Part 12

The average section of the old glacier was perhaps six hundred feet thick by half a mile in width. I followed its course from Mount Hoffmann down as far as I could ride, and then, tying my horse only a little way from the brink of the cliff, I continued downward on foot, walking upon the dry stream-bed. I found here and there a deep pit-hole, sometimes twenty feet deep, carved in mid-channel, and often full of water. Just before reaching the cliff verge the stream enters a narrow, sharp cut about one hundred and twenty feet in depth, and probably not over thirty feet wide. The bottom and sides of this granite lip, here and there, are evidently glacier-polished, but the greater part of the scorings have been worn away by the attrition of sands. A peculiar, brilliant polish, which may be seen there to-day, is wholly the result of recent sand friction.

It was noon when I reached the actual lip, and crept with extreme caution down over smooth, rounded granite, between towering walls, to where the Yosemite Fall makes its wonderful leap. Polished rock curved over too dangerously for me to lean out and look down over the cliff-front itself. A stone gate dazzlingly gilded with sunlight formed the frame through which I looked down upon that lovely valley.

Contrast with the strength of yellow rock and severe adamantine sculpture threw over the landscape beyond a strange unreality, a soft, aërial depth of purple tone quite as new to me as it was beautiful beyond description. There, twenty-six hundred feet below, lay meadow and river, oak and pine, and a broad shadow-zone cast by the opposite wall. Over it all, even through the dark sky overhead, there seemed to be poured some absolute color, some purple air, hiding details, and veiling with its soft, amethystine obscurity all that hard, broken roughness of the Sentinel cliffs. In this strange, vacant, stone corridor, this pathway for the great Yosemite torrent, this sounding-gallery of thunderous tumult, it was a strange sensation to stand, looking in vain for a drop of water, listening vainly, too, for the faintest whisper of sound, and I found myself constantly expecting some sign of the returning flood.

From the lip I climbed a high point just to the east, getting a grand view down the cliff, where a broad, purple band defined the Yosemite spray line. There, too, I found unmistakable ice-striæ, showing that the glacier of Mount Hoffmann had actually poured over the brink. At the moments of such discovery, one cannot help restoring in imagination pictures of the past. When we stand by river-bank or meadow of that fair valley, looking up at the torrent falling bright under fulness of light, and lovely in its graceful, wind-swayed airiness, we are apt to feel its enchantment; but how immeasurably grander must it have been when the great, living, moving glacier, with slow, invisible motion, crowded its huge body over the brink, and launched blue ice-blocks down through the foam of the cataract into that gulf of wild rocks and eddying mist!

The one-eyed mule, Bonaparte, I found tied where I had left him; and, as usual, I approached him upon his blind side, able thus to get successfully into my saddle, without danger to life or limb. I could never become attached to the creature, although he carried me faithfully many difficult and some dangerous miles, and for the reason that he made a pretext of his half-blindness to commit excesses, such as crowding me against trees and refusing to follow trails. Realizing how terrible under reinforcement of hereditary transmission the peculiarly mulish traits would have become, one is more than thankful to Nature for depriving this singular hybrid of the capacity of handing them down.

Rather tired, and not a little bruised by untimely collision with trees, I succeeded at last in navigating Bonaparte safely to camp, and turning him over to his fellow, Pumpkinseed.

The nights were already very cold, our beds on frozen ground none of the most comfortable; in fact, enthusiasm had quite as much to do with our content as the blankets or Longhurst’s culinary art, which, enclosed now by the narrow limit of bacon, bread, and beans, failed to produce such dainties as thrice-turned slapjacks or plum-duffs of solemnizing memory.

One more geological trip finished my examination of this side of the great valley. It was a two days’ ramble all over the granite ridges, from the North Dome up to Lake Tenaya, during which I gathered ample evidence that a broad sheet of glacier, partly derived from Mount Hoffmann, and in part from the Mount Watkins Ridge and Cathedral Peak, but mainly from the great Tuolumne glacier, gathered and flowed down into the Yosemite Valley. Where it moved over the cliffs there are well-preserved scarrings. The facts which attest this are open to observation, and seem to me important in making up a statement of past conditions.

We were glad to get back at last to our two little cabins in the valley, although our serio-comic hangers-on, the Diggers, were gone, and the great fall was dry.

A rest of one day proved refreshing enough for us to leave camp and ascend by the Mariposa trail to Meadow Brook, where we made a bivouac, from which Gardiner began his southern boundary line, and I renewed my geological studies east of Inspiration Point.

