CHAPTER V

THE YOSEMITE

July 15. Followed the Mono Trail up the eastern rim of the basin nearly to its summit, then turned off southward to a small shallow valley that extends to the edge of the Yosemite, which we reached about noon, and encamped. After luncheon I made haste to high ground, and from the top of the ridge on the west side of Indian Canon gained the noblest view of the summit peaks I have ever yet enjoyed. Nearly all the upper basin of the Merced was displayed, with its sublime domes and canons, dark up sweeping forests, and glorious array of white peaks deep in the sky, every feature glowing, radiating beauty that pours into our flesh and bones like heat rays from fire. Sunshine over all; no breath of wind to stir the brooding calm. Never before had I seen so glorious a landscape, so boundless an affluence of sublime mountain beauty. The most extravagant description I might give of this view to any one who has not seen similar landscapes with his own eyes would not so much as hint its grandeur and the spiritual glow that covered it. I shouted and gesticulated in a wild burst of ecstasy, much to the astonishment of St. Bernard Carlo, who came running up to me, manifesting in his intelligent eyes a puzzled concern that was very ludicrous, which had the effect of bringing me to my senses. A brown bear, too, it would seem, had been a spectator of the show I had made of my self, for I had gone but a few yards when I started one from a thicket of brush. He evidently considered me dangerous, for he ran away very fast, tumbling over the tops of the tangled manzanita bushes in his haste. Carlo drew back, with his ears depressed as if afraid, and kept looking me in the face, as if expecting me to pursue and shoot, for he had seen many a bear battle in his day.

Following the ridge, which made a gradual descent to the south, I came at length to the brow of that massive cliff that stands between Indian Canon and Yosemite Falls, and here the far-famed valley came suddenly into view throughout almost its whole extent. The no ble walls — sculptured into endless variety of domes and gables, spires and battlements and plain mural precipices — all a-tremble with the thunder tones of the falling water. The level bottom seemed to be dressed like a garden — sunny meadows here and there, and groves of pine and oak; the river of Mercy sweeping in majesty through the midst of them and flashing back the sunbeams. The great Tissiack, or Half-Dome, rising at the upper end of the valley to a height of nearly a mile, is nobly proportioned and life-like, the most impressive of all the rocks, holding the eye in devout admiration, calling it back again and again from falls or meadows, or even the mountains be yond,— marvelous cliffs, marvelous in sheer dizzy depth and sculpture, types of endurance. Thousands of years have they stood in the sky exposed to rain, snow, frost, earth quake and avalanche, yet they still wear the bloom of youth.

I rambled along the valley rim to the westward; most of it is rounded off on the very brink, so that it is not easy to find places where one may look clear down the face of the wall to the bottom. When such places were found, and I had cautiously set my feet and drawn my body erect, I could not help fearing a little that the rock might split off and let me down, and what a down! — more than three thousand feet. Still my limbs did not tremble, nor did I feel the least uncertainty as to the reliance to be placed on them. My only fear was that a flake of the granite, which in some places showed joints more or less open and running parallel with the face of the cliff, might give way. After withdrawing from such places, excited with the view I had got, I would say to myself, "Now don't go out on the verge again." But in the face of Yosemite scenery cautious remonstrance is vain; under its spell one's body seems to go where it likes with a will over which we seem to have scarce any control.

After a mile or so of this memorable cliff work I approached Yosemite Creek, admiring its easy, graceful, confident gestures as it comes bravely forward in its narrow channel, singing the last of its mountain songs on its way to its fate — a few rods more over the shining granite, then down half a mile in showy foam to an other world, to be lost in the Merced, where climate, vegetation, inhabitants, all are different. Emerging from its last gorge, it glides in wide lace-like rapids down a smooth incline into a pool where it seems to rest and compose its gray, agitated waters before taking the grand plunge, then slowly slipping over the lip of the pool basin, it descends another glossy slope with rapidly accelerated speed to the brink of the tremendous cliff, and with sublime, fateful confidence springs out free in the air.

