods. Then, all the fountains, full and overflowing, every
living thing breaks forth into singing, and the glad exulting streams
shining and falling in the warm sunny weather, shake everything into
music making all the mountain-world a song.


The great annual spring thaw usually begins in May in the forest region,
and in June and July on the high Sierra, varying somewhat both in time
and fullness with the weather and the depth of the snow. Toward the end
of summer the streams are at their lowest ebb, few even of the strongest
singing much above a whisper they slip and ripple through gravel and
boulder-beds from pool to pool in the hollows of their channels, and
drop in pattering showers like rain, and slip down precipices and fall
in sheets of embroidery, fold over fold. But, however low their singing,
it is always ineffably fine in tone, in harmony with the restful time of
the year.


The first snow of the season that comes to the help of the streams
usually falls in September or October, sometimes even is the latter part
of August, in the midst of yellow Indian summer when the goldenrods and
gentians of the glacier meadows are is their prime. This Indian-summer
snow, however, soon melts, the chilled flowers spread their petals to
the sun, and the gardens as well as the streams are refreshed as if only
a warm shower had fallen. The snow-storms that load the mountains to
form the main fountain supply for the year seldom set in before the
middle or end of November.

Winter Beauty Of The Valley

When the first heavy storms stopped work on the high mountains, I made
haste down to my Yosemite den, not to "hole up" and sleep the white
months away; I was out every day, and often all night, sleeping but
little, studying the so-called wonders and common things ever on show,
wading, climbing, sauntering among the blessed storms and calms,
rejoicing in almost everything alike that I could see or hear: the
glorious brightness of frosty mornings; the sunbeams pouring over the
white domes and crags into the groves end waterfalls, kindling marvelous
iris fires in the hoarfrost and spray; the great forests and mountains
in their deep noon sleep; the good-night alpenglow; the stars; the
solemn gazing moon, drawing the huge domes and headlands one by one
glowing white out of the shadows hushed and breathless like an audience
in awful enthusiasm, while the meadows at their feet sparkle with
frost-stars like the sky; the sublime darkness of storm-nights, when all
the lights are out; the clouds in whose depths the frail snow-flowers
grow; the behavior and many voices of the different kinds of storms,
trees, birds, waterfalls, and snow-avalanches in the ever-changing
weather.


Every clear, frosty morning loud sounds are heard booming and
reverberating from side to side of the Valley at intervals of a few
minutes, beginning soon after sunrise and continuing an hour or two like
a thunder-storm. In my first winter in the Valley I could not make out
the source of this noise. I thought of falling boulders, rock-blasting,
etc. Not till I saw what looked like hoarfrost dropping from the side of
the Fall was the problem explained. The strange thunder is made by the
fall of sections of ice formed of spray that is frozen on the face of
the cliff along the sides of the Upper Yosemite Fan--a sort of crystal
plaster, a foot or two thick, racked off by the sunbeams, awakening all
the Valley like cock-crowing, announcing the finest weather, shouting
aloud Nature's infinite industry and love of hard work in creating
beauty.

Exploring An Ice Cone

This frozen spray gives rise to one of the most interesting winter
features of the Valley--a cone of ice at the foot of the fall, four or
five hundred feet high. From the Fern Ledge standpoint its crater-like
throat is seen, down which the fall plunges with deep, gasping
explosions of compressed air, and, after being well churned in the wormy
interior, the water bursts forth through arched openings at its base,
apparently scourged and weary and glad to escape, while belching spray,
spouted up out of the throat past the descending current, is wafted
away in irised drifts to the adjacent rocks and groves. It is built
during the night and early hours of the morning; only in spells of
exceptionally cold and cloudy weather is the work continued through the
day. The greater part of the spray material falls in crystalline showers
direct to its place, something like a small local snow-storm; but a
considerable portion is first frozen on the face of the cliff along the
sides of the fall and stays there until expanded and cracked off in
irregular masses, some of them tons in weight, to be built into the
walls of the cone; while in windy, frosty weather, when the fall is
swayed from side to side, the cone is well drenched and the loose ice
masses and spray-dust are all firmly welded and frozen together. Thus
the finest of the downy wafts and curls of spray-dust, which in mild
nights fall about as silently as dew, are held back until sunrise to
make a store of heavy ice to reinforce the waterfall's thunder-tones.


While the cone is in process of formation, growing higher and wider in
the frosty weather, it looks like a beautiful smooth, pure-white hill;
but when it is wasting and breaking up in the spring its surface is
strewn with leaves, pine branches, stones, sand, etc., that have been
brought over the fall, making it look like a heap of avalanche detritus.


Anxious to learn what I could about the structure of this curious hill
I often approached it in calm weather and tried to climb it, carrying
an ax to cut steps. Once I nearly succeeded in gaining the summit. At
the base I was met by a current of spray and wind that made seeing and
breathing difficult. I pushed on backward however, and soon gained the
slope of the hill, where by creeping close to the surface most of the
choking blast passed over me and I managed to crawl up with but little
difficulty. Thus I made my way nearly to the summit, halting at times
to peer up through the wild whirls of spray at the veiled grandeur of
the fall, or to listen to the thunder beneath me; the whole hill was
sounding as if it were a huge, bellowing drum. I hoped that by waiting
until the fall was blown aslant I should be able to climb to the lip of
the crater and get a view of the interior; but a suffocating blast, half
air, half water, followed by the fall of an enormous mass of frozen
spray from a spot high up on the wall, quickly discouraged me. The whole
cone was jarred by the blow and some fragments of the mass sped past me
dangerously near; so I beat a hasty retreat, chilled and drenched, and
lay down on a sunny rock to dry.


Once during a wind-storm when I saw that the fall was frequently blown
westward, leaving the cone dry, I ran up to Fern Ledge hoping to gain a
clear view of the interior. I set out at noon. All the way up the storm
notes were so loud about me that the voice of the fall was almost
drowned by them. Notwithstanding the rocks and bushes everywhere were
drenched by the wind-driven spray, I approached the brink of the
precipice overlooking the mouth of the ice cone, but I was almost
suffocated by the drenching, gusty spray, and was compelled to seek
shelter. I searched for some hiding-place in the wall from whence I
might run out at some opportune moment when the fall with its whirling
spray and torn shreds of comet tails and trailing, tattered skirts was
borne westward, as I had seen it carried several times before, leaving
the cliffs on the east side and the ice hill bare in the sunlight. I had
not long to wait, for, as if ordered so for my special accommodation,
the mighty downrush of comets with their whirling drapery swung westward
and remained aslant for nearly half an hour. The cone was admirably
lighted and deserted by the water, which fell most of the time on the
rocky western slopes mostly outside of the cone. The mouth into which
the fall pours was, as near as I could guess, about one hundred feet in
diameter north and south and about two hundred feet east and west, which
is about the shape and size of the fall at its best in its normal
condition at this season.


