Read Ebook: Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada by King Clarence

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 917 lines and 95646 words, and 19 pages

As I rode I watched the western prospect. Completely bounding the basin in that direction rose the gigantic wall of the Sierra, its serrated line sharply profiled against the evening sky. This dark barrier became more and more shadowed, so that the old shore line and the lowland, where mountain and plain joined, were lost. The desert melted in the distance into the shadowed masses of the Sierra, which, looming higher and higher, seemed to rise as the sun went down. Scattered snow-fields shone along its crest; each peak and notch, every column of rock and detail of outline, were black and sharp.

On either side of the San Gorgonio stood its two guardian peaks, San Bernardino and San Jacinto, capped with rosy snow, and the pass itself, warm with western light, opened hopefully before us. For a moment the sun rested upon the Sierra crest, and then, slowly sinking, suffered eclipse by its ragged, black profile. Through the slow hours of darkening twilight a strange, ashy gloom overspread the desert. The forms of the distant mountain chains behind us, and the old shore line upon the Sierra base, stared at us with a strange, weird distinctness. At last all was gray and vague, except the black silhouette of the Sierras cut upon a band of golden heaven.

We at length reached their foot and, turning northward, rode parallel with the base toward the San Gorgonio. In the moonless night huge, rocky buttresses of the range loomed before us, their feet plunging into the pale desert floor. High upon their fronts, perhaps five hundred feet above us, was dimly traceable the white line of ancient shore. Over drifted hills of sand and hard alkaline clay we rode along the bottom of that primitive sea. Between the spurs deep mountain alcoves, stretching back into the heart of the range, opened grand and shadowy; far at their head, over crests of ridge and peak, loomed the planet Jupiter.

A long, wearisome ride of forty hours brought us to the open San Gorgonio Pass. Already scattered beds of flowers tinted the austere face of the desert; tufts of pale grass grew about the stones, and tall stems of yucca bore up their magnificent bunches of bluish flowers. Upon all the heights overhanging the road gnarled, struggling cedars grasp the rock, and stretch themselves with frantic effort to catch a breath of the fresh Pacific vapor. It is instructive to observe the difference between those which lean out into the vitalizing wind of the pass, and the fated few whose position exposes them to the dry air of the desert. Vigor, soundness, nerve to stand on the edge of sheer walls, flexibility, sap, fulness of green foliage, are in the one; a shroud of dull olive-leaves scantily cover the thin, straggling, bayonet-like boughs of the others; they are rigid, shrunken, split to the heart, pitiful. We were glad to forget them as we turned a last buttress and ascended the gentle acclivity of the pass.

Before us opened a broad gateway six or seven miles from wall to wall, in which a mere swell of green land rises to divide the desert and Pacific slopes. Flanking the pass along its northern side stands Mount San Bernardino, its granite framework crowded up above the beds of more recent rock about its base, bearing aloft tattered fragments of pine forest, the summit piercing through a marbling of perpetual snow, up to the height of ten thousand feet. Fronting it on the opposite wall rises its compeer, San Jacinto, a dark crag of lava, whose flanks are cracked, riven, and waterworn into innumerable ravines, each catching a share of the drainage from the snow-cap, and glistening with a hundred small waterfalls.

Numerous brooks unite to form two rivers, one running down the green slope among ranches and gardens into the blooming valley of San Bernardino, the other pouring eastward, shrinking as it flows out upon the hot sands, till, in a few miles, the unslakable desert has drunk it dry.

There are but few points in America where such extremes of physical condition meet. What contrasts, what opposed sentiments, the two views awakened! Spread out below us lay the desert, stark and glaring, its rigid hill-chains lying in disordered grouping, in attitudes of the dead. The bare hills are cut out with sharp gorges, and over their stone skeletons scanty earth clings in folds, like shrunken flesh; they are emaciated corses of once noble ranges now lifeless, outstretched as in a long sleep. Ghastly colors define them from the ashen plain in which their feet are buried. Far in the south were a procession of whirlwind columns slowly moving across the desert in spectral dimness. A white light beat down, dispelling the last trace of shadow, and above hung the burnished shield of hard, pitiless sky.