I took off my shoes and stockings and worked my way cautiously down alongside the rushing flood, keeping my feet and hands pressed firmly on the polished rock. The booming, roaring water, rushing past close to my head, was very exciting. I had expected that the sloping apron would terminate with the perpendicular wall of the valley, and that from the foot of it, where it is less steeply inclined, I should be able to lean far enough out to see the forms and behavior of the fall all the way down to the bottom. But I found that there was yet another small brow over which I could not see, and which appeared to be too steep for mortal feet. Scanning it keenly, I discovered a narrow shelf about three inches wide on the very brink, just wide enough for a rest for one's heels. But there seemed to be no way of reaching it over so steep a brow. At length, after careful scrutiny of the surface, I found an irregular edge of a flake of the rock some distance back from the margin of the torrent. If I was to get down to the brink at all that rough edge, which might offer slight finger-holds, was the only way. But the slope beside it looked dangerously smooth and steep, and the swift roaring flood beneath, overhead, and beside me was very nerve-trying. I therefore concluded not to venture farther, but did nevertheless. Tufts of artemisia were growing in clefts of the rock near by, and I filled my mouth with the bitter leaves, hoping they might help to prevent giddiness. Then, with a caution not known in ordinary circumstances, I crept down safely to the little ledge, got my heels well planted on it, then shuffled in a horizontal direction twenty or thirty feet until close to the outplunging current, which, by the time it had descended thus far, was already white. Here I obtained a perfectly free view down into the heart of the snowy, chanting throng of comet-like streamers, into which the body of the fall soon separates.

While perched on that narrow niche I was not distinctly conscious of danger. The tremendous grandeur of the fall in form and sound and motion, acting at close range, smothered the sense of fear, and in such places one's body takes keen care for safety on its own account. How long I remained down there, or how I returned, I can hardly tell. Anyhow I had a glorious time, and got back to camp about dark, enjoying triumphant exhilaration soon followed by dull weariness. Hereafter I'll try to keep from such extravagant, nerve-straining places. Yet such a day is well worth venturing for. My first view of the High Sierra, first view looking down into Yosemite, the death song of Yosemite Creek, and its flight over the vast cliff, each one of these is of itself enough for a great life-long landscape fortune — a most memorable day of days — enjoyment enough to kill if that were possible.

July 16. My enjoyments yesterday after noon, especially at the head of the fall, were too great for good sleep. Kept starting up last night in a nervous tremor, half awake, fancying that the foundation of the mountain we were camped on had given way and was falling into Yosemite Valley. In vain I roused myself to make a new beginning for sound sleep. The nerve strain had been too great, and again and again I dreamed I was rushing through the air above a glorious avalanche of water and rocks. One time, springing to nay feet, I said, "This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!"

Left camp soon after sunrise for an all-day ramble eastward. Crossed the head of Indian Basin, forested with Abies magnifica, under brush mostly Ceanothus cordulatus and manzanita, a mixture not easily trampled over or penetrated, for the ceanothus is thorny and grows in dense snow-pressed masses, and the manzanita has exceedingly crooked, stub born branches. From the head of the canon continued on past North Dome into the basin of Dome or Porcupine Creek. Here are many fine meadows imbedded in the woods, gay with Lilium parvum and its companions; the elevation, about eight thousand feet, seems to be best suited for it — saw specimens that were a foot or two higher than my head. Had more magnificent views of the upper mountains, and of the great South Dome, said to be the grandest rock in the world. Well it may be, since it is of such noble dimensions and sculpture. A wonderfully impressive monument, its lines exquisite in fineness, and though sublime in size, is finished like the fin est work of art, and seems to be alive.

July 17. A new camp was made to-day in a magnificent silver fir grove at the head of a small stream that flows into Yosemite by way of Indian Canon. Here we intend to stay several weeks, — a fine location from which to make excursions about the great valley and its fountains. Glorious days I'll have sketch ing, pressing plants, studying the wonderful topography and the wild animals, our happy fellow mortals and neighbors. But the vast mountains in the distance, shall I ever know them, shall I be allowed to enter into their midst and dwell with them?

We were pelted about noon by a short, heavy rainstorm, sublime thunder reverberating among the mountains and canons, — some strokes near, crashing, ringing in the tense crisp air with startling keenness, while the distant peaks loomed gloriously through the cloud fringes and sheets of rain. Now the storm is past, and the fresh washed air is full of the essences of the flower gardens and groves. Winter storms in Yosemite must be glorious. May I see them!

The North and South Domes

Have got my bed made in our new camp, — plushy, sumptuous, and deliciously fragrant, most of it magnifica fir plumes, of course, with a variety of sweet flowers in the pillow. Hope to sleep to-night without tottering nerve-dreams. Watched a deer eating ceanothus leaves and twigs.

