Part 14

Believing that we must still be below the bridge, we walked rapidly up the bank until at last we found it, and came quickly to Clark’s. We pounded upon the cabin door, and waked up our friends, who received us with joy, and set about cooking us a supper.

It was two o’clock when we arrived, and by three we all went off again to our bunks. My anxiety about Gardiner and Clark prevented my sleeping. Every few minutes I went to the door.

Before dawn it had cleared again, and remained fair till the next noon, when the two made their appearance. No sooner were they quietly housed than the storm burst again with renewed strength, howling among the forest trees grandly. Snow drifted heavily all the afternoon, and through the night it still fell, reaching an average depth of about two feet by the following morning.

We were up early, and packed upon the animals our instruments, note-books, and personal effects, leaving all the blankets and heavy luggage to be gotten out in the following spring. We toiled slowly and heavily up Chowchilla trail. The branches of the great pines and firs were overloaded with snow, which now and then fell in small avalanches upon our heads. Here and there an old bough gave way under its weight, and fell with a soft thud into the snow. We took turns breaking trail, Napoleon, the one-eyed mule, distinguishing himself greatly by following its intricate crooks, while the bravest of us, by turns, held to his tail. There is something deeply humiliating in this process. All the domineering qualities of mankind vanished before the quick, subtle instinct of that noble animal, the mule, and his superior strength came out in magnificent style. With a sublime scorn of his former master, he started ahead, dragging me proudly after him. I had sometimes thrashed that mule with unsympathetic violence, and I fancied it was something very like poetic justice thus submissively to follow in his wake.

Midday found us upon the Chowchilla summit, following a trail deeply buried and often obliterated, and undiscoverable but for our long-eared leader. As we descended the west slope the snow grew more and more moist, less deep, and gradually turned into rain. An hour’s tramp found us upon bare ground, under the fiercely driving rain, which quickly soaked us to the bone. The streams, as we descended, were found to be more and more swollen, until at last it required some nerve to ford the little brooklets which the mule had drunk dry on our upward journey. The earth was thoroughly softened, and here and there the trail was filled with brimming brooks, which rapidly gullied it out.

A more drowned and bedraggled set of fellows never walked out upon the wagon-road and turned toward Mariposa. Streams of water flowed from every fold of our garments, our soaked hats clung to our cheeks, the baggage was a mass of pulp, and the mules smelled violently of wet hide. Fortunately, our note-books, carefully strapped in oil-cloth, so far resisted wetting. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we reached Dulong’s house, and were surprised to see the water flowing over the top of the bridge. In ordinary times a dry arroyo traverses this farm, and runs under a bridge in front of the house. Clark, our only mounted man, rode out, as he supposed, upon the bridge; but unfortunately it was gone, and he and his horse plunged splendidly into the stream. They came to the surface, Clark with a look of intense astonishment on his face, and the mare sputtering and striking out wildly for the other side. Being a strong swimmer, she reached the bank, climbed out, and Clark politely invited us to follow. The one-eyed Napoleon was brought to the brink and induced to plunge in by an application of fence-rails _a tergo_, his cyclopean organ piloting him safely across, when he was quickly followed by the other mules. We watched the load of instruments with some anxiety, and were not reassured when their heavy weight bore the mule quite under; but she climbed successfully out, and we ourselves, half swimming, half floundering, managed to cross.

A little way farther we came upon another stream rushing violently across the road, sweeping down logs and sections of fence. Here Clark dismounted, and we drove the whole train in. Three animals got safely over, but the instrument mule was swept down stream and badly snagged, lying upon one side with his head under water.