I always go swiftly by this famous point of view now, feeling somehow that I don’t belong to that army of literary travellers who have here planted themselves and burst into rhetoric. Here all who make California books, down to the last and most sentimental specimen who so much as meditates a letter to his or her local paper, dismount and inflate. If those firs could recite half the droll _mots_ they have listened to, or if I dared tell half the delicious points I treasure, it would sound altogether too amusing among these dry-enough chapters.

I had always felt a desire to examine Bridal Veil cañon and the southwest Cathedral slope. Accordingly, one fine morning I set out alone, and descended through chaparral and over rough _débris_ slopes to the stream, which at this time, unlike the other upland brooks, flowed freely, though with far less volume than in summer. At this altitude only such streams as derive their volume wholly from melting snow dry up in the cold autumnal and winter months; spring-fed brooks hold their own, and rather increase as cold weather advances.

It was a wild gorge down which I tramped, following the stream-bed, often jumping from block to block, or letting myself down by the chaparral boughs that overhung my way. Splendid walls on either side rose steep and high, for the most part bare, but here and there on shelf or crevice bearing clusters of fine conifers, their lower slopes one vast wreck of bowlders and thicket of chaparral plants.

Not without some difficulty I at length got to the brink, and sat down to rest, looking over at the valley, whose meadows were only a thousand feet below; a cool, stirring breeze blew up the Merced Cañon, swinging the lace-like scarf of foam which fell from my feet, and, floating now against the purple cliff, again blew out gracefully to the right or left. While I looked, a gust came roaming round the Cathedral Rocks, impinging against our cliff near the fall, and apparently got in between it and the cliff, carrying the whole column of falling water straight out in a streamer through the air.

I went back to camp by way of the Cathedral Rocks, finding much of interest in the conoidal structure, which is yet perfectly apparent, and unobscured by erosion or the terrible splitting asunder they have suffered. Upon a ridge connecting these rocks with the plateaus just south there were many instructive and delightful points of view, especially the crag just above the Cathedral Spires, from which I overlooked a large part of valley and cliff, with the two sharp, slender minarets of granite close beneath me. That great block forming the plateau between the Yosemite and Illilluette cañons afforded a fine field for studying granite, pine, and many remarkably characteristic views of the gorge below and peaks beyond. From our camp I explored every ravine and climbed each eminence, reaching at last, one fine afternoon, the top of that singular, hemispherical mass, the Sentinel Dome. From this point one sweeps the horizon in all directions. You stand upon the crest of half a globe, whose smooth, white sides, bearing here and there stunted pines, slope away regularly in all directions from your feet. Below, granite masses, blackened here and there with densely clustered forest, stretch through varied undulations toward you. At a little distance from the foot of the Half-Dome, trees hold upon sharp brinks, and precipices plunge off into Yosemite upon one side, and the dark, rocky cañon of Illilluette upon the other. Eastward, soaring into clouds, stands the thin, vertical mass of the Half-Dome.

From this view the snowy peak of the Obelisk, flattened into broad, dome-like outline, rises, shutting out the more distant Sierra summits. This peak, from its peculiar position and thin, tower-like form, offers one of the most tempting summits of the region. From that slender top one might look into the Yosemite, and into that basin of ice and granite between the Merced and Mount Lyell groups. I had longed for it through the last month’s campaign, and now made up my mind, with this inspiring view, to attempt it at all hazards.

A little way to the east, and about a thousand feet below the brink of the Glacier Point, the crags appeared to me particularly tempting; so in the late afternoon I descended, walking over a rough, gritty surface of granite, which gave me secure foothold. Upon the very edge the immense, splintered rocks lay piled one upon another; here a mass jutting out and overhanging upon the edge, and here a huge slab pointed out like a barbette gun. I crawled out upon one of these projecting blocks and rested myself, while studying the view.

From here the one very remarkable object is the Half-Dome. You see it now edgewise and in sharp profile, the upper half of the conoid fronting the north with a sharp, sheer, fracture-face of about two thousand feet vertical. From the top of this a most graceful helmet curve sweeps over to the south, and descends almost perpendicularly into the valley of the Little Yosemite; and here from the foot springs up the block of Mount Broderick,--a single, rough-hewn pyramid, three thousand feet from summit to base, trimmed upon its crest with a few pines, and spreading out its southern base into a precipice, over which plunges the white Nevada torrent. Observation had taught me that a glacier flowed over the Yosemite brink. As I looked over now I could see its shallow valley and the ever-rounded rocks over which it crowded itself and tumbled into the icy valley below. Up the Yosemite gorge, which opened straight before me, I knew that another great glacier had flowed; and also that the valley of the Illilluette and the Little Yosemite had been the bed of rivers of ice; a study, too, of the markings upon the glacier cliff above Hutchings’s house had convinced me that a glacier no less than a thousand feet deep had flowed through the valley, occupying its entire bottom.

