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The Yosemite

by John Muir · English · Gutenberg #7091 · 375,019 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Yosemite

Author: John Muir


        
Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7091]
                Most recently updated: June 29, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7091

Credits: Dan Anderson and Andrew Sly


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

[Illustration]




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

Chapter 1.	 The Approach to the Valley
Chapter 2.	 Winter Storms and Spring Floods
Chapter 3.	 Snow-Storms
Chapter 4.	 Snow Banners
Chapter 5.	 The Trees of the Valley
Chapter 6.	 The Forest Trees in General
Chapter 7.	 The Big Trees
Chapter 8.	 The Flowers
Chapter 9.	 The Birds
Chapter 10.	 The South Dome
Chapter 11.	 The Ancient Yosemite Glaciers: How the Valley Was Formed
Chapter 12.	 How Best to Spend One’s Yosemite Time
Chapter 13.	 Early History of the Valley
Chapter 14.	 Lamon
Chapter 15.	 Galen Clark
Chapter 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 tears 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 way 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 in 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 will ever forget his first
meeting with the sugar pine. In most pine trees there is the sameness
of expression which to most people is apt to become monotonous, for the
typical spiral form of conifers, however beautiful, affords little
scope for appreciable individual character. The sugar pine is as free
from conventionalities as the most picturesque oaks. No two are alike,
and though they toss out their immense arms in what might seem
extravagant gestures they never lose their expression of serene
majesty. They are the priests of pines and seem ever to be addressing
the surrounding forest. The yellow pine is found growing with them on
warm hillsides, and the silver fir on cool northern slopes but, noble
as these are, the sugar pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above
them in blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition. The
main branches are sometimes forty feet long, yet persistently simple,
seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end; but anything like a
bare cable appearance is prevented by the small, tasseled branchlets
that extend all around them; and when these superb limbs sweep out
symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy feet wide is
formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble shaft, is a
glorious object. Commonly, however, there is a preponderance of limbs
toward the east, away from the direction of the prevailing winds.

Although so unconventional when full-grown, the sugar pine is a
remarkably proper tree in youth—a strict follower of coniferous
fashions—slim, erect, with leafy branches kept exactly in place, each
tapering in outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive
forms between the cautious neatness of youth and the bold freedom of
maturity offer a delightful study. At the age of fifty or sixty years,
the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up. Specialized branches
push out and bend with the great cones, giving individual character,
that becomes more marked from year to year. Its most constant companion
is the yellow pine. The Douglas spruce, libocedrus, sequoia, and the
silver fir are also more or less associated with it; but on many
deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above
the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and
hollow and down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each
other in bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered
sunbeams pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles and
the flowery, park-like ground into a scene of enchantment. On the most
sunny slopes the white-flowered, fragrant chamaebatia is spread like a
carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson sarcodes, the
wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in the shadiest
nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome darkness. In
the north sides of ridges the boles are more slender, and the ground is
mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and flowering
dogwood, but not so densely as to prevent the traveler from sauntering
where he will; while the crowning branches are never impenetrable to
the rays of the sun, and never so interblended as to lose their
individuality.

The Yellow Or Silver Pine

The Silver Pine (_Pinus ponderosa_), or Yellow Pine, as it is commonly
called, ranks second among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree,
and almost rivals the sugar pine in stature and nobleness of port.
Because of its superior powers of enduring variations of climate and
soil, it has a more extensive range than any other conifer growing on
the Sierra. On the western slope it is first met at an elevation of
about 2000 feet, and extends nearly to the upper limit of the
timber-line. Thence, crossing the range by the lowest passes, it
descends to the eastern base, and pushes out for a considerable
distance into the hot, volcanic plains, growing bravely upon
well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins, climbing old volcanoes and
dropping ripe cones among ashes and cinders.

The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope where it is
associated with the sugar pine, is a little less than 200 feet in
height and from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens
considerably larger may easily be found. Where there is plenty of free
sunshine and other conditions are favorable, it presents a striking
contrast in form to the sugar pine, being a symmetrical spire, formed
of a straight round trunk, clad with innumerable branches that are
divided over and over again. Unlike the Yosemite form about one-half of
the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all close
three-fourths or more is naked, presenting then a more slender and
elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The bark is mostly
arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four or five feet in
length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of three or four
inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature. The needles
are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight inches long, firm
and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the upturning
ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches long,
and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among the
leaves.

The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
especially in those of the older yosemites, and as we have seen, so
prominent a part does it form of their groves that it may well be
called the Yosemite Pine.

The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
portion of the Range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt
Rivers, where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any
other tree. It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about
half as tall, in its redder and more closely-furrowed bark
grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and much larger cones;
but intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation
impossible, although some botanists regard it as a distinct species. It
is this variety of ponderosa that climbs storm-swept ridges alone, and
wanders out among the volcanoes of the Great Basin. Whether exposed to
extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed like many other trees, and
becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike the majestic forms we have
been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones about as big as
pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted rocks at an
elevation of 7000 or 8000 feet, whose highest branches scarce reach
above one’s shoulders.

I have often feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were
towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow—one mass of
bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burrs are ripening in
the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as
if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the
crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood
breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water
among boulders at the foot of an enthusiastic cataract. But to me there
is something more impressive in the fall of light upon these noble,
silver pine pillars: it is beaten to the finest dust and shed off in
myriads of minute sparkles that seem to radiate from the very heart of
the tree as if like rain, falling upon fertile soil, it had been
absorbed to reappear in flowers of light. This species also gives forth
the finest wind music. After listening to it in all kinds of winds,
night and day, season after season, I think I could approximate to my
position on the mountain by this pine music alone. If you would catch
the tone of separate needles climb a tree in breezy weather. Every
needle is carefully tempered and gives forth no uncertain sound each
standing out with no interference excepting during head gales; then you
may detect the click of one needle upon another, readily
distinguishable from the free wind-like hum.

When a sugar pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
together, the latter is seen to be more simple in manners, more lively
and graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated; on
the other hand it is less dignified and original in demeanor. The
yellow pine seems ever eager to shoot aloft, higher and higher. Even
while it is drowsing in autumn sun-gold you may still detect a skyward
aspiration, but the sugar pine seems too unconsciously noble and too
complete in every way to leave room for even a heavenward care.