Cotter and Gardiner and Clark ran up stream and got across upon a log. I made a dash for the snagged mule, and by strong swimming managed to catch one of his feet, and then his tail, and worked myself toward the shore. It was something of a task to hold his head out of the water, but I was quickly joined by the others, and we managed to drag him out by the head and tail. There he lay upon the bank on his side, tired of life, utterly refusing to get upon his feet, the most abominable specimen of inertia and indifference. While I was pricking him vigorously with a tripod, the ground caved under my feet and I quickly sank. Cotter, who was standing close by, seized me by the cape of my soldier’s overcoat, and landed me as carefully as he would a fish. As we marched down the road, unconsciously keeping step, the sound of our boots had quite a symphonic effect; they were full of water, and with soft, melodious slushing acted as a calmer upon our spirits.

The road in some places was cut out many feet deep, and we were obliged to climb upon the wooded banks, and make laborious _détours_. At last we reached a branch of the Chowchilla, which was pouring in a flood between a man’s house and his barn. Here we formed a line, a mule between each two men. Our line was swept frightfully down stream, but the leader gained his feet, and we came out safe and dripping upon _terra firma_ on the other side. A mile farther we came upon the main Chowchilla, which was running a perfect flood; from being a mere brooklet it had swollen to a considerable river, with waves five and six feet high sweeping down its centre. We formed our line and attempted the passage, but were thrown back. It would have been madness to try it again, and we turned sorrowfully back to the last ranch. Cotter and I piloted the animals over to the barn, and, upon returning, threw a rope to our friends upon the other side, and were drawn through the swift water.

In the ranch-house we found two bachelors, typical California partners, who were quietly partaking of their supper of bacon, fried onions, Japanese tea, and biscuits, which, like “Harry York’s,” had too much saleratus. We stood upon their threshold awhile and dripped, quite a rill descending over the two steps, trickling down the door-yard as a new fork of the Chowchilla.

We asked for supper and shelter, but were met with such a gruff, inhospitable reply that we lost all sense of modesty, and walked in with all our moisture. We stretched a rope across the middle of the sitting-room before a huge fire in an open chimney, then, stripping ourselves to the buff, we hung up our steaming clothes upon the line, and turned solemnly round and round before the fire, drying our persons.

In the meanwhile our inhospitable landlords made the best of the situation, and proceeded to achieve more onions and more saleratus biscuit for our entertainment. Upon our departure in the morning the generous rancher charged us first-class hotel prices.

The flood had utterly disappeared, and we passed over the Chowchilla with surprise and dry shoes.

At Mariposa we parted from Clark, and devoted two whole days to struggling through the mud of San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco, where we arrived, wet and exhausted, just in time to get on board the New York steamer.

On the morning of the twelfth day out Gardiner and I seated ourselves under the grateful shadow of palm-trees, a bewitching black-and-tan sister thrumming her guitar while the chocolate for our breakfast boiled. The slumberous haze of the tropics hung over Lake Nicaragua; but high above its indistinct, pearly vale rose the smooth cone of the volcano of Omatepec, robed in a cover of pale emerald green. Warmth, repose, the verdure of eternal spring, the poetical whisper of palms, the heavy odor of the tropical blooms, banished the grand, cold fury of the Sierra, which had left a permanent chill in our bones.

IX

MERCED RAMBLINGS

1866

Delightful oaks cast protecting shadows over our camp on the 1st of June, 1866. Just beyond a little cook-fire where Hoover was preparing his mind and pan for an omelet stood Mrs. Fremont’s Mariposa cottage, with doors and windows wide open, still keeping up its air of hospitable invitation, though now deserted and fallen into decay. A little farther on, through an opening, a few clustered roofs and chimneys of the Bear Valley village showed their distant red-brown tint among heavy masses of green. Eastward swelled up a great ridge, upon whose grassy slopes were rough, serpentine outcrops,--groups of pines, and oak-groves with pale green foliage and clean white bark. Under the roots of this famous Mount Bullion have been mined those gold veins whose treasure enriched so few, whose promise allured so many.

As I altogether distrust my ability to speak of this region without sooner or later alluding to a certain discovery of some scientific value which I once made here, I deem it wise frankly to tell the story and discharge my mind of it at once, and if possible forever.