July 18. Slept pretty well; the valley walls did not seem to fall, though I still fancied my self at the brink, alongside the white, plunging flood, especially when half asleep. Strange the danger of that adventure should be more troublesome now that I am in the bosom of the peaceful woods, a mile or more from the fall, than it was while I was on the brink of it.

Bears seem to be common here, judging by their tracks. About noon we had another rainstorm with keen startling thunder, the metallic, ringing, clashing, clanging notes gradually fading into low bass rolling and muttering in the distance. For a few minutes the rain came in a grand torrent like a water fall, then hail; some of the hailstones an inch in diameter, hard, icy, and irregular in form, like those oftentimes seen in Wisconsin. Carlo watched them with intelligent astonishment as they came pelting and thrashing through the quivering branches of the trees. The cloud scenery sublime. Afternoon calm, sunful, and clear, with delicious freshness and fragrance from the firs and flowers and steaming ground.

July 19. Watching the daybreak and sun rise. The pale rose and purple sky changing softly to daffodil yellow and white, sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks and over the Yosemite domes, making their edges burn; the silver firs in the middle ground catching the glow on their spiry tops, and our camp grove fills and thrills with the glorious light. Everything awakening alert and joy ful; the birds begin to stir and innumerable insect people. Deer quietly withdraw into leafy hiding-places in the chaparral; the dew vanishes, flowers spread their petals, every pulse beats high, every life cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to thrill with life. The whole land scape glows like a human face in a glory of enthusiasm, and the blue sky, pale around the horizon, bends peacefully down over all like one vast flower.

About noon, as usual, big bossy cumuli be gan to grow above the forest, and the rain storm pouring from them is the most imposing I have yet seen. The silvery zigzag lightning lances are longer than usual, and the thunder gloriously impressive, keen, crashing, intensely concentrated, speaking with such tremendous energy it would seem that an entire mountain is being shattered at every stroke, but probably only a few trees are being shattered, many of which I have seen on my walks here abouts strewing the ground. At last the clear ringing strokes are succeeded by deep low tones that grow gradually fainter as they roll afar into the recesses of the echoing mountains, where they seem to be welcomed home. Then another and another peal, or rather crashing, splintering stroke, follows in quick succession, perchance splitting some giant pine or fir from top to bottom into long rails and slivers, and scattering them to all points of the compass. Now comes the rain, with corresponding extravagant grandeur, covering the ground high and low with a sheet of flowing water, a transparent film fitted like a skin upon the rugged anatomy of the landscape, making the rocks glitter and glow, gathering in the ravines, flooding the streams, and making them shout and boom in reply to the thunder.

How interesting to trace the history of a single raindrop! It is not long, geologically speaking, as we have seen, since the first rain drops fell on the newborn leafless Sierra landscapes. How different the lot of these falling now! Happy the showers that fall on so fair a wilderness, — scarce a single drop can fail to find a beautiful spot, — on the tops of the peaks, on the shining glacier pavements, on the great smooth domes, on forests and gardens and brushy moraines, plashing, glinting, pattering, laving. Some go to the high snowy fountains to swell their well-saved stores; some into the lakes, washing the mountain windows, patting their smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bubbles and spray; some into the waterfalls and cascades, as if eager to join in their dance and song and beat their foam yet finer; good luck and good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers. Some, falling on meadows and bogs, creep silently out of sight to the grass roots, hiding softly as in a nest, slipping, oozing hither, thither, seeking and finding their appointed work. Some, descending through the spires of the woods, sift spray through the shining needles, whispering peace and good cheer to each one of them. Some drops with happy aim glint on the sides of crystals, — quartz, hornblende, garnet, zircon, tourmaline, feldspar, — patter on grains of gold and heavy way-worn nuggets; some, with blunt plap-plap and low bass drumming, fall on the broad leaves of veratrum, saxifrage, cypripedium. Some happy drops fall straight into the cups of flowers, kissing the lips of lilies. How far they have to go, how many cups to fill, great and small, cells too small to be seen, cups holding half a drop as well as lake basins between the hills, each replenished with equal care, every drop in all the blessed throng a silvery newborn star with lake and river, garden and grove, valley and mountain, all that the landscape holds reflected in its crystal depths, God's messenger, angel of love sent on its way with majesty and pomp and display of power that make man's greatest shows ridiculous.

Now the storm is over, the sky is. clear, the last rolling thunder-wave is spent on the peaks, and where are the raindrops now — what has become of all the shining throng? In winged vapor rising some are already hastening back to the sky, some have gone into the plants, creeping through invisible doors into the round rooms of cells, some are locked in crystals of ice, some in rock crystals, some in porous moraines to keep their small springs flowing, some have gone journeying on in the rivers to join the larger raindrop of the ocean. From form to form, beauty to beauty, ever changing, never resting, all are speeding on with love's enthusiasm, singing with the stars the eternal song of creation.

July 20. Fine calm morning; air tense and clear; not the slightest breeze astir; every thing shining, the rocks with wet crystals, the plants with dew, each receiving its portion of irised dewdrops and sunshine like living creatures getting their breakfast, their dew manna coming down from the starry sky like swarms of smaller stars. How wondrous fine are the particles in showers of dew, thousands required for a single drop, growing in the dark as silently as the grass! What pains are taken to keep this wilderness in health, — showers of snow, showers of rain, showers of dew, floods of light, floods of invisible vapor, clouds, winds, all sorts of weather, interaction of plant on plant, animal on animal, etc., beyond thought! How fine Nature's methods! How deeply with beauty is beauty overlaid! the ground covered with crystals, the crystals with mosses and lichens and low-spreading grasses and flowers, these with larger plants leaf over leaf with ever-changing color and form, the broad palms of the firs outspread over these, the azure dome over all like a bell-flower, and star above star.

Yonder stands the South Dome, its crown high above our camp, though its base is four thousand feet below us; a most noble rock, it seems full of thought, clothed with living light, no sense of dead stone about it, all spiritualized, neither heavy looking nor light, steadfast in serene strength like a god.

Our shepherd is a queer character and hard to place in this wilderness. His bed is a hollow made in red dry-rot punky dust beside a log which forms a portion of the south wall of the corral. Here he lies with his wonderful ever lasting clothing on, wrapped in a red blanket, breathing not only the dust of the decayed wood but also that of the corral, as if determined to take ammoniacal snuff all night after chewing tobacco all day. Following the sheep he carries a heavy six-shooter swung from his belt on one side and his luncheon on the other. The ancient cloth in which the meat, fresh from the frying-pan, is tied serves as a filter through which the clear fat and gravy juices drip down on his right hip and leg in clustering stalactites. This oleaginous formation is soon broken up, however, and diffused and rubbed evenly into his scanty apparel, by sitting down, rolling over, crossing his legs while resting on logs, etc., making shirt and trousers water-tight and shiny. His trousers, in particular, have become so adhesive with the mixed fat and resin that pine needles, thin flakes and fibres of bark, hair, mica scales and minute grains of quartz, hornblende, etc., feathers, seed wings, moth and butterfly wings, legs and antennae of innumerable insects, or even whole insects such as the small beetles, moths and mosquitoes, with flower petals, pollen dust and indeed bits of all plants, animals, and minerals of the region adhere to them and are safely imbedded, so that though far from being a naturalist he collects fragmentary specimens of everything and becomes richer than he knows. His specimens are kept passably fresh, too, by the purity of the air and the resiny bituminous beds into which they are pressed. Man is a microcosm, at least our shepherd is, or rather his trousers. These precious overalls are never taken off, and no body knows how old they are, though one may guess by their thickness and concentric structure. Instead of wearing thin they wear thick, and in their stratification have no small geological significance.

Besides herding the sheep, Billy is the butcher, while I have agreed to wash the few iron and tin utensils and make the bread. Then, these small duties done, by the time the sun is fairly above the mountain-tops I am beyond the flock, free to rove and revel in the wilderness all the big immortal days.

Sketching on the North Dome. It commands views of nearly all the valley besides a few of the high mountains. I would fain draw everything in sight — rock, tree, and leaf. But little can I do beyond mere outlines, — marks with meanings like words, readable only to myself, — yet I sharpen my pencils and work on as if others might possibly be benefited. Whether these picture-sheets are to vanish like fallen leaves or go to friends like letters, matters not much; for little can they tell to those who have not themselves seen similar wildness, and like a language have learned it. No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the future. These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God's beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be. Drinking this champagne water is pure pleasure, so is breathing the living air, and every movement of limbs is pleasure, while the whole body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the camp-fire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure-glow not explainable. One's body then seems homogeneous throughout, sound as a crystal.

Perched like a fly on this Yosemite dome, I gaze and sketch and bask, oftentimes settling down into dumb admiration without definite hope of ever learning much, yet with the long ing, unresting effort that lies at the door of hope, humbly prostrate before the vast dis play of God's power, and eager to offer self-denial and renunciation with eternal toil to learn any lesson in the divine manuscript.