The Douglas Spruce

The Douglas Spruce (_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_) is one of the largest and
longest-lived of the giants that flourish throughout the main pine
belt, often attaining a height of nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of
six or seven feet. Where the growth is not too close, the stout,
spreading branches, covering more than half of the trunk, are hung with
innumerable slender, drooping sprays, handsomely feathered with the
short leaves which radiate at right angles all around them. This
vigorous tree is ever beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the
snow as well as the mellow summer light; and it maintains its youthful
freshness undiminished from century to century through a thousand
storms. It makes its finest appearance during the months of June and
July, when the brown buds at the ends of the sprays swell and open,
revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow, making
the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the pendulous
bracted cones, three or four inches long, with their shell-like scales,
are a constant adornment.

The young trees usually are assembled in family groups, each sapling
exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled regularly
around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with long,
feathery sprays that descend in lines as free and as finely drawn as
those of falling water.

In Oregon and Washington it forms immense forests, growing tall and
mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
tree. Here it is scattered among other trees, or forms small groves,
seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making what would be
called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of soil: wet or
dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them all. Two of the
largest specimens, as we have seen, are in Yosemite; one of these, more
than eight feet in diameter, is growing on a moraine; the other, nearly
as large, on angular blocks of granite. No other tree in the Sierra
seems so much at home on earthquake taluses and many of these huge
boulder-slopes are almost exclusively occupied by it.

The Incense Cedar

Incense Cedar (_Libocedrus decurrens_), already noticed among the
Yosemite trees, is quite generally distributed throughout the pine belt
without exclusively occupying any considerable area, or even making
extensive groves. On the warmer mountain slopes it ascends to about
5000 feet, and reaches the climate most congenial to it at a height of
about 4000 feet, growing vigorously at this elevation in all kinds of
soil and, in particular, it is capable of enduring more moisture about
its roots than any of its companions excepting only the sequoia.

Casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge-top you can
identify it by the color alone of its spiry summits, a warm
yellow-green. In its youth up to the age of seventy or eighty years,
none of its companions forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to
bottom. As it becomes older it oftentimes grows strikingly irregular
and picturesque. Large branches push out at right angles to the trunk,
forming stubborn elbows and shoot up parallel with the axis. Very old
trees are usually dead at the top. The flat fragrant plumes are
exceedingly beautiful: no waving fern-frond is finer in form and
texture. In its prime the whole tree is thatched with them, but if you
would see the libocedrus in all its glory you must go to the woods in
midwinter when it is laden with myriads of yellow flowers about the
size of wheat grains, forming a noble illustration of Nature’s immortal
virility and vigor. The mature cones, about three-fourths of an inch
long, born on the ends of the plumy branchlets, serve to enrich still
more the surpassing beauty of this winter-blooming tree-goldenrod.

The Silver Firs

We come now to the most regularly planted and most clearly defined of
the main forest belts, composed almost exclusively of two Silver
Firs—_Abies concolor_ and _Abies magnifica_—extending with but little
interruption 450 miles at an elevation of from 5000 to 9000 feet above
the sea. In its youth _A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree
with its flat plumy branches arranged in regular whorls around the
whitish-gray axis which terminates in a stout, hopeful shoot, pointing
straight to the zenith, like an admonishing finger. The leaves are
arranged in two horizontal rows along branchlets that commonly are less
than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds
of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, from
three to four inches long, and one and a half to two inches wide, and
stand upright on the upper horizontal branches. Full-grown trees in
favorable situations are usually about 200 feet high and five or six
feet in diameter. As old age creeps on, the rough bark becomes rougher
and grayer, the branches lose their exact regularity of form, many that
are snow-bent are broken off and the axis often becomes double or
otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot.
Nevertheless, throughout all the vicissitudes of its three or four
centuries of life, come what may, the noble grandeur of this species,
however obscured, is never lost.

The magnificent Silver Fir, or California Red Fir (_Abies magnifica_)
is the most symmetrical of all the Sierra giants, far surpassing its
companion species in this respect and easily distinguished from it by
the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that of
the white, and by its larger cones, its more regularly whorled and
fronded branches, and its shorter leaves, which grow all around the
branches and point upward instead of being arranged in two horizontal
rows. The branches are mostly whorled in fives, and stand out from the
straight, red-purple bole in level, or in old trees in drooping
collars, every branch regularly pinnated like fern-fronds, making broad
plumes, singularly rich and sumptuous-looking. The flowers are in their
prime about the middle of June; the male red, growing on the underside
of the branches in crowded profusion, giving a very rich color to all
the trees; the female greenish-yellow, tinged with pink, standing erect
on the upper side of the topmost branches, while the tufts of young
leaves, about as brightly colored as those of the Douglas spruce, make
another grand show. The cones mature in a single season from the
flowers. When mature they are about six to eight inches long, three or
four in diameter, covered with a fine gray down and streaked and beaded
with transparent balsam, very rich and precious-looking, and stand
erect like casks on the topmost branches. The inside of the cone is, if
possible, still more beautiful. The scales and bracts are tinged with
red and the seed-wings are purple with bright iridescence. Both of the
silver firs live between two and three centuries when the conditions
about them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may be seen
heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
generation, with a protecting grove of hopeful saplings pressing close
around his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf
seems wanting. Other groups are made up of trees near the prime of
life, nicely arranged as if Nature had culled them with discrimination
from all the rest of the woods. It is from this tree, called Red Fir by
the lumbermen, that mountaineers cut boughs to sleep on when they are
so fortunate as to be within its limit. Two or three rows of the
sumptuous plushy-fronded branches, overlapping along the middle, and a
crescent of smaller plumes mixed to one’s taste with ferns and flowers
for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essence of the
pressed leaves seems to fill every pore of one’s body. Falling water
makes a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand spires afford
noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the starry sky. The
fir woods are fine sauntering-grounds at almost any time of the year,
but finest in autumn when the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light
and drip with balsam; and the flying, whirling seeds, escaping from the
ripe cones, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies. Even in the
richest part of these unrivaled forests where so many noble trees
challenge admiration we linger fondly among the colossal firs and extol
their beauty again and again, as if no other tree in the world could
henceforth claim our love. It is in these woods the great granite domes
arise that are so striking and characteristic a feature of the Sierra.
Here, too, we find the best of the garden-meadows full of lilies. A dry
spot a little way back from the margin of a silver fir lily-garden
makes a glorious camp-ground, especially where the slope is toward the
east with a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the Range.
The tall lilies are brought forward most impressively like visitors by
the light of your camp-fire and the nearest of the trees with their
whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies and the sky seen
through the garden-opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.