Approaching the Sierras anywhere from the west, one will perceive a totally different topographical and climatic condition. From the Coast Range peaks especially one obtains an extended and impressive prospect. I had fallen behind the party one May evening of our march across Pacheco's Pass, partly because some wind-bent oaks trailing almost horizontally over the wild-oat surface of the hills, and marking, as a living record, the prevalent west wind, had arrested me and called out compass and note-book; and because there had fallen to my lot an incorrigibly deliberate mustang to whom I had abandoned myself to be carried along at his own pace, comforted withal that I should get in too late to have any hand in the cooking of supper. We reached the crest, the mustang coming to a conspicuous and unwarrantable halt; I yielded, however, and sat still in the saddle, looking out to the east.

Brown foot-hills, purple over their lower slopes with "fil-a-ree" blossoms, descended steeply to the plain of California, a great, inland, prairie sea, extending for five hundred miles, mountain-locked, between the Sierras and coast hills, and now a broad, arabesque surface of colors. Miles of orange-colored flowers, cloudings of green and white, reaches of violet which looked like the shadow of a passing cloud, wandering in natural patterns over and through each other, sunny and intense along near our range, fading in the distance into pale, bluish-pearl tones, and divided by long, dimly seen rivers, whose margins were edged by belts of bright emerald green. Beyond rose three hundred miles of Sierra half lost in light and cloud and mist, the summit in places sharply seen against a pale, beryl sky, and again buried in warm, rolling clouds. It was a mass of strong light, soft, fathomless shadows, and dark regions of forest. However, the three belts upon its front were tolerably clear. Dusky foot-hills rose over the plain with a coppery gold tone, suggesting the line of mining towns planted in its rusty ravines,--a suggestion I was glad to repel, and look higher into that cool, solemn realm where the pines stand, green-roofed, in infinite colonnade. Lifted above the bustling industry of the plains and the melodramatic mining theatre of the foot-hills, it has a grand, silent life of its own, refreshing to contemplate even from a hundred miles away.

While I looked the sun descended; shadows climbed the Sierras, casting a gloom over foot-hill and pine, until at last only the snow summits, reflecting the evening light, glowed like red lamps along the mountain wall for hundreds of miles. The rest of the Sierra became invisible. The snow burned for a moment in the violet sky, and at last went out.

THROUGH THE FOREST

Visalia is the name of a small town embowered in oaks upon the Tulare Plain in Middle California, where we made our camp one May evening of 1864.

Professor Whitney, our chief, the State Geologist, had sent us out for a summer's campaign in the High Sierras, under the lead of Professor William H. Brewer, who was more sceptical than I as to the result of the mission.

Several times during the previous winter Mr. Hoffman and I, while on duty at the Mariposa goldmines, had climbed to the top of Mount Bullion, and gained, in those clear January days, a distinct view of the High Sierra, ranging from the Mount Lyell group many miles south to a vast pile of white peaks, which, from our estimate, should lie near the heads of the King's and Kaweah rivers. Of their great height I was fully persuaded; and Professor Whitney, on the strength of these few observations, commissioned us to explore and survey the new Alps.

We numbered five in camp:--Professor Brewer; Mr. Charles F. Hoffman, chief topographer; Mr. James T. Gardiner, assistant surveyor; myself, assistant geologist; and our man-of-all-work, to whom science already owes its debts.

When we got together our outfit of mules and equipments of all kinds, Brewer was going to re-engage, as general aid, a certain Dane, Jan Hoesch, who, besides being a faultless mule-packer, was a rapid and successful financier, having twice, when the field-purse was low and remittances delayed, enriched us by what he called "dealing bottom stock" in his little evening games with the honest miners. Not ungrateful for that, I, however, detested the fellow with great cordiality.