The crater-like opening was not a true oval, but more like a huge coarse
mouth. I could see down the throat about one hundred feet or perhaps
farther.


The fall precipice overhangs from a height of 400 feet above the base;
therefore the water strikes some distance from the base off the cliff,
allowing space for the accumulation of a considerable mass of ice
between the fall and the wall.

Chapter 2
Winter Storms and Spring Floods

The Bridal Veil and the Upper Yosemite Falls, on account of their height
and exposure, are greatly influenced by winds. The common summer winds
that come up the river cañon from the plains are seldom very strong;
but the north winds do some very wild work, worrying the falls and the
forests, and hanging snow-banners on the comet-peaks. One wild winter
morning I was awakened by storm-wind that was playing with the falls as
if they were mere wisps of mist and making the great pines bow and sing
with glorious enthusiasm. The Valley had been visited a short time
before by a series of fine snow-storms, and the floor and the cliffs and
all the region round about were lavishly adorned with its best winter
jewelry, the air was full of fine snow-dust, and pine branches, tassels
and empty cones were flying in an almost continuous flock.


Soon after sunrise, when I was seeking a place safe from flying
branches, I saw the Lower Yosemite Fall thrashed and pulverized from top
to bottom into one glorious mass of rainbow dust; while a thousand feet
above it the main Upper Fall was suspended on the face of the cliff in
the form of an inverted bow, all silvery white and fringed with short
wavering strips. Then, suddenly assailed by a tremendous blast, the
whole mass of the fall was blown into thread and ribbons, and driven
back over the brow of the cliff whence it came, as if denied admission
to the Valley. This kind of storm-work was continued about ten or
fifteen minutes; then another change in the play of the huge exulting
swirls and billows and upheaving domes of the gale allowed the baffled
fall to gather and arrange its tattered waters, and sink down again in
its place. As the day advanced, the gale gave no sign of dying,
excepting brief lulls, the Valley was filled with its weariless roar,
and the cloudless sky grew garish-white from myriads of minute,
sparkling snow-spicules. In the afternoon, while I watched the Upper
Fall from the shelter of a big pine tree, it was suddenly arrested in
its descent at a point about half-way down, and was neither blown upward
nor driven aside, but simply held stationary in mid-air, as if
gravitation below that point in the path of its descent had ceased to
act. The ponderous flood, weighing hundreds of tons, was sustained,
hovering, hesitating, like a bunch of thistledown, while I counted one
hundred and ninety. All this time the ordinary amount of water was
coming over the cliff and accumulating in the air, swedging and widening
and forming an irregular cone about seven hundred feet high, tapering to
the top of the wall, the whole standing still, jesting on the invisible
arm of the North Wind. At length, as if commanded to go on again, scores
of arrowy comets shot forth from the bottom of the suspended mass as if
escaping from separate outlets.


The brow of El Capitan was decked with long snow-streamers like hair,
Clouds' Rest was fairly enveloped in drifting gossamer elms, and the Half
Dome loomed up in the garish light like a majestic, living creature clad
in the same gauzy, wind-woven drapery, while upward currents meeting at
times overhead made it smoke like a volcano.

An Extraordinary Storm And Flood

Glorious as are these rocks and waters arrayed in storm robes, or
chanting rejoicing in every-day dress, they are still more glorious when
rare weather conditions meet to make them sing with floods. Only once
during all the years I have lived in the Valley have I seen it in full
flood bloom. In 1871 the early winter weather was delightful; the days
all sunshine, the nights all starry and calm, calling forth fine crops
of frost-crystals on the pines and withered ferns and grasses for the
morning sunbeams to sift through. In the afternoon of December 16, when
I was sauntering on the meadows, I noticed a massive crimson cloud
growing in solitary grandeur above the Cathedral Rocks, its form
scarcely less striking than its color. It had a picturesque, bulging
base like an old sequoia, a smooth, tapering stem, and a bossy,
down-curling crown like a mushroom; all its parts were colored alike,
making one mass of translucent crimson. Wondering what the meaning of
that strange, lonely red cloud might be, I was up betimes next morning
looking at the weather, but all seemed tranquil as yet. Towards noon
gray clouds with a lose, curly grain like bird's-eye maple began to
grow, and late at night rain fell, which soon changed to snow. Next
morning the snow on the meadows was about ten inches deep, and it was
still falling in a fine, cordial storm. During the night of the 18th
heavy rain fell on the snow, but as the temperature was 34 degrees, the
snow-line was only a few hundred feet above the bottom of the Valley, and
one had only to climb a little higher than the tops of the pines to get
out of the rain-storm into the snow-storm. The streams, instead of being
increased in volume by the storm, were diminished, because the snow
sponged up part of their waters and choked the smaller tributaries. But
about midnight the temperature suddenly rose to 42°, carrying
the snow-line far beyond the Valley walls, and next morning Yosemite
was rejoicing in a glorious flood. The comparatively warm rain falling
on the snow was at first absorbed and held back, and so also was that
portion of the snow that the rain melted, and all that was melted by the
warm wind, until the whole mass of snow was saturated and became sludgy,
and at length slipped and rushed simultaneously from a thousand slopes
in wildest extravagance, heaping and swelling flood over flood, and
plunging into the Valley in stupendous avalanches.


Awakened by the roar, I looked out and at once recognized the
extraordinary character of the storm. The rain was still pouring in
torrent abundance and the wind at gale speed was doing all it could with
the flood-making rain.


The section of the north wall visible from my cabin was fairly streaked
with new falls--wild roaring singers that seemed strangely out of place.
Eager to get into the midst of the show, I snatched a piece of bread for
breakfast and ran out. The mountain waters, suddenly liberated, seemed
to be holding a grand jubilee. The two Sentinel Cascades rivaled the
great falls at ordinary stages, and across the Valley by the Three
Brothers I caught glimpses of more falls than I could readily count;
while the whole Valley throbbed and trembled, and was filled with an
awful, massive, solemn, sea-like roar. After gazing a while enchanted
with the network of new falls that were adorning and transfiguring every
rock in sight, I tried to reach the upper meadows, where the Valley is
widest, that I might be able to see the walls on both sides, and thus
gain general views. But the river was over its banks and the meadows
were flooded, forming an almost continuous lake dotted with blue sludgy
islands, while innumerable streams roared like lions across my path and
were sweeping forward rocks and logs with tremendous energy over ground
where tiny gilias had been growing but a short time before. Climbing
into the talus slopes, where these savage torrents were broken among
earthquake boulders, I managed to cross them, and force my way up the
Valley to Hutchings' Bridge, where I crossed the river and waded to the
middle of the upper meadow. Here most of the new falls were in sight,
probably the most glorious assemblage of waterfalls ever displayed from
any one standpoint. On that portion of the south wall between Hutchings'
and the Sentinel there were ten falls plunging and booming from a height
of nearly three thousand feet, the smallest of which might have been
heard miles away. In the neighborhood of Glacier Point there were six;
between the Three Brothers and Yosemite Fall, nine; between Yosemite and
Royal Arch Falls, ten; from Washington Column to Mount Watkins, ten; on
the slopes of Half Dome and Clouds' Rest, facing Mirror Lake and Tenaya
Cañon, eight; on the shoulder of Half Dome, facing the Valley, three;
fifty-six new falls occupying the upper end of the Valley, besides a
countless host of silvery threads gleaming everywhere. In all the Valley
there must have been upwards of a hundred. As if celebrating some
great event, falls and cascades in Yosemite costume were coming down
everywhere from fountain basins, far and near; and, though newcomers,
they behaved and sang as if they had lived here always.


All summer-visitors will remember the comet forms of the Yosemite Fall
and the laces of the Bridal Veil and Nevada. In the falls of this
winter jubilee the lace forms predominated, but there was no lack of
thunder-toned comets. The lower portion of one of the Sentinel Cascades
was composed of two main white torrents with the space between them
filled in with chained and beaded gauze of intricate pattern, through
the singing threads of which the purplish-gray rock could be dimly seen.
The series above Glacier Point was still more complicated in structure,
displaying every form that one could imagine water might be dashed and
combed and woven into. Those on the north wall between Washington Column
and the Royal Arch Fall were so nearly related they formed an almost
continuous sheet, and these again were but slightly separated from those
about Indian Cañon. The group about the Three Brothers and El Capitan,
owing to the topography and cleavage of the cliffs back of them, was
more broken and irregular. The Tissiack Cascades were comparatively
small, yet sufficient to give that noblest of mountain rocks a glorious
voice. In the midst of all this extravagant rejoicing the great Yosemite
Fall was scarce heard until about three o'clock in the afternoon. Then I
was startled by a sudden thundering crash as if a rock avalanche had
come to the help of the roaring waters. This was the flood-wave of
Yosemite Creek, which had just arrived delayed by the distance it had to
travel, and by the choking snows of its widespread fountains. Now, with
volume tenfold increased beyond its springtime fullness, it took its
place as leader of the glorious choir.


And the winds, too, were singing in wild accord, playing on every tree
and rock, surging against the huge brows and domes and outstanding
battlements, deflected hither and thither and broken into a thousand
cascading, roaring currents in the cañons, and low bass, drumming
swirls in the hollows. And these again, reacting on the clouds, eroded
immense cavernous spaces in their gray depths and swept forward the
resulting detritus in ragged trains like the moraines of glaciers. These
cloud movements in turn published the work of the winds, giving them
a visible body, and enabling us to trace them. As if endowed with
independent motion, a detached cloud would rise hastily to the very top
of the wall as if on some important errand, examining the faces of the
cliffs, and then perhaps as suddenly descend to sweep imposingly along
the meadows, trailing its draggled fringes through the pines, fondling
the waving spires with infinite gentleness, or, gliding behind a grove
or a single tree, bringing it into striking relief, as it bowed and
waved in solemn rhythm. Sometimes, as the busy clouds drooped and
condensed or dissolved to misty gauze, half of the Valley would be
suddenly veiled, leaving here and there some lofty headland cut off from
all visible connection with the walls, looming alone, dim, spectral, as
if belonging to the sky--visitors, like the new falls, come to take part
in the glorious festival. Thus for two days and nights in measureless
extravagance the storm went on, and mostly without spectators, at least
of a terrestrial kind. I saw nobody out--bird, bear, squirrel, or man.
Tourists had vanished months before, and the hotel people and laborers
were out of sight, careful about getting cold, and satisfied with views
from windows. The bears, I suppose, were in their cañon-boulder dens,
the squirrels in their knot-hole nests, the grouse in close fir groves,
and the small singers in the Indian Cañon chaparral, trying to keep
warm and dry. Strange to say, I did not see even the water-ouzels,
though they must have greatly enjoyed the storm.


This was the most sublime waterfall flood I ever saw--clouds, winds,
rocks, waters, throbbing together as one. And then to contemplate what
was going on simultaneously with all this in other mountain temples; the
Big Tuolumne Cañon--how the white waters and the winds were singing
there! And in Hetch Hetchy Valley and the great King's River yosemite,
and in all the other Sierra cañons and valleys from Shasta to the
southernmost fountains of the Kern, thousands of rejoicing flood
waterfalls chanting together in jubilee dress.