The Two-Leaved Pine

The Two-Leaved Pine (_Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_), above the
Silver Fir zone, forms the bulk of the alpine forests up to a height of
from 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea, growing in beautiful order on
moraines scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared
with the giants of the lower regions this is a small tree, seldom
exceeding a height of eighty or ninety feet. The largest I ever
measured was ninety feet high and a little over six feet in diameter.
The average height of mature trees throughout the entire belt is
probably not far from fifty or sixty feet with a diameter of two feet.
It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome tree with grayish-brown bark
and crooked, much-divided branches which cover the greater part of the
trunk, but not so densely as to prevent it being seen. The lower limbs,
like those of most other conifers that grow in snowy regions, curve
downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half-way up the
trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit. The short, rigid
needles in fascicles of two are arranged in comparatively long
cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough up-curving branches. The
cones are about two inches long, growing in clusters among the needles
without any striking effect except while very young, when the flowers
are of a vivid crimson color and the whole tree appears to be dotted
with brilliant flowers. The staminate flowers are still more showy on
account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge
to the whole mass of foliage and filling the air with pollen. No other
pine on the Range is so regularly planted as this one, covering
moraines that extend along the sides of the high rocky valleys for
miles without interruption. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled
with resin as though it had been showered upon the forest like rain.

Therefore this tree more than any other is subject to destruction by
fire. During strong winds extensive forests are destroyed, the flames
leaping from tree to tree in continuous belts that go surging and
racing onward above the bending wood like prairie-grass fires. During
the calm season of Indian summer the fire creeps quietly along the
ground, feeding on the needles and cones; arriving at the foot of a
tree, the resiny bark is ignited and the heated air ascends in a swift
current, increasing in velocity and dragging the flames upward. Then
the leaves catch forming an immense column of fire, beautifully spired
on the edges and tinted a rose-purple hue. It rushes aloft thirty or
forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle,
especially at night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing
with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at
irregular intervals, tree after tree, upflashing and darting, leaving
the trunks and branches scarcely scarred. The heat, however, is
sufficient to kill the tree and in a few years the bark shrivels and
falls off. Forests miles in extent are thus killed and left standing,
with the branches on, but peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the
distance like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay and the forlorn
gray trunks are blown down during some storm and piled one upon
another, encumbering the ground until, dry and seasoned, they are
consumed by another fire and leave the ground ready for a fresh crop.

In sheltered lake-hollows, on beds of alluvium, this pine varies so far
from the common form that frequently it could be taken for a distinct
species, growing in damp sods like grasses from forty to eighty feet
high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying gusts
more lively than any other tree in the woods. I frequently found
specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being so
slender and at the same time clad with leafy boughs, it is often bent
and weighed down to the ground when laden with soft snow; thus forming
fine ornamental arches, many of them to last until the melting of the
snow in the spring.

The Mountain Pine

The Mountain Pine (_Pinus monticola_) is the noblest tree of the alpine
zone—hardy and long-lived towering grandly above its companions and
becoming stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to
crouch and disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high
and five or six feet in diameter, though you may find specimens here
and there considerably larger than this. It is as massive and
suggestive of enduring strength as an oak. About two-thirds of the
trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of spray occur
nearly all the way down to the ground. On trees that occupy exposed
situations near its upper limit the bark is deep reddish-brown and
rather deeply furrowed, the main furrows running nearly parallel to
each other and connected on the old trees by conspicuous cross-furrows.
The cones are from four to eight inches long, smooth, slender,
cylindrical and somewhat curved. They grow in clusters of from three to
six or seven and become pendulous as they increase in weight. This
species is nearly related to the sugar pine and, though not half so
tall, it suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its
long branches in general habit. It is first met on the upper margin of
the silver fir zone, singly, in what appears as chance situations
without making much impression on the general forest. Continuing up
through the forests of the two-leaved pine it begins to show its
distinguishing characteristic in the most marked way at an elevation of
about 10,000 feet extending its tough, rather slender arms in the
frosty air, welcoming the storms and feeding on them and reaching
sometimes to the grand old age of 1000 years.

The Western Juniper

The Juniper or Red Cedar (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is preëminently a
rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and pavements in the upper
silver fir and alpine zones, at a height of from 7000 to 9500 feet. In
such situations, rooted in narrow cracks or fissures, where there is
scarcely a handful of soil, it is frequently over eight feet in
diameter and not much more in height. The tops of old trees are almost
always dead, and large stubborn-looking limbs push out horizontally,
most of them broken and dead at the end, but densely covered, and
imbedded here and there with tufts or mounds of gray-green scalelike
foliage. Some trees are mere storm-beaten stumps about as broad as
long, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling
towers of old castles scantily draped with ivy. Its homes on bare,
barren dome and ridge-top seem to have been chosen for safety against
fire, for, on isolated mounds of sand and gravel free from grass and
bushes on which fire could feed, it is often found growing tall and
unscathed to a height of forty to sixty feet, with scarce a trace of
the rocky angularity and broken limbs so characteristic a feature
throughout the greater part of its range. It never makes anything like
a forest; seldom even a grove. Usually it stands out separate and
independent, clinging by slight joints to the rocks, living chiefly on
snow and thin air and maintaining sound health on this diet for 2000
years or more. Every feature or every gesture it makes expresses
steadfast, dogged endurance. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color and
is handsomely braided and reticulated on thrifty trees, flaking off in
thin, shining ribbons that are sometimes used by the Indians for tent
matting. Its fine color and picturesqueness are appreciated by artists,
but to me the juniper seems a singularly strange and taciturn tree. I
have spent many a day and night in its company and always have found it
silent and rigid. It seems to be a survivor of some ancient race,
wholly unacquainted with its neighbors. Its broad stumpiness, of
course, makes wind-waving or even shaking out of the question, but it
is not this rocky rigidity that constitutes its silence. In calm,
sun-days the sugar pine preaches like an enthusiastic apostle without
moving a leaf. On level rocks the juniper dies standing and wastes
insensibly out of existence like granite, the wind exerting about as
little control over it, alive or dead, as is does over a glacier
boulder.

I have spent a good deal of time trying to determine the age of these
wonderful trees, but as all of the very old ones are honey-combed with
dry rot I never was able to get a complete count of the largest. Some
are undoubtedly more than 2000 years old, for though on deep moraine
soil they grow about as fast as some of the pines, on bare pavements
and smoothly glaciated, overswept ridges in the dome region they grow
very slowly. One on the Starr King Ridge only two feet eleven inches in
diameter was 1140 years old forty years ago. Another on the same ridge,
only one foot seven and a half inches in diameter, had reached the age
of 834 years. The first fifteen inches from the bark of a medium-size
tree six feet in diameter, on the north Tenaya pavement, had 859 layers
of wood. Beyond this the count was stopped by dry rot and scars. The
largest examined was thirty-three feet in girth, or nearly ten feet in
diameter and, although I have failed to get anything like a complete
count, I learned enough from this and many other specimens to convince
me that most of the trees eight or ten feet thick, standing on
pavements, are more than twenty centuries old rather than less. Barring
accidents, for all I can see they would live forever; even then
overthrown by avalanches, they refuse to lie at rest, lean stubbornly
on their big branches as if anxious to rise, and while a single root
holds to the rock, put forth fresh leaves with a grim, never-say-die
expression.