So my friend, Richard Cotter, came into the service, and the accomplished but filthy Jan opened a poker and rum shop on one of the San Francisco wharves, where he still mixes drinks and puts up jobs of "bottom stock." Secretly I longed for him as we came down the Pacheco Pass, the packs having loosened with provoking frequency. The animals of our small exploring party were upon a footing of easy social equality with us. All were excellent except mine. The choice of Hobson falling naturally to me, I came to be possessed of the only hopeless animal in the band. Old Slum, a dignified roan mustang of a certain age, with the decorum of years and a conspicuous economy of force retained not a few of the affectations of youth, such as snorting theatrically and shying, though with absolute safety to the rider, Professor Brewer. Hoffman's mount was a young half-breed, full of fire and gentleness. The mare Bess, my friend Gardiner's pet, was a light-bay creature, as full of spring and perception as her sex and species may be. A rare mule, Cate, carried Cotter. Nell and Jim, two old geological mules, branded with Mexican hieroglyphics from head to tail, were bearers of the loads.

A stroke of good fortune completed our outfit and my happiness by bringing to Visalia a Spaniard who was under some manner of financial cloud. His horse was offered for sale, and quickly bought for me by Professor Brewer. We named him Kaweah, after the river and its Indian tribe. He was young, strong, fleet, elegant, a pattern of fine modelling in every part of his bay body and fine black legs; every way good, only fearfully wild, with a blaze of quick electric light in his dark eye.

Shortly after sunrise one fresh morning we made a point of putting the packs on very securely, and, getting into our saddles, rode out toward the Sierras.

The group of farms surrounding Visalia is gathered within a belt through which several natural, and many more artificial, channels of the Kaweah flow. Groves of large, dark-foliaged oaks follow this irrigated zone; the roads, nearly always in shadow, are flanked by small ranch-houses, fenced in with rank jungles of weeds and rows of decrepit pickets.

There is about these fresh ruins, these specimens of modern decay, an air of social decomposition not pleasant to perceive. Freshly built houses, still untinted by time, left in rickety disorder, half-finished windows, gates broken down or unhinged, and a kind of sullen neglect staring everywhere. What more can I say of the people than that they are chiefly immigrants who subsist upon pork?

Rare exceptions of comfort and thrift shine out sometimes, with neat dooryards, well-repaired dwellings, and civilized-looking children. In these I never saw the mother of the family sitting cross-legged, smoking a corncob pipe, nor the father loafing about with a fiddle or shot-gun.

Our backs were now turned to this farm-belt, the road leading us out upon the open plain in our first full sight of the Sierras.

Grand and cool swelled up the forest; sharp and rugged rose the wave of white peaks, their vast fields of snow rolling over the summit in broad, shining masses.

Sunshine, exuberant vegetation, brilliant plant life, occupied our attention hour after hour until the middle of the second day. At last, after climbing a long, weary ascent, we rode out of the dazzling light of the foot-hills into a region of dense woodland, the road winding through avenues of pines so tall that the late evening light only came down to us in scattered rays. Under the deep shade of these trees we found an air pure and gratefully cool. Passing from the glare of the open country into the dusky forest, one seems to enter a door and ride into a vast covered hall. The whole sensation is of being roofed and enclosed. You are never tired of gazing down long vistas, where, in stately groups, stand tall shafts of pine. Columns they are, each with its own characteristic tinting and finish, yet all standing together with the air of relationship and harmony. Feathery branches, trimmed with living green, wave through the upper air, opening broken glimpses of the far blue, and catching on their polished surfaces reflections of the sun. Broad streams of light pour in, gilding purple trunks and falling in bright pathways along an undulating floor. Here and there are wide, open spaces, around which the trees group themselves in majestic ranks.

Our eyes often ranged upward, the long shafts leading the vision up to green, lighted spires, and on to the clouds. All that is dark and cool and grave in color, the beauty of blue umbrageous distance, all the sudden brilliance of strong local lights tinted upon green boughs or red and fluted shafts, surround us in ever-changing combination as we ride along these winding roadways of the Sierra.