Chapter 3
Snow-Storms

As has been already stated, the first of the great snow-storms that
replenish the Yosemite fountains seldom sets in before the end of
November. Then, warned by the sky, wide-awake mountaineers, together
with the deer and most of the birds, make haste to the lowlands or
foothills; and burrowing marmots, mountain beavers, wood-rats, and other
small mountain people, go into winter quarters, some of them not again
to see the light of day until the general awakening and resurrection of
the spring in June or July. The fertile clouds, drooping and condensing
in brooding silence, seem to be thoughtfully examining the forests and
streams with reference to the work that lies before them. At length, all
their plans perfected, tufted flakes and single starry crystals come in
sight, solemnly swirling and glinting to their blessed appointed places;
and soon the busy throng fills the sky and makes darkness like night.
The first heavy fall is usually from about two to four feet in depth
then with intervals of days or weeks of bright weather storm succeeds
storm, heaping snow on snow, until thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But
on account of its settling and compacting, and waste from melting and
evaporation, the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds
ten feet in the forest regions, or fifteen feet along the slopes of the
summit peaks. After snow-storms come avalanches, varying greatly in
form, size, behavior and in the songs they sing; some on the smooth
slopes of the mountains are short and broad; others long and river-like
in the side cañons of yosemites and in the main cañons, flowing in
regular channels and booming like waterfalls, while countless smaller
ones fall everywhere from laden trees and rocks and lofty cañon walls.
Most delightful it is to stand in the middle of Yosemite on still clear
mornings after snow-storms and watch the throng of avalanches as they
come down, rejoicing, to their places, whispering, thrilling like birds,
or booming and roaring like thunder. The noble yellow pines stand hushed
and motionless as if under a spell until the morning sunshine begins to
sift through their laden spires; then the dense masses on the ends of
the leafy branches begin to shift and fall, those from the upper
branches striking the lower ones in succession, enveloping each tree in
a hollow conical avalanche of fairy fineness; while the relieved
branches spring up and wave with startling effect in the general
stillness, as if each tree was moving of its own volition. Hundreds of
broad cloud-shaped masses may also be seen, leaping over the brows of
the cliffs from great heights, descending at first with regular
avalanche speed until, worn into dust by friction, they float in front
of the precipices like irised clouds. Those which descend from the brow
of El Capitan are particularly fine; but most of the great Yosemite
avalanches flow in regular channels like cascades and waterfalls. When
the snow first gives way on the upper slopes of their basins, a dull
rushing, rumbling sound is heard which rapidly increases and seems to
draw nearer with appalling intensity of tone. Presently the white flood
comes bounding into sight over bosses and sheer places, leaping from
bench to bench, spreading and narrowing and throwing off clouds of
whirling dust like the spray of foaming cataracts. Compared with
waterfalls and cascades, avalanches are short-lived, few of them lasting
more than a minute or two, and the sharp, clashing sounds so common in
falling water are mostly wanting; but in their low massy thundertones
and purple-tinged whiteness, and in their dress, gait, gestures and
general behavior, they are much alike.

Avalanches

Besides these common after-storm avalanches that are to be found not
only in the Yosemite but in all the deep, sheer-walled cañon of the
Range there are two other important kinds, which may be called annual
and century avalanches, which still further enrich the scenery. The only
place about the Valley where one may be sure to see the annual kind is
on the north slope of Clouds' Rest. They are composed of heavy, compacted
snow, which has been subjected to frequent alternations of freezing and
thawing. They are developed on cañon and mountain-sides at an elevation
of from nine to ten thousand feet, where the slopes are inclined at an
angle too low to shed off the dry winter snow, and which accumulates
until the spring thaws sap their foundations and make them slippery;
then away in grand style go the ponderous icy masses without any fine
snow-dust. Those of Clouds' Rest descend like thunderbolts for more than
a mile.


The great century avalanches and the kind that mow wide swaths through
the upper forests occur on mountain-sides about ten or twelve thousand
feet high, where under ordinary weather 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 beneath them.
On their way down through the woods they seldom fail to make a perfectly
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 or lakes, and piling their uprooted trees, head downward, in
rows along the sides of the gaps like lateral moraines. Scars and broken
branches of the trees standing on the sides of the gaps record the depth
of the overwhelming flood; and when we come to count the annual
wood-rings on the uprooted trees we learn that some of these immense
avalanches occur only once in a century or even at still wider
intervals.

A Ride On An Avalanche

Few Yosemite visitors ever see snow avalanches and fewer still know the
exhilaration of riding on them. In all my mountaineering I have enjoyed
only one avalanche ride, and the start was so sudden and the end came
so soon I had but little time to think of the danger that attends this
sort of travel, though at such times one thinks fast. One fine Yosemite
morning after a heavy snowfall, being eager to see as many avalanches
as possible and wide views of the forest and summit peaks in their new
white robes before the sunshine had time to change 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 require a long
time, some three or four hours as I estimated; but it proved far more
difficult than I had anticipated. Most of the way I sank waist deep,
almost out of sight in some places. After spending the whole day to
within half an hour or so of sundown, I was still several hundred feet
below the summit. Then my hopes were reduced to getting up in time to
see the sunset. But I was not to get summit 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 down to the foot of the cañon
as if by enchantment. The wallowing ascent had taken nearly all day, the
descent only about a minute. When the avalanche started I threw myself
on my back and spread my arms to try to keep from sinking. Fortunately,
though the grade of the cañon is very steep, it is not interrupted by
precipices large 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 at times a little below it, and covered with a veil of
back-streaming dust particles; and as the whole mass beneath and about
me joined in the flight there was no friction, though I was tossed here
and there and lurched from side to side. When the avalanche swedged and
came to rest I found myself on top of the crumpled pile without bruise
or scar. This was a fine experience. Hawthorne says somewhere that steam
has spiritualized travel; though unspiritual smells, smoke, etc., still
attend steam travel. This flight in what might be called a milky way of
snow-stars was the most spiritual and exhilarating of all the modes of
motion I have ever experienced. Elijah's flight in a chariot of fire
could hardly have been more gloriously exciting.

The Streams In Other Seasons

In the spring, after all the avalanches are down and the snow is melting
fast, then all the Yosemite streams, from their fountains to their
falls, sing their grandest songs. Countless rills make haste to the
rivers, running and singing soon after sunrise, louder and louder with
increasing volume until sundown; then they gradually fail through the
frosty hours of the night. In this way the volume of the upper branches
of the river is nearly doubled during the day, rising and falling as
regularly as the tides of the sea. Then the Merced overflows its banks,
flooding the meadows, sometimes almost from wall to wall in some places,
beginning to rise towards sundown just when the streams on the fountains
are beginning to diminish, the difference in time of the daily rise and
fall being caused by the distance the upper flood streams have to travel
before reaching the Valley. In the warmest 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 their dance and song, to swell their exulting chorus.


In early summer, after the flood season, the Yosemite streams are in
their prime, running crystal clear, deep and full but not overflowing
their banks--about as deep through the night as the day, the difference
in volume so marked in spring being now too slight to be noticed. Nearly
all the weather is cloudless and everything is at its brightest--lake,
river, garden and forest with all their life. Most of the plants are in
full flower. The blessed ouzels have built their mossy huts and are now
singing their best songs with the streams.


In tranquil, mellow autumn, when the year's work is about done and
the fruits are ripe, birds and seeds out of their nests, and all the
landscape is glowing like a benevolent countenance, then the streams
are at their lowest ebb, with scarce a memory left of their wild spring
floods. The small tributaries that do not reach back to the lasting
snow fountains of the summit peaks shrink to whispering, tinkling
currents. After the snow is gone from the basins, excepting occasional
thundershowers, they are now fed only by small springs whose waters
are mostly evaporated in passing over miles of warm pavements, and in
feeling their way slowly from pool to pool through the midst of boulders
and sand. Even the main rivers are so low they may easily be forded, and
their grand falls and cascades, now gentle and approachable, have waned
to sheets of embroidery.