In the winter of 1863 I came to Bear Valley as the sole occupant of a stage-coach. The Sierras were quite cloud-hidden, and desolation such as drought has never before or since been able to make reigned in dreary monotony over all the plains from Stockton to Hornitas.

Ordinarily solitude is with me only a happy synonym for content; but throughout that ride I was preyed upon by self-reproach, and in an aggravated manner. The paleontologist of our survey, my senior in rank and experience, had just said of me, rather in sorrow than in unkindness, yet with unwonted severity, “I believe that fellow had rather sit on a peak all day, and stare at those snow-mountains, than find a fossil in the metamorphic Sierra”; and, in spite of me, all that weary ride his judgment rang in my ear.

Can it be? I asked myself; has a student of geology so far forgotten his devotion to science? Am I really fallen to the level of a mere nature-lover? Later, when evening approached, and our wheels began to rumble over upturned edges of Sierra slate, every jolt seemed aimed at me, every thin, sharp outcrop appeared risen up to preach a sermon on my friend’s text.

I re-dedicated myself to geology, and was framing a resolution to delve for that greatly important but missing link of evidence, the fossil which should clear up an old unsolved riddle of upheaval age, when over to eastward a fervid, crimson light smote the vapor-bank and cleared a bright pathway through to the peaks, and on to a pale sea-green sky. Through this gateway of rolling gold and red cloud the summits seemed infinitely high and far, their stone and snow hung in the sky with lucent delicacy of hue, brilliant as gems yet soft as air,--a mosaic of amethyst and opal transfigured with passionate light, as gloriously above words as beyond art. Obsolete shell-fishes in the metamorphic were promptly forgotten, and during those lingering moments, while peak after peak flushed and faded back into recesses of the heavens, I forgot what paleontological unworthiness was loading me down, becoming finally quite jolly of heart. But for many days thereafter I did search and hope, leaving no stone unturned, and usually going so far as to break them open. Indeed, my third hammer and I were losing temper together, when one noon I was tired and sat down to rest and lunch in the bottom of Hell’s Hollow, a cañon whose profound uninterestingness is quite beyond portrayal. Shut in by great, monotonous slopes and innumerable spurs, each the exact fac-simile of the other; with no distance, no faintest suggestion of a snow-peak, only a lofty chaparral ridge sweeping around, cutting off all eastern lookout; with a few disordered bowlders tumbled pell-mell into the bed of a feeble brooklet of bitter water,--it seemed to me the place of places for a fossil. Here was nadir, the snow-capped zenith of my heart banished even from sight. A swallow of tepid alkaline water, with which I crowned the frugal and appropriate lunch, burned my throat, and completed the misery of the occasion.

Jagged outcrops of slate cut through vulgar gold-dirt at my feet. Picking up my hammer to turn homeward, I noticed in the rock an object about the size and shape of a small cigar. It was the fossil, the object for which science had searched and yearned and despaired! There he reclined comfortably upon his side, half-bedded in luxuriously fine-grained argillaceous material,--a plump, pampered belemnites (if it is belemnites), whom the terrible ordeal of metamorphism had spared. I knelt and observed the radiating structure as well as the characteristic central cavity, and assured myself it was beyond doubt he. The age of the gold-belt was discovered! I was at pains to chip my victim out whole, and when he chose to break in two was easily consoled, reflecting that he would do as well gummed together.

I knew this mollusk perfectly by sight, could remember how he looked on half a dozen plates of fossils, but I failed exactly to recollect his name. It troubled me that I could come so near uttering without ever precisely hitting upon it. In ten or fifteen minutes I judged it full time for my joy to begin.

Down the perspective of years I could see before me spectacled wise men of some scientific society, and one who pronounced my obituary, ending thus: “In summing up the character and labors of this fallen follower of science, let it never be forgotten that he discovered the belemnites;” and perhaps, I mused, they will put over me a slab of fossil raindrops, those eternally embalmed tears of nature.

But all this came and went without the longed-for elation. There was no doubt I was not so happy as I thought I should be.

Once in after years I met an aged German paleontologist, fresh from his fatherland, where through threescore years and ten his soul had fattened on Solenhofen limestone and effete shells from many and wide-spread strata.

We were introduced.

“Ach!” he said, with a kindle of enthusiasm, “I have pleasure you to meet, when it is you which the cephalopoda discovered has.”

Then turning to one who enacted the part of Ganymede, he remarked, “Zwei lager.”

Now, with freed mind, I should say something of the foot-hills about our camp as they looked in June. Once before, the reader may remember, I pictured their autumn garb.

It has become a fixed habit with me to climb Mount Bullion whenever I get a chance. My winter Sundays were many times spent there in a peace and repose which Bear Valley village did not afford; for that hamlet gave itself up, after the Saturday night’s sleep, to a day of hellish jocularity. The town passed through a period of horse-racing, noisy, quarrelsome drinking, and disorderly service of Satan; then an hour in which the Spaniard loved and “treated” the “Americano.” Later the Americano kicked the “damned Greaser” out of town. Manly forms slept serenely under steps, and the few “gentlemen of the old school” steadied themselves against the bar-room door-posts, and in ingenious language told of the good old pandemonium of 1849.

Thus Mount Bullion came to mean for me a Sabbath retreat over which heaven arched pure and blue, silent hours (marked by the slow sun) passing sacredly by in presence of nature and of God.

So now in June I climbed on a Sunday morning to my old retreat, found the same stone seat, with leaning oak-tree back, and wide, low canopy of boughs. A little down to the left, welling among tufts of grass and waving tulips, is the spring which Mrs. Fremont found for her camp-ground. North and south for miles extends our ridge in gently rising or falling outline, its top broadly round, and for the most part an open oak-grove with grass carpet and mountain flowers in wayward loveliness of growth. West, you overlook a wide panorama. Oak and pine mottled foot-hills, with rusty groundwork and cloudings of green, wander down in rolling lines to the ripe plain; beyond are plains, then coast ranges, rising in peaks, or curved down in passes, through which gray banks of fog drift in and vanish before the hot air of the plains. East, the Sierra slope is rent and gashed in a wilderness of cañons, yawning deep and savage. Miles of chaparral tangle in dense growth over walls and spurs, covering with kindly olive-green the staring red of riven mountain-side and gashed earth. Beyond this swells up the more refined plateau and hill country made of granite and trimmed with pine, bold domes rising above the green cover; and there the sharp, terrible front of El Capitan, guarding Yosemite and looking down into its purple gulf. Beyond, again, are the peaks, and among them one looms sharpest. It is that Obelisk from which the great storm drove Cotter and me in 1864. We were now bound to push there as soon as grass should grow among the upper cañons.

The air around my Sunday mountain in June is dry, bland, and fragrant; a full sunlight ripens it to a perfect temperature, giving you at once stimulus and rest. You sleep in it without fear of dew, and no excess of hot or cold breaks up the even flow of balmy delight. You see the wild tulips open, and watch wind-ripples course over slopes of thick-standing grass-blades. Birds, so rare on plains or pine-hills, here sing you their fullest, and enjoy with you the soft, white light, or come to see you in your chosen shadow and bathe in your spring.

Mountain oaks, less wonderful than great, straight pines, but altogether domestic in their generous way of reaching out low, long boughs, roofing in spots of shade, are the only trees on the Pacific slope which seem to me at all allied to men; and these quiet foot-hill summits, these islands of modest, lovely verdure floating in an ocean of sunlight, lifted enough above San Joaquin plains to reach pure, high air and thrill your blood and brain with mountain oxygen, are yet far enough below the rugged wildness of pine and ice and rock to leave you in peace, and not forever challenge you to combat. They are almost the only places in the Sierras impressing me as rightly fitted for human company. I cannot find in wholesale vineyards and ranches dotted along the Sierra foot anything which savors of the eternal indigenous perfume of home. They are scenes of speculation and thrift, of immense enterprise and comfort, with no end of fences and square miles of grain, with here and there astounding specimens of modern upholstery, to say nothing of pianos with elaborate legs and always discordant keys; but they never comfort the soul with that air of sacred household reserve, of simple human poetry, which elsewhere greets you under plainer roofs, and broods over your days and nights familiarly.

Here on these still summits the oaks lock their arms and gather in groves around open slopes of natural park, and you are at home. A cottage or a castle would seem in keeping, nor would the savage gorges and snow-capped Sierras overcome the sober kindliness of these affectionate trees. It is almost as hard now, as I write, to turn my back on Mount Bullion and descend to camp again, as it was that afternoon in 1866.

Evening and supper were at hand, Hoover having achieved a repast of rabbit-pie, with salad from the Italian garden near at hand. It added no little to my peace that two obese squaws from the neighboring rancheria had come and squatted in silence on either side of our camp-fire, adding their statuesque sobriety and fire-flushed bronze to the dusky, druidical scene.

To be welcomed at White and Hatch’s next evening was reward for our dusty ride, and over the next day’s familiar trail we hurried to Clark’s, there again finding friends who took us by the hand. Another day’s end found us within the Yosemite, and there for a week we walked and rode, studied and looked, revisiting all our old points, lingering hours here and half-days there, to complete within our minds the conception of this place. My chief has written so fully in his charming Yosemite book of all main facts and details that I would not, if I could, rehearse them here.

What sentiment, what idea, does this wonder-valley leave upon the earnest observer? What impression does it leave upon his heart?

From some up-surging crag upon its brink you look out over wide expanse of granite swells, upon whose solid surface the firs climb and cluster, and afar on the sky line only darken together in one deep green cover. Upward heave the eastern ridges; above them looms a white rank of peaks. Into this plateau is rent a chasm; the fresh-splintered granite falls down, down, thousands of feet in sheer, blank faces or giant crags broken in cleft and stair, gorge and bluff, down till they sink under that winding ribbon of park with its flash of river among sunlit grass, its darkness, where, within shadows of jutting wall, cloud-like gather the pine companies, or, in summer opening, stand oak and cottonwood, casting together their lengthening shadow over meadow and pool. The falls, like torrents of snow, pour in white lines over purple precipice, or, as the wind wills, float and drift in vanishing film of airy lacework.

Two leading ideas are wrought here with a force hardly to be seen elsewhere. First, the titanic power, the awful stress, which has rent this solid table-land of granite in twain; secondly, the magical faculty displayed by vegetation in redeeming the aspect of wreck and masking a vast geological tragedy behind draperies of fresh and living green. I can never cease marvelling how all this terrible crush and sundering is made fair, even lovely, by meadow, by wandering groves, and by those climbing files of pine which thread every gorge and camp in armies over every brink; nor can I ever banish from memory another gorge and fall, that of the Shoshone in Idaho, a sketch of which may help the reader to see more vividly those peculiarities of color and sentiment that make Yosemite so unique.

The Snake or Lewis’s Fork of the Columbia River drains an oval basin, the extent of whose longer axis measures about four hundred miles westward from the base of the Rocky Mountains across Idaho and into the middle of Oregon, and whose breadth, in the direction of the meridian, averages about seventy miles. Irregular chains of mountains bound it in every direction, piling up in a few places to an elevation of nine thousand feet. The surface of this basin is unbroken by any considerable peak. Here and there, knobs, belonging to the earlier geological formations, rise above its level; and, in a few instances, dome-like mounds of volcanic rock are lifted from the expanse. It has an inclination from east to west, and a quite perceptible sag along the middle line.