The Mountain Hemlock

As the juniper is the most stubborn and unshakeable of trees in the
Yosemite region, the Mountain Hemlock (_Tsuga Mertensiana_) is the most
graceful and pliant and sensitive. Until it reaches a height of fifty
or sixty feet it is sumptuously clothed down to the ground with
drooping branches, which are divided again and again into delicate
waving sprays, grouped and arranged in ways that are indescribably
beautiful, and profusely adorned with small brown cones. The flowers
also are peculiarly beautiful and effective; the female dark rich
purple, the male blue, of so fine and pure a tone. What the best azure
of the mountain sky seems to be condensed in them. Though apparently
the most delicate and feminine of all the mountain trees, it grows best
where the snow lies deepest, at a height of from 9000 to 9500 feet, in
hollows on the northern slopes of mountains and ridges. But under all
circumstances, sheltered from heavy winds or in bleak exposure to them,
well fed or starved, even at its highest limit, 10,500 feet above the
sea, on exposed ridge-tops where it has to crouch and huddle close in
low thickets, it still contrives to put forth its sprays and branches
in forms of invincible beauty, while on moist, well-drained moraines it
displays a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage, flowers and fruit.
The snow of the first winter storm is frequently soft, and lodges in
due dense leafy branches, weighing them down against the trunk, and the
slender, drooping axis, bending lower and lower as the load increases,
at length reaches the ground, forming an ornamental arch. Then, as
storm succeeds storm and snow is heaped on snow, the whole tree is at
last buried, not again to see the light of day or move leaf or limb
until set free by the spring thaws in June or July. Not only the young
saplings are thus carefully covered and put to sleep in the whitest of
white beds for five or six months of the year, but trees thirty feet
high or more. From April to May, when the snow by repeated thawing and
freezing is firmly compacted, you may ride over the prostrate groves
without seeing a single branch or leaf of them. No other of our alpine
conifers so finely veils its strength; poised in thin, white sunshine,
clad with branches from head to foot, it towers in unassuming majesty,
drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race,
loving the ground, conscious of heaven and joyously receptive of its
blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling
the light and reveling in it. The largest specimen I ever found was
nineteen feet seven inches in circumference. It was growing on the edge
of Lake Hollow, north of Mount Hoffman, at an elevation of 9250 feet
above the level of the sea, and was probably about a hundred feet in
height. Fine groves of mature trees, ninety to a hundred feet in
height, are growing near the base of Mount Conness. It is widely
distributed from near the south extremity of the high Sierra northward
along the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington and the coast
ranges of British Columbia to Alaska, where it was first discovered in
1827. Its northernmost limit, so far as I have observed, is in the icy
fiords of Prince William Sound in latitude 61°, where it forms pure
forests at the level of the sea, growing tall and majestic on the banks
of glaciers. There, as in the Yosemite region, it is ineffably
beautiful, the very loveliest of all the American conifers.

The White-Bark Pine

The Dwarf Pine, or White-Bark Pine (_Pinus albicaulis_), forms the
extreme edge of the timberline throughout nearly the whole extent of
the Range on both flanks. It is first met growing with the two-leaved
pine on the upper margin of the alpine belt, as an erect tree from
fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two feet in diameter hence
it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or
crumbling ledges, wherever it can get a foothold, to an elevation of
from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled
branches, covered with slender shoots, each tipped with a short,
close-packed, leaf tassel. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
places almost white. The flowers are bright scarlet and rose-purple,
giving a very flowery appearance little looked for in such a tree. The
cones are about three inches long, an inch and a half in diameter, grow
in rigid clusters, and are dark chocolate in color while young, and
bear beautiful pearly-white seeds about the size of peas, most of which
are eaten by chipmunks and the Clarke’s crows. Pines are commonly
regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or die. This
species forms a marked exception, crouching and creeping in compliance
with the most rigorous demands of climate; yet enduring bravely to a
more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the sun-lands far
below it. Seen from a distance it would never be taken for a tree of
any kind. For example, on Cathedral Peak there is a scattered growth of
this pine, creeping like mosses over the roof, nowhere giving hint of
an ascending axis. While, approached quite near, it still appears matty
and heathy, and one experiences no difficulty in walking over the top
of it, yet it is seldom absolutely prostrate, usually attaining a
height of three or four feet with a main trunk, and with branches
outspread above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a
ceiling against which they had been compelled to spread horizontally.
The winter snow is a sort of ceiling, lasting half the year; while the
pressed surface is made yet smoother by violent winds armed with
cutting sand-grains that bear down any shoot which offers to rise much
above the general level, and that carve the dead trunks and branches in
beautiful patterns.

During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers,
such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath
the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment. This lowly dwarf
reaches a far greater age than would be guessed. A specimen that I
examined, growing at an elevation of 10,700 feet, yet looked as though
it might be plucked up by the roots, for it was only three and a half
inches in diameter and its topmost tassel reached hardly three feet
above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings
with the aid of a lens, I found its age to be no less than 255 years.
Another specimen about the same height, with a trunk six inches in
diameter, I found to be 426 years old, forty years ago; and one of its
supple branchlets hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside the
bark, was seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam and
seasoned by storms that I tied it in knots like a whip-cord.

The Nut Pine

In going across the Range from the Tuolumne River Soda Springs to Mono
Lake one makes the acquaintance of the curious little Nut Pine (_Pinus
monophylla_). It dots the eastern flank of the Sierra to which it is
mostly restricted in grayish bush-like patches, from the margin of the
sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet. A more
contented, fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived. All
the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant
from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as this. Without any
apparent cause it keeps near the ground, throwing out crooked,
divergent branches like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a
single shoot higher than fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.

The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over
all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the
bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in
length, and seem to have but little space for seeds; but when we come
to open them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is
made up of sweet, nutritious nuts, nearly as large as hazel-nuts. This
is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
furnishes the Mona, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
Indian’s own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
down. Being so low, the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and
the nuts procured by roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful
seasons a single Indian may gather thirty or forty bushels.