Chapter 4
Snow Banners

But it is on the mountain tops, when they are laden with loose, dry snow
and swept by a gale from the north, that the most magnificent storm
scenery is displayed. The peaks along the axis of the Range are then
decorated with resplendent banners, some of them more than a mile long,
shining, streaming, waving with solemn exuberant enthusiasm as if
celebrating some surpassingly glorious event.


The snow of which these banners are made falls on the high Sierra in
most extravagant abundance, sometimes to a depth of fifteen or twenty
feet, coming from the fertile clouds not in large angled flakes such as
one oftentimes sees in Yosemite, seldom even in complete crystals, for
many of the starry blossoms fall before they are ripe, while most of
those that attain perfect development as six-petaled flowers are more
or less broken by glinting and chafing against one another on the
way down to their work. This dry frosty snow is prepared for the grand
banner-waving celebrations by the action of the wind. Instead of at
once finding rest like that which falls into the tranquil depths of
the forest, it is shoved and rolled and beaten against boulders and
out-jutting rocks, swirled in pits and hollows like sand in river
pot-holes, and ground into sparkling dust. And when storm winds find
this snow-dust in a loose condition on the slopes above the timber-line
they toss it back into the sky and sweep it onward from peak to peak
in the form of smooth regular banners, or in cloudy drifts, according
to the velocity and direction of the wind, and the conformation of the
slopes over which it is driven. While thus flying through the air a
small portion escapes from the mountains to the sky as vapor; but far
the greater part is at length locked fast in bossy overcurling cornices
along the ridges, or in stratified sheets in the glacier cirques, some
of it to replenish the small residual glaciers and remain silent and
rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down
home to the sea.


But, though snow-dust and storm-winds abound on the mountains, regular
shapely banners are, for causes we shall presently see, seldom produced.
During the five winters that I spent in Yosemite I made many excursions
to high points above the walls in all kinds of weather to see what was
going on outside; from all my lofty outlooks I saw only one banner-storm
that seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873, when
the snow-laden peaks were swept by a powerful norther. I was awakened
early in the morning by a wild storm-wind and of course I had to make
haste to the middle of the Valley to enjoy it. Rugged torrents and
avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were roaring down the side
cañons and over the cliffs, arousing the rocks and the trees and the
streams alike into glorious hurrahing enthusiasm, shaking the whole
Valley into one huge song. Yet inconceivable as it must seem even to
those who love all Nature's wildness, the storm was telling its story
on the mountains in still grander characters.

A Wonderful Winter Scene

I had long been anxious to study some points in the structure of the
ice-hill at the foot of the Upper Yosemite Fall, but, as I have already
explained, blinding spray had hitherto prevented me from getting
sufficiently near it. This morning the entire body of the Fall was
oftentimes torn into gauzy strips and blown horizontally along the face
of the cliff, leaving the ice-hill dry; and while making my way to the
top of Fern Ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to look down its
throat, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of
the South Dome, each waving a white glowing banner against the dark blue
sky, as regular in form and firm and fine in texture as if it were made
of silk. So rare and splendid a picture, of course, smothered everything
else and I at once began to scramble and wallow up the snow-choked
Indian Cañon to a ridge about 8000 feet high, commanding a general
view of the main summits along the axis of the Range, feeling assured I
should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least
disappointed. I reached the top of the ridge in four or five hours, and
through an opening in the woods the most imposing wind-storm effect I
ever beheld came full in sight; unnumbered mountains rising sharply
into the cloudless sky, their bases solid white their sides plashed with
snow, like ocean rocks with foam, and on every summit a magnificent
silvery banner, from two thousand to six thousand feet in length,
slender at the point of attachment, and widening gradually until about
a thousand or fifteen hundred feet in breadth, and as shapely and as
substantial looking in texture as the banners of the finest silk, all
streaming and waving free and clear in the sun-glow with nothing to blur
the sublime picture they made.


Fancy yourself standing beside me on this Yosemite Ridge. There is a
strange garish glitter in the air and the gale drives wildly overhead,
but you feel nothing of its violence, for you are looking out through a
sheltered opening in the woods, as through a window. In the immediate
foreground there is a forest of silver fir their foliage warm
yellow-green, and the snow beneath them strewn with their plumes,
plucked off by the storm; and beyond broad, ridgy, cañon-furrowed,
dome-dotted middle ground, darkened here and there with belts of pines,
you behold the lofty snow laden mountains in glorious array, waving
their banners with jubilant enthusiasm as if shouting aloud for joy.
They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for
every feature is distinct and the whole wonderful show is seen in its
right proportions, like a painting on the sky.


And now after this general view, mark how sharply the ribs and
buttresses and summits of the mountains are defined, excepting the
portions veiled by the banners; how gracefully and nobly the banners
are waving in accord with the throbbing of the wind flood; how trimly
each is attached to the very summit of its peak like a streamer at a
mast-head; how bright and glowing white they are, and how finely their
fading fringes are penciled on the sky! See how solid white and opaque
they are at the point of attachment and how filmy and translucent toward
the end, so that the parts of the peaks past which they are streaming
look dim as if seen through a veil of ground glass. And see how some of
the longest of the banners on the highest peaks are streaming perfectly
free from peak to peak across intervening notches or passes, while
others overlap and partly hide one another.


As to their formation, we find that the main causes of the wondrous
beauty and perfection of those we are looking at are the favorable
direction and force of the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the
form of the north sides of the peaks. In general, the north sides are
concave in both their horizontal and vertical sections, having been
sculptured into this shape by the residual glaciers that lingered in
the protecting northern shadows, while the sun-beaten south sides,
having never been subjected to this kind of glaciation, are convex or
irregular. It is essential, therefore, not only that the wind should
move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious
and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come from the
north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by the south
wind. Had the gale today blown from the south, leaving the other
conditions unchanged, only swirling, interfering, cloudy drifts would
have been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted straight up
and over the tops of the peaks in condensed currents to be drawn out as
streamers, would have been driven over the convex southern slopes from
peak to peak like white pearly fog.


It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only the
forms of lofty ice mountains, but also those of the snow banners that
the wild winds hang upon them.