It was impossible for me, as I sat perched upon this jutting rock mass, in full view of all the cañons which had led into this wonderful converging system of ice-rivers, not to imagine a picture of the glacier period. Bare or snow-laden cliffs overhung the gulf; streams of ice, here smooth and compacted into a white plain, there riven into innumerable crevasses, or tossed into forms like the waves of a tempest-lashed sea, crawled through all the gorges. Torrents of water and avalanches of rock and snow spouted at intervals all along the cliff walls. Not a tree nor a vestige of life was in sight, except far away upon ridges below, or out upon the dimly expanding plain. Granite and ice and snow, silence broken only by the howling tempest and the crash of falling ice or splintered rock, and a sky deep freighted with cloud and storm,--these were the elements of a period which lasted immeasurably long, and only in comparatively the most recent geological times have given way to the present marvellously changed condition. Nature in her present aspects, as well as in the records of her past, here constantly offers the most vivid and terrible contrasts. Can anything be more wonderfully opposite than that period of leaden sky, gray granite, and desolate stretches of white, and the present, when of the old order we have only left the solid framework of granite, and the indelible inscriptions of glacier work? To-day their burnished pathways are legibly traced with the history of the past. Every ice-stream is represented by a feeble river, every great glacier cascade by a torrent of white foam dashing itself down rugged walls, or spouting from the brinks of upright cliffs. The very avalanche tracks are darkened by clustered woods, and over the level pathway of the great Yosemite glacier itself is spread a park of green, a mosaic of forest, a thread of river.

VIII

A SIERRA STORM

From every commanding eminence around the Yosemite no distant object rises with more inspiring greatness than the Obelisk of Mount Clark. Seen from the west it is a high, isolated peak, having a dome-like outline very much flattened upon its west side, the precipice sinking deeply down to an old glacier ravine. From the north this peak is a slender, single needle, jutting two thousand feet from a rough-hewn pedestal of rocks and snow-fields. Forest-covered heights rise to its base from east and west. To the south it falls into a deep saddle, which rises again, after a level outline of a mile, sweeping up in another noble granite peak. On the north the spur drops abruptly down, overhanging an edge of the great Merced gorge, its base buried beneath an accumulation of morainal matter deposited by ancient Merced glaciers. From the region of Mount Hoffmann, looming in most impressive isolation, its slender needle-like summit had long fired us with ambition; and, having finished my agreeable climb round the Yosemite walls, I concluded to visit the mountain with Cotter, and, if the weather should permit, to attempt a climb. We packed our two mules with a week’s provisions and a single blanket each, and on the tenth of November left our friends at the head-quarter’s camp in Yosemite Valley and rode out upon the Mariposa trail, reaching the plateau by noon. Having passed Meadow Brook, we left the path and bore off in the direction of Mount Clark, spending the afternoon in riding over granite ridges and open stretches of frozen meadow, where the ground was all hard, and the grass entirely cropped off by numerous herds of sheep that had ranged here during the summer. The whole earth was bare, and rang under our mules’ hoofs almost as clearly as the granite itself.

We camped for the night on one of the most eastern affluents of Bridal Veil Creek, and were careful to fill our canteens before the bitter night-chill should freeze it over. By our camp was a pile of pine logs swept together by some former tempest; we lighted them, and were quickly saluted by a magnificent bonfire. The animals were tied within its ring of warmth, and our beds laid where the rain of sparks could not reach. As we were just going to sleep, our mules pricked up their ears and looked into the forest. We sprang to our feet, picked up our pistols, expecting an Indian or a grizzly, but were surprised to see, riding out of the darkness, a lonely mountaineer, mounted upon a little mustang, carrying his long rifle across the saddle-bow. He came directly to our camp-fire, and, without uttering a word, slowly and with great effort swung himself out of his saddle and walked close to the flames, leaving his horse, which remained motionless, where he had reined him in. I saw that the man was nearly frozen to death, and immediately threw my blanket over his shoulders. The water in our camp kettle was still hot, and Cotter made haste to draw a pot of tea, while I broiled a slice of beef and pressed him to eat. He, however, shook his head and maintained a persistent silence, until at length, after turning round and round until I could have thought him done to a turn, in a very feeble, broken voice he ejaculated, “I was pretty near gone in, stranger!” Again I pressed him to drink a cup of tea, but he feebly answered, “Not yet.” After roasting for half an hour, in which I fully expected to see his coat-tail smoke, he sat down and drank about two quarts of tea. This had the effect of thawing him out, and he remembered that his horse was still saddled and very hungry. He told us that neither he nor the animal had had anything to eat for three days, and that he was pushing hopelessly westward, expecting either the giving out of his horse, or death by freezing. We took the saddle from his tired little mustang, spread the saddle-blanket over his back, and from the scanty supply of grain we had brought for our own animals gave him a tolerable supper. It is wonderful how in hours of danger and privation the horse clings to his human friend. Perfectly tame, perfectly trusting, he throws the responsibility of his care and life upon his rider; and it is not the least pathetic among our mountain experiences to see this patient confidence continue until death. Observing that the logs were likely to burn freely all night, we divided our blankets with the mountaineer, and Cotter and I turned in together. In the morning our new friend had entirely recovered from his numb, stupid condition. Recognizing at a glance his whereabouts, and thanking us feelingly for our rough hospitality, he headed toward the Mariposa trail, with quite an affecting good-by.