Chapter 7
The Big Trees


Between the heavy pine and silver fir zones towers the Big Tree
(_Sequoia gigantea_), the king of all the conifers in the world, “the
noblest of the noble race.” The groves nearest Yosemite Valley are
about twenty miles to the westward and southward and are called the
Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves. It extends, a widely interrupted
belt, from a very small grove on the middle fork of the American River
to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about 260 miles, its northern
limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below
the thirty-sixth. The elevation of the belt above the sea varies from
about 5000 to 8000 feet. From the American River to Kings River the
species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed
along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty
miles wide. But from Kings River south-ward the sequoia is not
restricted to mere groves but extends across the wide rugged basins of
the Kaweah and Tule Rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly
seventy miles, the continuity of this part of the belt being broken
only by the main cañons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern
groves, has an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to
the southward of the famous Mariposa grove. Along the south rim of the
cañon of the south fork of Kings River there is a majestic sequoia
forest about six miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost group
that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the divide between the
Kings and Kaweah Rivers you come to the grand forests that form the
main continuous portion of the belt. Southward the giants become more
and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the
sky from every ridge and slope, waving onward in graceful compliance
with the complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kaweah
section of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the
middle fork, and is called the Giant Forest. It extends from the
granite headlands, overlooking the hot San Joaquin plains, to within a
few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The
extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the middle and south
forks of the Kaweah at a height of 8400 feet, but the finest block of
big tree forests in the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River,
and is included in the Sequoia National Park.

In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees or
saplings. But here for every old storm-beaten giant there are many in
their prime and for each of these a crowd of hopeful young trees and
saplings, growing vigorously on moraines, rocky edges, along water
courses and meadows. But though the area occupied by the big tree
increases so greatly from north to south, here is no marked increase in
the size of the trees. The height of 275 feet or thereabouts and a
diameter of about twenty feet, four feet from the ground is, perhaps,
about the average size of what may be called full-grown trees, where
they are favorably located. The specimens twenty-five feet in diameter
are not very rare and a few are nearly three hundred feet high. In the
Calaveras grove there are four trees over 300 feet in height, the
tallest of which as measured by the Geological Survey is 325 feet. The
very largest that I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a
majestic old fire-scarred monument in the Kings River forest. It is
thirty-five feet and eight inches in diameter inside the bark, four
feet above the ground. It is burned half through, and I spent a day in
clearing away the charred surface with a sharp ax and counting the
annual wood-rings with the aid of a pocket lens. I succeeded in laying
bare a section all the way from the outside to the heart and counted a
little over four thousand rings, showing that this tree was in its
prime about twenty-seven feet in diameter at the beginning of the
Christian era. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked
down on so many centuries as the sequoia or opens so many impressive
and suggestive views into history. Under the most favorable conditions
these giants probably live 5000 years or more though few of even the
larger trees are half as old. The age of one that was felled in
Calaveras grove, for the sake of having its stump for a dancing-floor,
was about 1300 years, and its diameter measured across the stump
twenty-four feet inside the bark. Another that was felled in the Kings
River forest was about the same size but nearly a thousand years older
(2200 years), though not a very old-looking tree.

So harmonious and finely balanced are even the mightiest of these
monarchs in all their proportions that there is never anything
overgrown or monstrous about them. Seeing them for the first time you
are more impressed with their beauty than their size, their grandeur
being in great part invisible; but sooner or later it becomes manifest
to the loving eye, stealing slowly on the senses like the grandeur of
Niagara or of the Yosemite Domes. When you approach them and walk
around them you begin to wonder at their colossal size and try to
measure them. They bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is
required for beauty and safety and the only reason that this bulging
seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small
section is seen in near views. One that I measured in the Kings River
forest was twenty-five feet in diameter at the ground and ten feet in
diameter 220 feet above the ground showing the fineness of the taper of
the trunk as a whole. No description can give anything like an adequate
idea of their singular majesty, much less of their beauty. Except the
sugar pine, most of their neighbors with pointed tops seem ever trying
to go higher, while the big tree, soaring above them all, seems
satisfied. Its grand domed head seems to be poised about as lightly as
a cloud, giving no impression of seeking to rise higher. Only when it
is young does it show like other conifers a heavenward yearning,
sharply aspiring with a long quick-growing top. Indeed, the whole tree
for the first century or two, or until it is a hundred or one hundred
and fifty feet high, is arrowhead in form, and, compared with the
solemn rigidity of age, seems as sensitive to the wind as a squirrel’s
tail. As it grows older, the lower branches are gradually dropped and
the upper ones thinned out until comparatively few are left. These,
however, are developed to a great size, divide again and again and
terminate in bossy, rounded masses of leafy branch-lets, while the head
becomes dome-shaped, and is the first to feel the touch of the rosy
beams of the morning, the last to bid the sun good night. Perfect
specimens, unhurt by running fires or lightning, are singularly regular
and symmetrical in general form though not in the least
conventionalized, for they show extraordinary variety in the unity and
harmony of their general outline. The immensely strong, stately shafts
are free of limbs for one hundred and fifty feet or so. The large limbs
reach out with equal boldness a every direction, showing no weather
side, and no other tree has foliage so densely massed, so finely molded
in outline and so perfectly subordinate to an ideal type. A
particularly knotty, angular, ungovernable-looking branch, from five to
seven or eight feet in diameter and perhaps a thousand years old, may
occasionally be seen pushing out from the trunk as if determined to
break across the bounds of the regular curve, but like all the others
it dissolves in bosses of branchlets and sprays as soon as the general
outline is approached. Except in picturesque old age, after being
struck by lightning or broken by thousands of snow-storms, the
regularity of forms is one of their most distinguishing
characteristics. Another is the simple beauty of the trunk and its
great thickness as compared with its height and the width of the
branches, which makes them look more like finely modeled and sculptured
architectural columns than the stems of trees, while the great limbs
look like rafters, supporting the magnificent dome-head. But though so
consummately beautiful, the big tree always seems unfamiliar, with
peculiar physiognomy, awfully solemn and earnest; yet with all its
strangeness it impresses us as being more at home than any of its
neighbors, holding the best right to the ground as the oldest strongest
inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted with new species of pine and
fir and spruce as with friendly people, shaking their outstretched
branches like shaking hands and fondling their little ones, while the
venerable aboriginal sequoia, ancient of other days, keeps you at a
distance, looking as strange in aspect and behavior among its neighbor
trees as would the mastodon among the homely bears and deers. Only the
Sierra juniper is at all like it, standing rigid and unconquerable on
glacier pavements for thousands of years, grim and silent, with an air
of antiquity about as pronounced as that of the sequoia.

The bark of the largest trees is from one to two feet thick, rich
cinnamon brown, purplish on young trees, forming magnificent masses of
color with the underbrush. Toward the end of winter the trees are in
bloom, while the snow is still eight or ten feet deep. The female
flowers are about three-eighths of an inch long, pale green, and grow
in countless thousands on the ends of sprays. The male are still more
abundant, pale yellow, a fourth of an inch long and when the pollen is
ripe they color the whole tree and dust the air and the ground. The
cones are bright grass-green in color, about two and a half inches
long, one and a half wide, made up of thirty or forty strong,
closely-packed, rhomboidal scales, with four to eight seeds at the base
of each. The seeds are wonderfully small end light, being only from an
eighth to a fourth of an inch long and wide, including a filmy
surrounding wing, which causes them to glint and waver in falling and
enables the wind to carry them considerable distances. Unless harvested
by the squirrels, the cones discharge their seed and remain on the tree
for many years. In fruitful seasons the trees are fairly laden. On two
small branches one and a half and two inches in diameter I counted 480
cones. No other California conifer produces nearly so many seeds,
except, perhaps, the other sequoia, the Redwood of the Coast Mountains.
Millions are ripened annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year
the product of one of the northern groves would be enough to plant all
the mountain ranges in the world.

As soon as any accident happens to the crown, such as being smashed off
by lightning, the branches beneath the wound, no matter how situated,
seem to be excited, like a colony of bees that have lost their queen,
and become anxious to repair the damage. Limbs that have grown outward
for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to
assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form
of true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through,
some mere ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a
leader in forming a new head. Groups of two or three are often found
standing close together, the seeds from which they sprang having
probably grown on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a
large tree of a former generation. They are called “loving couples,”
“three graces,” etc. When these trees are young they are seen to stand
twenty or thirty feet apart, by the time they are full-grown their
trunks will touch and crowd against each other and in some cases even
appear as one.

It is generally believed that the sequoia was once far more widely
distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I have
come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of
the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of the
groves, and in the gaps between fails to reveal a single trace of its
previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I feel
confident that if every sequoia in the Range were to die today,
numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable
a nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand
years hence.

In the first place, no species of coniferous tree in the Range keeps
its members so well together as the sequoia; a mile is, perhaps, the
greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those
stragglers that have come under my observation are young, instead of
old monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.

Again, the great trunks of the sequoia last for centuries after they
fall. I have a specimen block of sequoia wood, cut from a fallen tree,
which is hardly distinguishable from a similar section cut from a
living tree, although the one cut from the fallen trunk has certainly
lain on the damp forest floor more than 380 years, probably thrice as
long. The time-measure in the case is simply this: When the ponderous
trunk to which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the
ground, thus making a long, straight ditch, and in the middle of this
ditch a silver fir four feet in diameter and 380 years old was growing,
as I determined by cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus
demonstrating that the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has
lain on the ground _more_ than 380 years. For it is evident that, to
find the whole time, we must add to the 380 years the time that the
vanished portion of the trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out
of the way, plus the time that passed before the seed from which the
monumental fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now,
because sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire,
and those fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because
sequoia ditches after being cleared are often left unplanted for
centuries, it becomes evident that the trunk-remnant in question may
probably have lain a thousand years or more. And this instance is by no
means a late one.

Again, admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once
covered with sequoia forests, every tree may have fallen, and every
trunk may have been burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of
the ditches made by the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls
made by their upturning roots, would remain patent for thousands of
years after the last vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished.
Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the
flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no
inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops
beyond such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are
favorable, it is almost imperishable. Now these historic ditches and
root-bowls occur in all the present sequoia groves and forests, but, as
far as I have observed, not the faintest vestige of one presents itself
outside of them.

We therefore conclude that the area covered by sequoia has not been
diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably
not at all in post-glacial time. Nevertheless, the questions may be
asked: Is the species verging toward extinction? What are its relations
to climate, soil, and associated trees?

All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
and sustain the conclusion already arrived at as to the question of
former extension. In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are
few young trees or saplings growing up around the old ones to
perpetuate the race, and inasmuch as those aged sequoias, so nearly
childless, are the only ones commonly known the species, to most
observers, seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being nothing more
than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for life
by pines and firs that have driven it into its last strongholds in
moist glens where the climate is supposed to be exceptionally
favorable. But the story told by the majestic continuous forests of the
south creates a very different impression. No tree in the forest is
more enduringly established in concordance with both climate and soil.
It grows heartily everywhere—on moraines, rocky ledges, along
watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows with, as we
have seen, a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the
aged, abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. So that if
all the trees of any section of the main sequoia forest were ranged
together according to age, a very promising curve would be presented,
all the way up from last year’s seedlings to giants, and with the young
and middle-aged portion of the curve many times longer than the old
portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted 536 saplings and
seedlings, growing promisingly upon a landslip not exceeding two acres
in area. This soil-bed was about seven years old, and had been seeded
almost simultaneously by pines, firs, libocedrus, and sequoia,
presenting a simple and instructive illustration of the struggle for
life among the rival species; and it was interesting to note that the
conditions thus far affecting them have enabled the young sequoias to
gain a marked advantage. Toward the south where the sequoia becomes
most exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become less so; and where
they mix with sequoias they grow up beneath them like slender grasses
among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy floodsoil I counted
ninety-four sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch of
ground once occupied by four large sugar pines which lay crumbling
beneath them—an instance of conditions which have enabled sequoias to
crowd out the pines. I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a
piece of fresh ground prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire,
the great destroyer of the sequoia, also furnishes the bare ground
required for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
furnished in sufficient quantities for the renewal of the forests
without the aid of fire—by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
falls.

It is constantly asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly
wetter than now, and that the increasing drought will of itself
extinguish the sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees supposed
capable of flourishing in a drier climate. But that the sequoia can and
does grow on as dry ground as any of its present rivals is manifest in
a thousand places. “Why, then,” it will be asked, “are sequoias always
found only in well-watered places?” Simply because a growth of sequoias
creates those streams. The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every
sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to
suppose that the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the
contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there. Drain off
the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the
streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for
effect than in the case of these related phenomena of sequoia woods and
perennial streams.

When attention is called to the method of sequoia stream-making, it
will be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the
ground, forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rain and
melting snow, only allowing it to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every
fallen leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and prostrate
trunk, may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds,
and dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of
allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods.

Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of sequoias are growing
thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
pines to rifts in granite precipices, and since it has also been shown
that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
moisture, are seen to be erroneous.