Earthquake Storms

The avalanche taluses, leaning against the walls at intervals of a mile
or two, are among the most striking and interesting of the secondary
features of the Valley. They are from about three to five hundred feet
high, made up of huge, angular, well-preserved, unshifting boulders, and
instead of being slowly weathered from the cliffs like ordinary taluses,
they were all formed suddenly and simultaneously by a great earthquake
that occurred at least three centuries ago. And though thus hurled into
existence in a few seconds or minutes, they are the least changeable of
all the Sierra soil-beds. Excepting those which were launched directly
into the channels of swift rivers, scarcely one of their wedged and
interlacing boulders has moved since the day of their creation; and
though mostly made up of huge blocks of granite, many of them from ten
to fifty feet cube, weighing thousands of tons with only a few small
chips, trees and shrubs make out to live and thrive on them and even
delicate herbaceous plants--draperia, collomia, zauschneria, etc.,
soothing and coloring their wild rugged slopes with gardens and groves.


I was long in doubt on some points concerning the origin of those
taluses. Plainly enough they were derived from the cliffs above them,
because they are of the size of scars on the wall, the rough angular
surface of which contrasts with the rounded, glaciated, unfractured
parts. It was plain, too, that instead of being made up of material
slowly and gradually weathered from the cliffs like ordinary taluses,
almost every one of them 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 are 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 ever fallen
among them. Furthermore, all these taluses throughout the Range seemed
by the trees and lichens growing on them to be of the same age. All
the phenomena thus pointed straight to a grand ancient earthquake. But
for years I left the question open, 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 had been assorted and
related and brought to rest, and their correspondence in size with the
cleavage joints of the cliffs from whence they were derived, cautious
about making up my mind. But at last all doubt as to their formation
vanished.


At half-past two o'clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened
by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a
storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken,
and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble
earthquake! A noble earthquake!" feeling sure I was going to learn
something. The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one
another so closely, that I had to balance myself carefully in walking as
if on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that the
high cliffs of the Valley could escape being shattered. In particular,
I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, towering above my cabin,
would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a large yellow pine,
hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller outbounding
boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became more and more
violent--flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and
battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,--as if Nature were wrecking her
Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a still better one.


I was now convinced before a single boulder had fallen that earthquakes
were the talus-makers and positive proof soon came. It was a calm
moonlight night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or so, save
low, muffled, underground, bubbling rumblings, and the whispering and
rustling of the agitated trees, as if Nature were holding her breath.
Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion there came
a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock on the south wall, about a half a mile
up the Valley, gave way and I saw it falling in thousands of the great
boulders I had so long been studying, pouring to the Valley floor
in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime
spectacle--an arc of glowing, passionate fire, fifteen hundred feet
span, as true in form and as serene in beauty as a rainbow in the midst
of the stupendous, roaring rock-storm. The sound was so tremendously
deep and broad and earnest, the whole earth like a living creature
seemed to have at last found a voice and to be calling to her sister
planets. In trying to tell something of the size of this awful sound it
seems to me that if all the thunder of all the storms I had 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
at the simultaneous birth of all the thousands of ancient cañon-taluses
throughout the length and breadth of the Range!


The first severe shocks were soon over, and eager to examine the
new-born talus I ran up the Valley in the moonlight and climbed upon it
before the huge blocks, after their 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. A cloud of dust particles, lighted by the moon, floated out
across the whole breadth of the Valley, forming a ceiling that lasted
until after sunrise, and the air was filled with the odor of crushed
Douglas spruces from a grove that had been mowed down and mashed like
weeds.


After the ground began to calm I ran across the meadow to the river to
see in what direction it was flowing and was glad to find that down
the Valley was still down. Its waters were muddy from portions of its
banks having given way, but it was flowing around its curves and over
its ripples and shallows with ordinary tones and gestures. The mud would
soon be cleared away and the raw slips on the banks would be the only
visible record of the shaking it suffered.


The Upper Yosemite Fall, glowing white in the moonlight, seemed to know
nothing of the earthquake, manifesting no change in form or voice, as
far as I could see or hear.


After a second startling shock, about half-past three o'clock, the
ground continued to tremble gently, and smooth, hollow rumbling sounds,
not always distinguishable from the rounded, bumping, explosive tones of
the falls, came from deep in the mountains in a northern direction.


The few Indians fled from their huts to the middle of the Valley,
fearing that angry spirits were trying to kill them; and, as I afterward
learned, most of the Yosemite tribe, who were spending the winter at
their village on Bull Creek forty miles away, were so terrified that
they ran into the river and washed themselves,--getting themselves clean
enough to say their prayers, I suppose, or to die. I asked Dick, one of
the Indians with whom I was acquainted, "What made the ground shake and
jump so much?" He only shook his head and said, "No good. No good," and
looked appealingly to me to give him hope that his life was to be
spared.


In the morning I found the few white settlers assembled in front of
the old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and meditating flight to the
lowlands, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. 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 talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on
their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a
somewhat speculative thinker 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 roads and trails dangling three or four thousand feet in the air.
Just then came the third 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 diminish his fears and laugh him into
something like reasonable faith, 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 to keep, saying that with a
companion of like mind he was going to the lowlands to stay until the
fate of poor, trembling Yosemite was settled. In vain I rallied them on
their fears, calling attention to the strength of the granite walls of
our Valley home, the very best and solidest masonry in the world, and
less likely to collapse and sink than the sedimentary lowlands to which
they were looking for safety; and saying that in any case they sometime
would have to die, and so grand a burial was not to be slighted. But
they were too seriously panic-stricken to get comfort from anything I
could say.


During the third severe shock the trees were so violently shaken that
the birds flew out with frightened cries. In particular, I noticed two
robins flying in terror from a leafless oak, the branches of which
swished and quivered as if struck by a heavy battering-ram. Exceedingly
interesting were the flashing and quivering of the elastic needles of
the pines in the sunlight and the waving up and down of the branches
while the trunks stood rigid. There was no swaying, waving or swirling
as in wind-storms, but quick, quivering jerks, and at times the heavy
tasseled branches moved as if they had all been pressed down against the
trunk and suddenly let go, to spring up and vibrate until they came to
rest again. Only the owls seemed to be undisturbed. Before the rumbling
echoes had died away a hollow-voiced owl began to hoot in philosophical
tranquillity from near the edge of the new talus as if nothing
extraordinary had occurred, although, perhaps, he was curious to know
what all the noise was about. His "hoot-too-hoot-too-whoo" might have
meant, "what's a' the steer, kimmer?"