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized they are mostly hidden. Sheer precipices three thousand feet high are fringed with tall trees growing close like grass on the brow of a lowland hill, and extending along the feet of these precipices a ribbon of meadow a mile wide and seven or eight long, that seems like a strip a farmer might mow in less than a day. Waterfalls, five hundred to one or two thousand feet high, are so subordinated to the mighty cliffs over which they pour that they seem like wisps of smoke, gentle as floating clouds, though their voices fill the valley and make the rocks tremble. The mountains, too, along the eastern sky, and the domes in front of them, and the succession of smooth rounded waves between, swelling higher, higher, with dark woods in their hollows, serene in massive exuberant bulk and beauty, tend yet more to hide the grandeur of the Yosemite temple and make it appear as a subdued subordinate feature of the vast harmonious landscape. Thus every attempt to appreciate any one feature is beaten down by the overwhelming influence of all the others. And, as if this were not enough, lo! in the sky arises another mountain range with topography as rugged and substantial-looking as the one beneath it — snowy peaks and domes and shadowy Yosemite valleys — another version of the snowy Sierra, a new creation heralded by a thunder-storm. How fiercely, devoutly wild is Nature in the midst of her beauty-loving tenderness! — painting lilies, watering them, caressing them with gentle hand, going from flower to flower like a gardener while building rock mountains and cloud mountains full of lightning and rain. Gladly we run for shelter beneath an over hanging cliff and examine the reassuring ferns and mosses, gentle love tokens growing in cracks and chinks. Daisies, too, and ivesias, confiding wild children of light, too small to fear. To these one's heart goes home, and the voices of the storm become gentle. Now the sun breaks forth and fragrant steam arises. The birds are out singing on the edges of the groves. The west is flaming in gold and purple, ready for the ceremony of the sunset, and back I go to camp with my notes and pictures, the best of them printed in my mind as dreams. A fruitful day, without measured beginning or ending. A terrestrial eternity. A gift of good God.

Wrote to my mother and a few friends, mountain hints to each. They seem as near as if within voice-reach or touch. The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends. Now bread and tea, fir bed and good-night to Carlo, a look at the sky lilies, and death sleep until the dawn of another Sierra to-morrow.

July 21. Sketching on the Dome — no rain; clouds at noon about quarter filled the sky, casting shadows with fine effect on the white mountains at the heads of the streams, and a soothing cover over the gardens during the warm hours.

Saw a common house-fly and a grasshopper and a brown bear. The fly and grasshopper paid me a merry visit on the top of the Dome, and I paid a visit to the bear in the middle of a small garden meadow between the Dome and the camp where he was standing alert among the flowers as if willing to be seen to advantage. I had not gone more than half a mile from camp this morning, when Carlo, who was trotting on a few yards ahead of me, came to a sudden, cautious standstill. Down went tail and ears, and forward went his knowing nose, while he seemed to be saying, "Ha, what's this? A bear, I guess." Then a cautious advance of a few steps, setting his feet down softly like a hunting cat, and questioning the air as to the scent he had caught until all doubt vanished. Then he came back to me, looked me in the face, and with his speaking eyes reported a bear near by; then led on softly, careful, like an experienced hunter, not to make the slightest noise, and frequently looking back as if whispering, "Yes, it's a bear; come and I'll show you." Presently we came to where the sunbeams were streaming through between the purple shafts of the firs, which showed that we were nearing an open spot, and here Carlo came behind me, evidently sure that the bear was very near. So I crept to a low ridge of moraine boulders on the edge of a narrow garden meadow, and in this meadow I felt pretty sure the bear must be. I was anxious to get a good look at the sturdy mountaineer without alarming him; so drawing myself up noiselessly back of one of the largest of the trees I peered past its bulging buttresses, exposing only a part of my head, and there stood neighbor Bruin within a stone's throw, his hips covered by tall grass and flowers, and his front feet on the trunk of a fir that had fallen out into the meadow, which raised his head so high that he seemed to be standing erect. He had not yet seen me, but was looking and listening attentively, showing that in some way he was aware of our approach. I watched his gestures and tried to make the most of my opportunity to learn what I could about him, fearing he would catch sight of me and run away. For I had been told that this sort of bear, the cinnamon, always ran from his bad brother man, never showing fight unless wounded or in defense of young. He made a telling picture standing alert in the sunny forest garden. How well he played his part, harmonizing in bulk and color and shaggy hair with the trunks of the trees and lush vegetation, as natural a feature as any other in the landscape. After examining at leisure, noting the sharp muzzle thrust inquiringly forward, the long shaggy hair on his broad chest, the stiff, erect ears nearly buried in hair, and the slow, heavy way he moved his head, I thought I should like to see his gait in running, so I made a sudden rush at him, shouting and swinging my hat to frighten him, expecting to see him make haste to get away. But to my dismay he did not run or show any sign of running. On the contrary, he stood his ground ready to fight and defend himself, lowered his head, thrust it forward, and looked sharply and fiercely at me. Then I suddenly began to fear that upon me would fall the work of running; but I was afraid to run, and therefore, like the bear, held my ground. We stood staring at each other in solemn silence within a dozen yards or there abouts, while I fervently hoped that the power of the human eye over wild beasts would prove as great as it is said to be. How long our aw fully strenuous interview lasted, I don't know; but at length in the slow fullness of time he pulled his huge paws down off the log, and with magnificent deliberation turned and walked leisurely up the meadow, stopping frequently to look back over his shoulder to see whether I was pursuing him, then moving on again, evidently neither fearing me very much nor trusting me. He was probably about five hundred pounds in weight, a broad, rusty bundle of ungovernable wildness, a happy fellow whose lines have fallen in pleasant places. The flowery glade in which I saw him so well, framed like a picture, is one of the best of all I have yet discovered, a conservatory of Nature's precious plant people. Tall lilies were swinging their bells over that  bear's back, with geraniums, larkspurs, columbines, and daisies brushing against his sides.  A place for angels, one would say, instead of  bears. 