The decrease in rain and snowfall since the close of the glacial period
in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
post-glacial water-marks are well preserved in all the upper river
channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring flood-marks
of the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has
taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
Sierra streams since they came into existence. But, in the meantime,
eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
fact remains that the present rain and snowfall is abundantly
sufficient for the luxuriant growth of sequoia forests. Indeed, all my
observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the sugar pines
and firs would perish before the sequoia, not alone because of the
greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can
endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls.

Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the Range, then instead
of increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the
rainfall is less, it should diminish. If, then, the peculiar
distribution of sequoia has not been governed by superior conditions of
soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it been governed?

In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to
break up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin
of the San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of sequoia
where every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occurred to
me that this remarkable gap in the sequoia belt fifty miles wide is
located exactly in the basin of the vast, ancient _mer de glace_ of the
San Joaquin and Kings River basins which poured its frozen floods to
the plain through this gap as its channel. I then perceived that the
next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty miles wide,
extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the
basin of the great ancient mer de glace of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus
basins; and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves
occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. The wider the
ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the sequoia belt.

Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and
Tule, I discovered that the sequoia belt attained its greatest
development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
region, the ground had been best protected from the main ice-rivers
that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long after the
smaller local glaciers had been melted.

Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south we see
that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down
the valleys of Kern and Kings Rivers by the lofty protective spurs
outspread embracingly above the warm sequoia-filled basins of the
Kaweah and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide sequoia-less
channel, or basin of the ancient San Joaquin and sings River mer de
glace; then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves;
then the sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the
warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the
sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient mer de glace of the Tuolumne
and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and
Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain
period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the sequoia is not.

But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is
probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
species and individuals,—comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia
sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and
described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which flourished over vast
areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories,
during tertiary and cretaceous times—then, indeed, it becomes plain
that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the
limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to
species and individuals, and that they may be verging to extinction.
But the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a
breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible
existence of conditions calculated to multiply and re-extend both
species and individuals.

There is no absolute limit to the existence of any tree. Death is due
to accidents, not, as that of animals, to the wearing out of organs.
Only the leaves die of old age. Their fall is foretold in their
structure; but the leaves are renewed every year, and so also are the
essential organs wood, roots, bark, buds. Most of the Sierra trees die
of disease, insects, fungi, etc., but nothing hurts the big tree. I
never saw one that was sick or showed the slightest sign of decay.
Barring accidents, it seems to be immortal. It is a curious fact that
all the very old sequoias had lost their heads by lightning strokes.
“All things come to him who waits.” But of all living things, sequoia
is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to make sure of being
struck by lightning.

So far as I am able to see at present only fire and the ax threaten the
existence of these noblest of God’s trees. In Nature’s keeping they are
safe, but through the agency of man destruction is making rapid
progress, while in the work of protection only a good beginning has
been made. The Fresno grove, the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves
are under the protection of the Federal Government in the Yosemite
National Park. So are the General Grant and Sequoia National Parks; the
latter, established twenty-one years ago, has an area of 240 square
miles and is efficiently guarded by a troop of cavalry under the
direction of the Secretary of the Interior; so also are the small
General Grant National Park, estatblished at the same time with an area
of four square miles, and the Mariposa grove, about the same size and
the small Merced and Tuolumne group. Perhaps more than half of all the
big trees have been thoughtlessly sold and are now in the hands of
speculators and mill men. It appears, therefore, that far the largest
and important section of protected big trees is in the great Sequoia
National Park, now easily accessible by rail to Lemon Cove and thence
by a good stage road into the giant forest of the Kaweah and thence by
rail to other parts of the park; but large as it is it should be made
much larger. Its natural eastern boundary is the High Sierra and the
northern and southern boundaries are the Kings and Kern Rivers. Thus
could be included the sublime scenery on the headwaters of these rivers
and perhaps nine-tenths of all the big trees in existence. All private
claims within these bounds should be gradually extinguished by purchase
by the Government. The big tree, leaving all its higher uses out of the
count, is a tree of life to the dwellers of the plain dependent on
irrigation, a never-failing spring, sending living waters to the
lowland. For every grove cut down a stream is dried up. Therefore all
California is crying, “Save the trees of the fountains.” Nor, judging
by the signs of the times, is it likely that the cry will cease until
the salvation of all that is left of _Sequoia gigantea_ is made sure.



Chapter 8
The Flowers


Yosemite was all one glorious flower garden before plows and scythes
and trampling, biting horses came to make its wide open spaces look
like farmers’ pasture fields. Nevertheless, countless flowers still
bloom every year in glorious profusion on the grand talus slopes, wall
benches and tablets, and in all the fine, cool side-cañons up to the
rim of the Valley, and beyond, higher and higher, to the summits of the
peaks. Even on the open floor and in easily-reached side-nooks many
common flowering plants have survived and still make a brave show in
the spring and early summer. Among these we may mention tall œnotheras,
_Pentstemon lutea_, and _P. Douglasii_ with fine blue and red flowers;
Spraguea, scarlet zauschneria, with its curious radiant rosettes
characteristic of the sandy flats; mimulus, eunanus, blue and white
violets, geranium, columbine, erythraea, larkspur, collomia, draperia,
gilias, heleniums, bahia, goldenrods, daisies, honeysuckle; heuchera,
bolandra, saxifrages, gentians; in cool cañon nooks and on Clouds’ Rest
and the base of Starr King Dome you may find _Primula suffrutescens_,
the only wild primrose discovered in California, and the only known
shrubby species in the genus. And there are several fine orchids,
habenaria, and cypripedium, the latter very rare, once common in the
Valley near the foot of Glacier Point, and in a bog on the rim of the
Valley near a place called Gentry’s Station, now abandoned. It is a
very beautiful species, the large oval lip white, delicately veined
with purple; the other petals and the sepals purple, strap-shaped, and
elegantly curled and twisted.

Of the lily family, fritillaria, smilacina, chlorogalum and several
fine species of brodiæa, Ithuriel’s spear, and others less prized are
common, and the favorite calochortus, or Mariposa lily, a unique genus
of many species, something like the tulips of Europe but far finer.
Most of them grow on the warm foothills below the Valley, but two
charming species, _C. cœruleus_ and _C. nudus_, dwell in springy places
on the Wawona road a few miles beyond the brink of the walls.