It was long before the Valley found perfect rest. 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
in the depths of the mountains was usually followed by sudden jarring,
horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting,
upjolting movements. More than a month after the first great shock, when
I was standing on a fallen tree up the Valley near Lamon's winter cabin,
I heard a distinct bubbling thunder from the direction of Tenaya Cañon
Carlo, a large intelligent St. Bernard dog standing beside me seemed
greatly astonished, and looked intently in that direction with mouth
open and uttered a low Wouf! as if saying, "What's that?" He
must have known that it was not thunder, though like it. The air was
perfectly still, not the faintest breath of wind perceptible, and a
fine, mellow, sunny hush pervaded everything, in the midst of which came
that subterranean thunder. Then, while we gazed and listened, came the
corresponding shocks, distinct as if some mighty hand had shaken the
ground. After the sharp horizontal jars died away, they were followed
by a gentle rocking and undulating of the ground so distinct that Carlo
looked at the log on which he was standing to see who was shaking it. It
was the season of flooded meadows and the pools about me, calm as sheets
of glass, were suddenly thrown into low ruffling waves.


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 the streams 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 glided smoothly. Some of
the streams were completely dammed; driftwood, leaves, etc., gradually
filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes
and level reaches; and these again, after being gradually filled in,
were changed to meadows, through which the streams are now silently
meandering; 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 confounded confusion and ruin, the landscapes were enriched; for
gradually every talus was covered with groves and gardens, and made a
finely proportioned and ornamental base for the cliffs. In this work of
beauty, 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, and 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 these magnificent rock piles--a fine lesson; and all
Nature's wildness tells the same story--the shocks and outbursts of
earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods,
the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort--each and all
are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

Chapter 5
The Trees of the Valley

The most influential of the Valley trees is the yellow pine (Pinus
ponderosa). It attains its noblest dimensions on beds of water-washed,
coarsely-stratified moraine material, between the talus slopes and
meadows, dry on the surface, well-watered below and where not too
closely assembled in groves the branches reach nearly to the ground,
forming grand spires 200 to 220 feet in height. The largest that I have
measured is standing alone almost opposite the Sentinel Rock, or a
little to the westward of it. It is a little over eight feet in diameter
and about 220 feet high. Climbing these grand trees, especially when
they are waving and singing in worship in wind-storms, is a glorious
experience. Ascending from the lowest branch to the topmost is like
stepping up stairs through a blaze of white light, every needle
thrilling and shining as if with religious ecstasy.


Unfortunately there are but few sugar pines in the Valley, though in
the King's yosemite they are in glorious abundance. The incense cedar
(Libocedrus decurrens) with cinnamon-colored bark and yellow-green
foliage is one of the most interesting of the Yosemite trees. Some of
them are 150 feet high, from six to ten feet in diameter, and they are
never out of sight as you saunter among the yellow pines. Their bright
brown shafts and towers of flat, frondlike branches make a striking
feature of the landscapes throughout all the seasons. In midwinter, when
most of the other trees are asleep, this cedar puts forth its flowers
in millions,--the pistillate pale green and inconspicuous, but the
staminate bright yellow, tingeing all the branches and making the trees
as they stand in the snow look like gigantic goldenrods. The branches,
outspread in flat plumes and, beautifully fronded, sweep gracefully
downward and outward, except those near the top, which aspire; the
lowest, especially in youth and middle age, droop to the ground,
overlapping one another, shedding off rain and snow like shingles, and
making fine tents for birds and campers. This tree frequently lives more
than a thousand years and is well worthy its place beside the great
pines and the Douglas spruce.


The two largest specimens I know of the Douglas spruce, about eight feet
in diameter, are growing at the foot of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada
Fall, and on the terminal moraine of the small residual glacier that
lingered in the shady Illilouette Cañon.


After the conifers, the most important of the Yosemite trees are the
oaks, two species; the California live-oak (Quercus agrifolia), with
black trunks, reaching a thickness of from four to nearly seven feet,
wide spreading branches and bright deeply-scalloped leaves. It occupies
the greater part of the broad sandy flats of the upper end of the
Valley, and is the species that yields the acorns so highly prized by
the Indians and woodpeckers.


The other species is the mountain live-oak, or goldcup oak (Quercus
chrysolepis), a sturdy mountaineer of a tree, growing mostly on the
earthquake taluses and benches of the sunny north wall of the Valley.
In tough, unwedgeable, knotty strength, it is the oak of oaks, a
magnificent tree.


The largest and most picturesque specimen in the Valley is near the foot
of the Tenaya Fall, a romantic spot seldom seen on account of the rough
trouble of getting to it. It is planted on three huge boulders and yet
manages to draw sufficient moisture and food from this craggy soil to
maintain itself in good health. It is twenty feet in circumference,
measured above a large branch between three and four feet in diameter
that has been broken off. The main knotty trunk seems to be made up of
craggy granite boulders like those on which it stands, being about the
same color as the mossy, lichened boulders and about as rough. Two
moss-lined caves near the ground open back into the trunk, one on the
north side, the other on the west, forming picturesque, romantic seats.
The largest of the main branches is eighteen feet and nine inches in
circumference, and some of the long pendulous branchlets droop over the
stream at the foot of the fall where it is gray with spray. The leaves
are glossy yellow-green, ever in motion from the wind from the fall. It
is a fine place to dream in, with falls, cascades, cool rocks lined with
hypnum three inches thick; shaded with maple, dogwood, alder, willow;
grand clumps of lady-ferns where no hand may touch them; light filtering
through translucent leaves; oaks fifty feet high; lilies eight feet high
in a filled lake basin near by, and the finest libocedrus groves and
tallest ferns and goldenrods.


In the main river cañon below the Vernal Fall and on the shady south
side of the Valley there are a few groves of the silver fir (Abies
concolor), and superb forests of the magnificent species round the rim
of the Valley.


On the tops of the domes is found the sturdy, storm-enduring red cedar
(Juniperus occidentalis). It never makes anything like a forest here,
but stands out separate and independent in the wind, clinging by slight
joints to the rock, with scarce a handful of soil in sight of it,
seeming to depend chiefly on snow and air for nourishment, and yet it
has maintained tough health on this diet for two thousand years or more.
The largest hereabouts are from five to six feet in diameter and fifty
feet in height.


The principal river-side 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 tree, towering above its companions and gracefully embowering
the banks of the river. 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.


Some of the involucres of the flowering dogwood measure six to eight
inches in diameter, and the whole tree when in flower looks as if
covered with snow. In the spring when the streams are in flood it is the
whitest of trees. In Indian summer the leaves become bright crimson,
making a still grander show than the flowers.