In the great canons Bruin reigns supreme.  Happy fellow, whom no famine can reach  while one of his thousand kinds of food is  spared him. His bread is sure at all seasons,  ranged on the mountain shelves like stores in  a pantry. From one to the other, up or down  he climbs, tasting and enjoying each in turn  in different climates, as if he had journeyed  thousands of miles to other countries north  or south to enjoy their varied productions. I  should like to know my hairy brothers better  — though after this particular Yosemite bear,  my very neighbor, had sauntered out of sight  this morning, I reluctantly went back to camp  for the Don's rifle to shoot him, if necessary,  in defense of the flock. Fortunately I couldn't  find him, and after tracking him a mile or  two towards Mount Huffman I bade him  Godspeed and gladly returned to my work on  the Yosemite Dome. 

The house-fly also seemed at home and  buzzed about me as I sat sketching, and enjoying my bear interview now it was over. I  wonder what draws house-flies so far up the  mountains, heavy gross feeders as they are,  sensitive to cold, and fond of domestic ease.  How have they been distributed from continent to continent, across seas and deserts and  mountain chains, usually so influential in determining boundaries of species both of plants  and animals. Beetles and butterflies are some  times restricted to small areas. Each mountain in a range, and even the different zones  of a mountain, may have its own peculiar  species. But the house-fly seems to be every  where. I wonder if any island in mid-ocean is  flyless. The bluebottle is abundant in these  Yosemite woods, ever ready with his marvelous store of eggs to make all dead flesh fly.  Bumblebees are here, and are well fed on  boundless stores of nectar and pollen. The  honeybee, though abundant in the foothills,  has not yet got so high. It is only a few  years since the first swarm was brought to  California. 

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grass  hopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don't know, but at least  as far and high as Yosemite tourists. I was  much interested with the hearty enjoyment of  the one that danced and sang for me on the  Dome this afternoon. He seemed brimful of  glad, hilarious energy, manifested by springing  into the air to a height of twenty or thirty feet,  then diving and springing up again and making  a sharp musical rattle just as the lowest point  in the descent was reached. Up and down a  dozen times or so he danced and sang, then  alighted to rest, then up and at it again. The  curves he described in the air in diving and  rattling resembled those made by cords hanging loosely and attached at the same height at  the ends, the loops nearly covering each other.  Braver, heartier, keener, care-free enjoyment  of life I have never seen or heard in any creature, great or small. The life of this comic red-legs, the mountain's merriest child, seems to  be made up of pure, condensed gayety. The  Douglas squirrel is the only living creature  that I can compare him with in exuberant, rollicking, irrepressible jollity. Wonderful  that these sublime mountains are so loudly  cheered and brightened by a creature so queer.  Nature in him seems to be snapping her fingers  in the face of all earthly dejection and melancholy with a boyish hip-hip-hurrah. How the  sound is made I do not understand. When he  was on the ground he made not the slightest  noise, nor when he was simply flying from place  to place, but only when diving in curves, the  motion seeming to be required for the sound;  for the more vigorous the diving the more energetic the corresponding outbursts of jolly rattling. I tried to observe him closely while he  was resting in the intervals of his performances;  but he would not allow a near approach, always  getting his jumping legs ready to spring for immediate flight, and keeping his eyes on me. A  fine sermon the little fellow danced for me on  the Dome, a likely place to look for sermons in  stones, but not for grasshopper sermons. A large  and imposing pulpit for so small a preacher.  No danger of weakness in the knees of the  world while Nature can spring such a rattle  as this. Even the bear did not express for me  the mountain's wild health and strength and  happiness so tellingly as did this comical little  hopper. No cloud of care in his day, no winter  of discontent in sight. To him every day is a  holiday; and when at length his sun sets, I  fancy he will cuddle down on the forest floor  and die like the leaves and flowers, and like  them leave no unsightly remains calling for  burial. 

TRACK OF SINGING DANCING GRASSHOPPER  IN THE AIR OVER NORTH DOME

Sundown, and I must to camp. Good-night,  friends three, — brown bear, rugged boulder  of energy in groves and gardens fair as Eden;  restless, fussy fly with gauzy wings stirring the  air around all the world; and grasshopper,  crisp, electric spark of joy enlivening the massy  sublimity of the mountains like the laugh of a  child. Thank you, thank you all three for  your quickening company. Heaven guide every  wing and leg. Good-night friends three, good  night. 

July 22. A fine specimen of the black-tailed  deer went bounding past camp this morning.  A buck with wide spread of antlers, showing  admirable vigor and grace. Wonderful the  beauty, strength, and graceful movements of  animals in wildernesses, cared for by Nature  only, when our experience with domestic animals would lead us to fear that all the so-called  neglected wild beasts would degenerate. Yet  the upshot of Nature's method of breeding and  teaching seems to lead to excellence of every  sort. Deer, like all wild animals, are as clean  as plants. The beauties of their gestures and  attitudes, alert or in repose, surprise yet more  than their bounding exuberant strength. Every  movement and posture is graceful, the very  poetry of manners and motion. Mother Nature  is too often spoken of as in reality no mother  at all. Yet how wisely, sternly, tenderly she  loves and looks after her children in all sorts of  weather and wildernesses. The more I see of  deer the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of  the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of  strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder  piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snowfields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.  Over nearly all the continent the deer find  homes. In the Florida savannas and hummocks, in the Canada woods, in the far north,  roaming over mossy tundras, swimming lakes  and rivers and arms of the sea from island to  island washed with waves, or climbing rocky  mountains, everywhere healthy and able, adding beauty to every landscape,—a truly admirable creature and great credit to Nature. 

MOUNT CLARK, TOP OF SOUTH DOME, MOUNT STAAR KING
ABIES MAGNIFICA

Have been sketching a silver fir that stands  on a granite ridge a few hundred yards to the  eastward of camp—a fine tree with a particular  snow-storm story to tell. It is about one hundred feet high, growing on bare rock, thrusting its roots into a weathered joint less than an  inch wide, and bulging out to form a base to  bear its weight. The storm came from the  north while it was young and broke it down  nearly to the ground, as is shown by the old,  dead, weather-beaten top leaning out from the  living trunk built up from a new shoot below  the break. The annual rings of the trunk that  have overgrown the dead sapling tell the year  of the storm. Wonderful that a side branch  forming a portion of one of the level collars  that encircle the trunk of this species (Abies magnifica) should bend upward, grow erect,  and take the place of the lost axis to form a  new tree. 

Many others, pines as well as firs, bear testimony to the crushing severity of this particular  storm. Trees, some of them fifty to seventy-five feet high, were bent to the ground and  buried like grass, whole groves vanishing as if  the forest had been cleared away, leaving not a  branch or needle visible until the spring thaw.  Then the more elastic undamaged saplings rose  again, aided by the wind, some reaching a  nearly erect attitude, others remaining more or  less bent, while those with broken backs endeavored to specialize a side branch below the  break and make a leader of it to form a new axis  of development. It is as if a man, whose back  was broken or nearly so and who was compelled to go bent, should find a branch back  bone sprouting straight up from below the  break and should gradually develop new arms  and shoulders and head, while the old dam  aged portion of his body died. 

Grand white cloud mountains and domes  created about noon as usual, ridges and ranges  of endless variety, as if Nature dearly loved  this sort of work, doing it again and again  nearly every day with infinite industry, and  producing beauty that never palls. A few zigzags of lightning, five minutes' shower, then a  gradual wilting and clearing. 

 
ILLUSTRATING GROWTH OF NEW PINE FROM BRANCH BELOW THE BREAK OF AXIS OF SNOW-CRUSHED TREE

July 23. Another midday cloudland, displaying power and beauty that one never wearies in beholding, but hopelessly unsketchable  and untellable. What can poor mortals say  about clouds? While a description of their  huge glowing domes and ridges, shadowy gulfs  and canons, and feather-edged ravines is being  tried, they vanish, leaving no visible ruins.  Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains are  as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both  alike are built up and die, and in God's calendar  difference of duration is nothing. We can only  dream about them in wondering, worshiping  admiration, happier than we dare tell even to  friends who see farthest in sympathy, glad to  know that not a crystal or vapor particle of  them, hard or soft, is lost; that they sink and  vanish only to rise again and again in higher  and higher beauty. As to our own work, duty,  influence, etc., concerning which so much fussy  pother is made, it will not fail of its due effect,  though, like a lichen on a stone, we keep  silent. 

July 24. Clouds at noon occupying about  half the sky gave half an hour of heavy rain  to wash one of the cleanest landscapes in the world. How well it is washed! The sea is hardly  less dusty than the ice-burnished pavements  and ridges, domes and canons, and summit  peaks plashed with snow like waves with foam.  How fresh the woods are and calm after the  last films of clouds have been wiped from the  sky! A few minutes ago every tree was excited,  bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling,  tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm  like worship. But though to the outer ear these  trees are now silent, their songs never cease.  Every hidden cell is throbbing with music  and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings,  while .incense is ever flowing from the balsam  bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and  groves were God's first temples, and the more  they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals  and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems  the Lord himself. The same may be said of  stone temples. Yonder, to the eastward of our  camp grove, stands one of Nature's cathedrals,  hewn from the living rock, almost conventional  in form, about two thousand feet high, nobly  adorned with spires and pinnacles, thrilling  under floods of sunshine as if alive like a grove- temple, and well named "Cathedral Peak."  Even Shepherd Billy turns at times to this  wonderful mountain building, though apparently deaf to all stone sermons. Snow that refused to melt in fire would hardly be more  wonderful than unchanging dullness in the rays  of God's beauty. I have been trying to get him  to walk to the brink of Yosemite for a view,  offering to watch the sheep for a day, while he  should enjoy what tourists come from all over  the world to see. But though within a mile of  the famous valley, he will not go to it even out  of mere curiosity. "What," says he, "is Yosemite but a canon — a lot of rocks — a hole  in the ground — a place dangerous about falling into — a d—d good place to keep away  from." "But think of the waterfalls, Billy —  just think of that big stream we crossed the  other day, falling half a mile through the air —  think of that, and the sound it makes. You  can hear it now like the roar of the sea." Thus  I pressed Yosemite upon him like a missionary  offering the gospel, but he would have none  of it. "I should be afraid to look over so high a  wall," he said. "It would make my head swim.  There is nothing worth seeing anywhere, only  rocks, and I see plenty of them here. Tourists  that spend their money to see rocks and falls  are fools, that's all. You can't humbug me.  I've been in this country too long for that."  Such souls, I suppose, are asleep, or smothered  and befogged beneath mean pleasures and cares. 

July 25. Another cloudland. Some clouds  have an over-ripe decaying look, watery and  bedraggled and drawn out into wind-torn  shreds and patches, giving the sky a littered  appearance; not so these Sierra summer mid  day clouds. All are beautiful with smooth definite outlines and curves like those of glacier-polished domes. They begin to grow about  eleven o'clock, and seem so wonderfully near  and clear from this high camp one is tempted  to try to climb them and trace the streams that  pour like cataracts from their shadowy fountains. The rain to which they give birth is often  very heavy, a sort of waterfall as imposing as if  pouring from rock mountains. Never in all my  travels have I found anything more truly novel  and interesting than these midday mountains  of the sky, their fine tones of color, majestic  visible growth, and ever-changing scenery and  general effects, though mostly as well let alone  as far as description goes. I oftentimes think  of Shelley's cloud poem, "I sift the snow on the  mountains below."