We had marched a few hours over high, rolling, wooded ridges, when in the late afternoon we reached the brow of an eminence and began to descend. Looking over the tops of the trees beneath us, we saw a mountain basin fifteen hundred feet deep surrounded by a rim of pine-covered hills. An even, unbroken wood covered these sweeping slopes down to the very bottom, and in the midst, open to the sun, lay a circular green meadow, about a mile in diameter.

As we descended, side wood-tracks, marked by the deep ruts of timber wagons, joined our road on either side, and in the course of an hour we reached the basin and saw the distant roofs of Thomas's Saw-Mill Ranch. We crossed the level disc of meadow, fording a clear, cold mountain stream, flowing, as the best brooks do, over clean, white granite sand, and near the northern margin of the valley, upon a slight eminence, in the edge of a magnificent forest, pitched our camp.

Professor Brewer determined to make this camp a home for the week during which we were to explore and study all about the neighborhood. We were on a great granite spur, sixty miles from east to west by twenty miles wide, which lies between the Kaweah and King's River ca?ons. Rising in bold sweeps from the plain, this ridge joins the Sierra summit in the midst of a high group. Experience had taught us that the ca?ons are impassable by animals for any great distance; so the plan of campaign was to find a way up over the rocky crest of the spur as far as mules could go.

In the little excursions from this camp, which were made usually on horseback, we became acquainted with the forest, and got a good knowledge of the topography of a considerable region. On the heights above King's Ca?on are some singularly fine assemblies of trees. Cotter and I had ridden all one morning northeast from camp under the shadowy roof of forest, catching but occasional glimpses out over the plateau, until at last we emerged upon the bare surface of a ridge of granite, and came to the brink of a sharp precipice. Rocky crags lifted just east of us. The hour devoted to climbing them proved well spent.

A single little family of alpine firs growing in a niche in the granite surface, and partly sheltered by a rock, made the only shadow, and just shielded us from the intense light as we lay down by their roots. North and south, as far as the eye could reach, heaved the broad, green waves of plateau, swelling and merging through endless modulation of slope and form.

The behavior of the forest is observed most interestingly from these elevated points above the general face of the table-land. All over the gentle undulations of the more level country sweeps an unbroken covering of trees. Reaching the edge of the ca?on precipices, they stand out in bold groups upon the brink, and climb all over the more ragged and broken surfaces of granite. Only the most smooth and abrupt precipices are bare. Here and there a little shelf of a foot or two in width, cracked into the face of the bluff, gives foothold to a family of pines, who twist their roots into its crevices and thrive. With no soil from which the roots may drink up moisture and absorb the slowly dissolved mineral particles, they live by breathing alone, moist vapors from the river below and the elements of the atmosphere affording them the substance of life.

I believe no one can study from an elevated lookout the length and depth of one of these great Sierra ca?ons without asking himself some profound geological questions. Your eyes range along one or the other wall. The average descent is immensely steep. Here and there side ravines break down the rim in deep, lateral gorges. Again, the wall advances in sharp, salient precipices, rising two or three thousand feet, sheer and naked, with all the air of a recent fracture. At times the two walls approach each other, standing in perpendicular gateways. Toward the summits the ca?on grows, perhaps, a little broader, and more and more prominent lateral ravines open into it, until at last it receives the snow drainage of the summit, which descends through broad, rounded amphitheatres, separated from each other by sharp, castellated snow-clad ridges.

Looking down the course of the river, vertical precipices are seen to be less and less frequent, the walls inclining to each other more and more gently, until they roll out on the north and south in round, wooded ridges. Solid, massive granite forms the material throughout its whole length. If you study the topography upon the plateaus above one of these ca?ons, you will see that the ridges upon one side are reproduced in the other, as if the outlines of wavy table-land topography had been determined before the great ca?on was made.

It is not easy to propose a solution for this peculiar structure. I think, however, it is safe to say that actual rending asunder of the mountain mass determined the main outlines. Upon no other theory can we account for those blank walls. Where, in the upper course of the ca?on, they descend in a smooth, ship-like curve, and the rocks bear upon their curved sides the markings and striations of glaciers, it is easy to see that those terrible ice-engines gradually modified their form; and toward the foot-hills the forces of aqueous erosion are clearly indicated in the rounded forms and broad undulations of the two banks.