The snow plant (_Sarcodes sanguinea_) is more admired by tourists than
any other in California. It is red, fleshy and watery and looks like a
gigantic asparagus shoot. Soon after the snow is off the round it rises
through the dead needles and humus in the pine and fir woods like a
bright glowing pillar of fire. In a week or so it grows to a height of
eight or twelve inches with a diameter of an inch and a half or two
inches; then its long fringed bracts curl aside, allowing the twenty-
or thirty-five-lobed, bell-shaped flowers to open and look straight out
from the axis. It is said to grow up through the snow; on the contrary,
it always waits until the ground is warm, though with other early
flowers it is occasionally buried or half-buried for a day or two by
spring storms. The entire plant—flowers, bracts, stem, scales, and
roots—is fiery red. Its color could appeal to one’s blood.
Nevertheless, it is a singularly cold and unsympathetic plant.
Everybody admires it as a wonderful curiosity, but nobody loves it as
lilies, violets, roses, daisies are loved. Without fragrance, it stands
beneath the pines and firs lonely and silent, as if unacquainted with
any other plant in the world; never moving in the wildest storms; rigid
as if lifeless, though covered with beautiful rosy flowers.

Far the most delightful and fragrant of the Valley flowers is the
Washington lily, white, moderate in size, with from three- to
ten-flowered racemes. I found one specimen in the lower end of the
Valley at the foot of the Wawona grade that was eight feet high, the
raceme two feet long, with fifty-two flowers, fifteen of them open; the
others had faded or were still in the bud. This famous lily is
distributed over the sunny portions of the sugar-pine woods, never in
large meadow-garden companies like the large and the small tiger lilies
(_pardalinum_ and _parvum_), but widely scattered, standing up to the
waist in dense ceanothus and manzanita chaparral, waving its lovely
flowers above the blooming wilderness of brush, and giving their
fragrance to the breeze. It is now becoming scarce in the most
accessible parts of its range on account of the high price paid for its
bulbs by gardeners through whom it has been distributed far and wide
over the flower-loving world. For, on account of its pure color and
delicate, delightful fragrance, all lily lovers at once adopted it as a
favorite.

The principal shrubs are manzanita and ceanothus, several species of
each, azalea, _Rubus nutkanus_, brier rose, choke-cherry philadelphus,
calycanthus, garrya, rhamnus, etc.

The manzanita never fails to attract particular attention. The species
common in the Valley is usually about six or seven feet high,
round-headed with innumerable branches, red or chocolate-color bark,
pale green leaves set on edge, and a rich profusion of small, pink,
narrow-throated, urn-shaped flowers, like those of arbutus. The knotty,
crooked, angular branches are about as rigid as bones, and the red bark
is so thin and smooth on both trunk and branches, they look as if they
had been peeled and polished and painted. In the spring large areas on
the mountain up to a height of eight or nine thousand feet are
brightened with the rosy flowers, and in autumn with their red fruit.
The pleasantly acid berries, about the size of peas, look like little
apples, and a hungry mountaineer is glad to eat them, though half their
bulk is made up of hard seeds. Indians, bears, coyotes, foxes, birds
and other mountain people live on them for weeks and months. The
different species of ceanothus usually associated with manzanita are
flowery fragrant and altogether delightful shrubs, growing in glorious
abundance, not only in the Valley, but high up in the forest on sunny
or half-shaded ground. In the sugar-pine woods the most beautiful
species is _C. integerrimus_, often called Californian lilac, or deer
brush. It is five or six feet high with slender branches, glossy
foliage, and abundance of blue flowers in close, showy panicles. Two
species, _C. prostrates_ and _C. procumbens_, spread smooth,
blue-flowered mats and rugs beneath the pines, and offer fine beds to
tired mountaineers. The commonest species, _C. cordulatus_, is most
common in the silver-fir woods. It is white-flowered and thorny, and
makes dense thickets of tangled chaparral, difficult to wade through or
to walk over. But it is pressed flat every winter by ten or fifteen
feet of snow. The western azalea makes glorious beds of bloom along the
river bank and meadows. In the Valley it is from two to five feet high,
has fine green leaves, mostly hidden beneath its rich profusion of
large, fragrant white and yellow flowers, which are in their prime in
June, July and August, according to the elevation, ranging from 3000 to
6000 feet. Near the azalea-bordered streams the small wild rose,
resembling _R. blanda_, makes large thickets deliciously fragrant,
especially on a dewy morning and after showers. Not far from these
azalea and rose gardens, _Rubus nutkanus_ covers the ground with broad,
soft, velvety leaves, and pure-white flowers as large as those of its
neighbor and relative, the rose, and much finer in texture, followed at
the end of summer by soft red berries good for everybody. This is the
commonest and the most beautiful of the whole blessed, flowery, fruity
Rubus genus.

There are a great many interesting ferns in the Valley and about it.
Naturally enough the greater number are rock ferns—pellæa, cheilanthes,
polypodium, adiantum, woodsia, cryptogramma, etc., with small tufted
fronds, lining cool glens and fringing the seams of the cliffs. The
most important of the larger species are woodwardia, aspidium,
asplenium, and, above all, the common pteris. _Woodwardia radicans_ is
a superb, broad-shouldered fern five to eight feet high, growing in
vase-shaped clumps where tile ground is nearly level and on some of the
benches of the north wall of the Valley where it is watered by a broad
trickling stream. It thatches the sloping rocks, frond overlapping
frond like roof shingles. The broad-fronded, hardy _Pteris aquilina_,
the commonest of ferns, covers large areas on the floor of the Valley.
No other fern does so much for the color glory of autumn, with its
browns and reds and yellows, even after lying dead beneath the snow all
winter. It spreads a rich brown mantle over the desolate ground in the
spring before the grass has sprouted, and at the first touch of
sun-heat its young fronds come rearing up full of faith and hope
through the midst of the last year’s ruins.

Of the five species of pellæa, _P. Breweri_ is the hardiest as to
enduring high altitudes and stormy weather and at the same time it is
the most fragile of the genus. It grows in dense tufts in the clefts of
storm-beaten rocks, high up on the mountain-side on the very edge of
the fern line. It is a handsome little fern about four or five inches
high, has pale-green pinnate fronds, and shining bronze-colored stalks
about as brittle as glass. Its companions on the lower part of its
range are _Cryptogramma acrostichoides_ and _Phegopteris alpestris_,
the latter with soft, delicate fronds, not in the least like those of
Rock fern, though it grows on the rocks where the snow lies longest.
_Pellaea Bridgesii_, with blue-green, narrow, simply-pinnate fronds, is
about the same size as Breweri and ranks next to it as a mountaineer,
growing in fissures, wet or dry, and around the edges of boulders that
are resting on glacier pavements with no fissures whatever. About a
thousand feet lower we find the smaller, more abundant _P. densa_ on
ledges and boulder-strewn, fissured pavements, watered until late in
summer from oozing currents, derived from lingering snowbanks. It is,
or rather was, extremely abundant between the foot o

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