After breakfast we ourselves mounted and rode up a long, forest-covered spur leading to the summit of a granite divide, which we crossed at a narrow pass between two steep cliffs, and descended its eastern slope in full view of the whole Merced group. This long abrupt descent in front of us led to the Illilluette Creek, and directly opposite, on the other side of the trough-like valley, rose the high sharp summit of Mount Clark. We were all day in crossing and riding up the crest of a sharply curved medial moraine which traced itself from the mountain south of Mount Clark in a long, parabolic curve, dying out at last in the bottom of the Illilluette basin. The moraine was one of the most perfect I have ever seen; its smooth, graded summit rose as regularly as a railway embankment, and seemed to be formed altogether of irregular bowlders piled securely together and cemented by a thick deposit of granitic glacier-dust. Late in the afternoon we had reached its head, where the two converging glaciers of Mount Clark and Mount Kyle had joined, clasping a rugged promontory of granite. To our left, in a depression of the forest-covered basin, lay a little patch of meadow wholly surrounded by dense groups of alpine trees, which grew in clusters of five and six, apparently from one root. A little stream from the Obelisk snows fell in a series of shallow cascades by the meadow’s margin. We jumped across the brook and went into camp, tethering the mules close by us. One of the great charms of high mountain camps is their very domestic nature. Your animals are picketed close by the kitchen, your beds are between the two, and the water and the wood are always in most comfortable apposition.

For the first time in many months a mild, moist wind sprang up from the south, and with it came slowly creeping over the sky a dull, leaden bank of ominous-looking cloud. Since April we had had no storm. The perpetually cloudless sky had banished all thought, almost memory, of foul weather; but winter tempests had already held off remarkably, and we knew that at any moment they might set in, and in twenty-four hours render the plateaus impassable. It was with some anxiety that I closed my eyes that night, and, sleeping lightly, often awoke as a freshening wind moved the pines. At dawn we were up, and observed that a dark, heavy mass of storm-cloud covered the whole sky, and had settled down over the Obelisk, wrapping even the snow-fields at its base in gray folds. The entire peak was lost, except now and then, when the torn vapors parted for a few moments and disclosed its sharp summit, whitened by new-fallen snow. A strange moan filled the air. The winds howled pitilessly over the rocks, and swept in deafening blasts through the pines. It was my duty to saddle up directly and flee for the Yosemite; but I am naturally an optimist, a sort of geological Micawber, so I dodged my duty, and determined to give the weather every opportunity for a clear-off. Accordingly, we remained in camp all day, studying the minerals of the granite as the thickly strewn bowlders gave us material. At nightfall I climbed a little rise back of our meadow, and looked out over the basin of Illilluette and up in the direction of the Obelisk. Now and then the parting clouds opened a glimpse of the mountain, and occasionally an unusual blast of wind blew away the deeply settled vapors from the cañon to westward; but each time they closed in more threateningly, and before I descended to camp the whole land was obscured in the cloud which settled densely down.

The mules had made themselves comfortable with a repast of rich mountain-grasses, which, though slightly frosted, still retained much of their original juice and nutriment. We ourselves made a deep inroad on the supply of provisions, and, after chatting awhile by the firelight, went to bed, taking the precaution to pile our effects carefully together, covering them with an india-rubber blanket. Our bivouac was in the middle of a cluster of firs, quite well protected overhead, but open to the sudden gusts which blew roughly hither and thither. By nine o’clock the wind died away altogether, and in a few moments a thick cloud of snow was falling. We had gone to bed together, pulled the blankets as a cover over our heads, and in a few moments fell into a heavy sleep. Once or twice in the night I woke with a slight sense of suffocation, and cautiously lifted the blanket over my head, but each time found it growing heavier and heavier with a freight of snow. In the morning we awoke quite early, and, pushing back the blanket, found that we had been covered by about a foot and a half of snow. The poor mules had approached us to the limit of their rope, and stood within a few feet of our beds, anxiously waiting our first signs of life.