Looking back from our isolated crag in the direction of our morning's ride, we saw the green hills break down into the basin of Thomas's Mill, but the disc of meadow lay too deep to be seen. Forests, dense and unbroken, grew to the base of our cliff. The southern sunlight reflected from its polished foliage gave to this whole sea of spiry tops a peculiar golden green, through which we looked down among giant red and purple trunks upon beds of bright mountain flowers. As the afternoon lengthened, the summit rank of peaks glowed warmer and warmer under inclined rays. The granite flushed with rosy brightness between the fields of glittering golden snow. A mild, pearly haziness came gradually to obscure the ordinary cold-blue sky, and, settling into ca?on depths, and among the vast, open corridors of the summit, veiled the savage sharpness of their details.

Wherever the ground opened level before us we gave our horses the rein, and went at a free gallop through the forest; the animals realized that they were going home, and pressed forward with the greatest spirit. A good-sized log across our route seemed to be an object of special amusement to Kaweah, who seized the bits in his teeth, and, dancing up, crouched, and cleared it with a mighty bound, in a manner that was indeed inspiring, yet left one with the impression that once was enough of that sort of thing. Fearing some manner of hostilities with him, I did my very best to quiet Kaweah, and by the end of an hour had gotten him down to a sensible, serious walk. I noticed that he insisted upon following his tracks of the morning's march, and was not contented unless I let him go on the old side of every tree. Thus I became so thoroughly convinced of his faculty to follow the morning's trail that I yielded all control of him, giving myself up to the enjoyment of the dimly lighted wood.

As the sun at last set, the shadow deepened into an impressive gloom; mighty trunks, rising into that dark region of interlocking boughs, only vaguely defined themselves against the twilight sky. We could no longer see our tracks, and the confused rolling topography looked alike whichever way we turned. Kaweah strode on in his confident way, and I was at last confirmed as to his sagacity by passing one after another the objects we had noted in the morning. Thus for a couple of hours we rode in the darkness. At length the rising moon poured down through broken tents of foliage its uncertain silvery light, which had the effect of deepening all the shadows, and lighting up in the strangest manner little local points. Here and there ahead of us the lighted trees rose like pillars of an ancient temple. The forest, which an hour before overpowered us with a sense of its dark enclosure, opened on in distant avenues as far as the eye could reach. As we rode through denser or more open passages the moon sailed into clear, violet sky, or was obscured again by the sharply traced crests of the pines. Ravines, dark and unfathomable, yawned before us, their flanks half in shadow, half in weird, uncertain light. Blocks of white granite gleamed here and there in contrast with the general depth of shade. At last, descending a hill, there shone before us a red light; the horses plunged forward at a gallop, and in a moment we were in camp. After this ride we supped, relishing our mountain fare, and then lay down upon blankets before a camp-fire for the mountaineer's short evening. One keeps awake under stimulus of the sparkling, frosty air for awhile, and then turns in for the night, sleeping till daybreak with a light, sound sleep.

The rancheria was astir when we arrived. It was a mere group of half a dozen smoky hovels, built of pine bark propped upon cones of poles, and arranged in a semi-circle within the edge of the forest, fronting on a brook and meadow. Jerry and I leaned our backs against a large tree, and watched the group.

Buck's shanty was deserted, the body of his wife lying outside upon a blanket, being prepared by two of these funeral hags. Buck himself was quietly stuffing his stomach with a breakfast of venison and acorns, which were handed him at brief intervals by several sympathizing squaws.

Turning to Jerry with a countenance of stolid seriousness, he laconically remarked, "My woman she die! Very bad. To-night, sundown" , "she burn up." Meanwhile the tar-heads rolled Sally the Old over and over, all the while alternately howling the same dismal phrase. Indian relatives and friends, having the general air of animated rag-bags, arrived occasionally, and sat down in silence at a fire a little removed from the other Diggers, never once saluting them.