The broad-leaved maple and mountain maple are found mostly in the cool
cañons at the head of the Valley, spreading their branches in beautiful
arches over the foaming streams.


Scattered here and there are a few other trees, mostly small--the
mountain mahogany, cherry, chestnut-oak, and laurel. The California
nutmeg (Torreya californica), a handsome evergreen belonging to the
yew family, forms small groves near the cascades a mile or two below
the foot of the Valley.

Chapter 6
The Forest Trees in General

For the use of the ever-increasing number of Yosemite visitors who make
extensive excursions into the mountains beyond the Valley, a sketch of
the forest trees in general will probably be found useful. The different
species are arranged in zones and sections, which brings the forest as
a whole within the comprehension of every observer. These species are
always found as controlled by the climates of different elevations,
by soil and by the comparative strength of each species in taking and
holding possession of the ground; and so appreciable are these relations
the traveler need never be at a loss in determining within a few
hundred feet his elevation above sea level by the trees alone; for,
notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several thousand
feet and all pass one another more or less, yet even those species
possessing the greatest vertical range are available in measuring
the elevation; inasmuch as they take on new forms corresponding with
variations in altitude. Entering the lower fringe of the forest composed
of Douglas oaks and Sabine pines, the trees grow so far apart that not
one-twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at noon. After
advancing fifteen or twenty miles towards Yosemite and making an ascent
of from two to three thousand feet you reach the lower margin of the
main pine belt, composed of great sugar pine, yellow pine, incense cedar
and sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent silver-fir belt and lastly
to the upper pine belt, which sweep up to the feet of the summit peaks
in a dwarfed fringe, to a height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
That this general order of distribution depends on climate as affected
by height above the sea, is seen at once, but there are other harmonies
that become manifest only after observation and study. One of the most
interesting of these is the arrangement of the forest in long curving
bands, braided together into lace-like patterns in some places and
out-spread in charming variety. The key to these striking arrangements
is the system of ancient glaciers; where they flowed the trees followed,
tracing their courses along the sides of cañons, over ridges, and high
plateaus. The cedar of Lebanon, said Sir Joseph Hooker, occurs upon one
of the moraines of an ancient glacier. All the forests of the Sierra are
growing upon moraines, but moraines vanish like the glaciers that make
them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them, carrying away their
decaying, disintegrating material into new formations, until they are no
longer recognizable without tracing their transitional forms down the
Range from those still in process of formation in some places through
those that are more and more ancient and more obscured by vegetation and
all kinds of post-glacial weathering. It appears, therefore, that the
Sierra forests indicate the extent and positions of ancient moraines as
well as they do belts of climate.


One will have no difficulty in knowing the Nut Pine (Pinus Sabiniana),
for it is the first conifer met in ascending the Range from the west,
springing up here and there among Douglas oaks and thickets of ceanothus
and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being about 4000 feet above the
sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet. It is remarkable for its
loose, airy, wide-branching habit and thin gray foliage. Full-grown
specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height and from two to three
feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into three or four main
branches about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground that, after
bearing away from one another, shoot straight up and form separate
summits. Their slender, grayish needles are from eight to twelve inches
long, and inclined to droop, contrasting with the rigid, dark-colored
trunk and branches. No other tree of my acquaintance so substantial in
its body has foliage so thin and pervious to the light. The cones are
from five to eight inches long and about as large in thickness; rich
chocolate-brown in color and protected by strong, down-curving nooks
which terminate the scales. Nevertheless the little Douglas Squirrel can
open them. Indians climb the trees like bears and beat off the cones or
recklessly cut off the more fruitful branches with hatchets, while the
squaws gather and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to
allow the hard-shell seeds to be beaten out. The curious little Pinus
attenuata is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet, growing in
close groves and belts. It is exceedingly slender and graceful, although
trees that chance to stand alone send out very long, curved branches,
making a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of
the same peculiar gray-green color as that of the nut pine, and is worn
about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured
by it. At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones in
whorls on the main axis, and as they never fall off, the trunk is soon
picturesquely dotted with them. Branches also soon become fruitful. The
average size of the tree is about thirty or forty feet in height and
twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches
long and covered with a sort of varnish and gum, rendering them
impervious to moisture.


No observer can fail to notice the admirable adaptation of this curious
pine to the fire-swept regions where alone it is found. After a running
fire has scorched and killed it the cones open and the ground beneath it
is then sown broadcast with all the seeds ripened during its whole life.
Then up spring a crowd of bright, hopeful seedlings, giving beauty for
ashes in lavish abundance.

The Sugar Pine, King Of Pine Trees

Of all the world's eighty or ninety species of pine trees, the Sugar
Pine (Pinus Lambertiana) is king, surpassing all others, not merely in
size but in lordly beauty and majesty. In the Yosemite region it grows
at an elevation of from 3000 to 7000 feet above the sea and attains
most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet. The largest
specimens are commonly about 220 feet high and from six to eight feet
in diameter four feet from the ground, though some grand old patriarch
may be met here and there that has enjoyed six or eight centuries of
storms and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, still sweet
and fresh in every fiber. The trunk is a remarkably smooth, round,
delicately-tapered shaft, straight and regular as if turned in a lathe,
mostly without limbs, purplish brown in color and usually enlivened with
tufts of a yellow lichen. Toward the head of this magnificent column
long branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming
a palm-like crown, but far more impressive than any palm crown I ever
beheld. The needles are about three inches long in fascicles of five,
and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets
that clothe the long outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the wind,
and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the long cylindrical
cones, depending loosely from the ends of the long branches! The cones
are about fifteen to eighteen inches long, and three in diameter;
green, shaded with dark purple on their sunward sides. They are ripe in
September and October of the second year from the flower. Then the flat,
thin scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones become
still more beautiful and effective as decorations, for their diameter is
nearly doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes
to yellowish brown while they remain, swinging on the tree all the
following winter and summer, and continue effectively beautiful even on
the ground many years after they fall. The wood is deliciously fragrant,
fine in grain and texture and creamy yellow, as if formed of condensed
sunbeams. The sugar from which the common name is derived is, I think,
the best of sweets. It exudes from the heart-wood where wounds have been
made by forest fires or the ax, and forms irregular, crisp, candy-like
kernels of considerable size, something like clusters of resin beads.
When fresh it is white, but because most of the wounds on which it is
found have been made by fire the sap is stained and the hardened sugar
becomes brown. Indians are fond of it, but on account of its laxative
properties only small quantities may be eaten. No tree lover wi