As we walked back to our camp, I remarked on the stolid, cruel expression of Buck's face, but Jerry, to my surprise, bade me not judge too hastily. He went on to explain that Indians have just as deep and tender attachments, just as much good sense, and, to wind up with, "as much human into 'em, as we edicated white folks."

His own squaw had instilled this into Jerry's naturally sentimental and credulous heart, so I refrained from expressing my convictions concerning Indians, which, I own, were formerly tinged with the most sanguinary Caucasian prejudice.

Jerry came for me by appointment just before sunset, and we walked leisurely across the meadow, and under lengthening pine shadows, to the rancheria. No one was stirring. Buck and the two vicarious mourners sat in his lodge door, uttering low, half-audible groans. In the opening before the line of huts a low pile of dry logs had been carefully laid, upon which, outstretched, and wrapped in a red blanket, lay the dead form of Sally the Old, her face covered in careful folds. Upon her heart were a grass-woven water-bowl and her last pappoose basket.

Just as the sun sank to the horizon, one tar-head stepped out in front of the funeral pile, lifted up both hands, and gazed steadily and silently at the sun. She might have been five minutes in this statuesque position, her face full of strange, half-animal intensity of expression, her eyes glittering, the whole hard figure glowing with a deep bronze reflection. Suddenly she sprang back with the old wild shriek, seized a brand from one of the camp-fires, and lighted the funeral heap, when all the Indians came out, and grouped themselves in little knots around it. Sally the Old's children clung about an old mummy of a squaw, who squatted upon the ground and rocked her body to and fro, making a low cry as of an animal in pain. All the Indians looked serious; a group, who Jerry said were relatives, seemed stupefied with grief. Upon a few faces falling tears glistened in the light of the fire, which now shot up red tongues high in the air, lighting up with weird distinctness every feature of the whole group. Flames slowly lapped over, consuming the blanket, and caught the willow pappoose basket. When Buck saw this the tears streamed from his eyes; he waved his hands eloquently, looking up to heaven, and uttered heartbroken sobs. The pappoose basket crackled for a moment, flashed into a blaze, and was gone. The two old women yelled their sharp death-cry, dancing, posturing, gesticulating toward the fire, and in slow, measured chorus all the Indians intoned in pathetic measure, "Himalaya! Himalaya!" looking first at the mound of fire and then out upon the fading sunset.

It was all indescribably strange: monarch pines standing in solemn ranks far back into the dusky heart of the forest, glowing and brightening with pulsating reflections of firelight; the ring of Indians, crouching, standing fixed like graven images, or swaying mechanically to and fro; each tattered scarlet and white rag of their utterly squalid garments, every expression of barbaric grief or dull stolidity, being brought strongly out by the red, flaming fire.

Buck watched with wet eyes that slow-consuming fire burn to ashes the body of his wife of many years, the mother of his group of poor, frightened children. Not a stoical savage, but a despairing husband, stood before us. I felt him to be human. The body at last sank into a bed of flames which shot up higher than ever with fountains of sparks, and sucked together, hiding the remains forever from view. At this Buck sprang to the front and threw himself at the fire; but the two old women seized each a hand and dragged him back to his children, when he fell into a fit of stupor.

As we walked home Jerry was quick to ask, "Didn't I tell you Injuns has feelings inside of 'em?" I answered promptly that I was convinced; and long after, as I lay awake through many night-hours listening to that shrill death-wail, I felt as if any policy toward the Indians based upon the assumption of their being brutes or devils was nothing short of a blot on this Christian century.

My sleep was light, and sunrise found me dressed, still listening, as under a kind of spell, to the mourners, who, though evidently exhausted, at brief intervals uttered the cry. Alone, and filled with serious reflections, I strolled over to the rancheria, finding every one there up and about his morning duties.

The tar-heads, withdrawn some distance into the forest, sat leaning against a stump, chatting and grinning together, now and then screeching by turns.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet