 CHAPTER XIV THE WILD SHEEP The Wild Sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the Sierra. Possessed of keen sight and scent and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag, up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave, warm life and developing from generation to generation in perfect strength and beauty. Nearly all the lofty mountain chains of the globe are inhabited by wild sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet. They are classified by different naturalists, under from five to ten distinct species or varieties, the best known being the Burrell of the Himalaya, Ovis Burrell, Blythe. The Argali, the large wild sheep of Central and Northern Asia, Ovis Ammon, Lin, or Caprovis Argali. The Corsican Muflon, Ovis Musamon, Pell. The Aodad of the Mountains of Northern Africa, Amitragis Trajalafis, and the Rocky Mountain Bighorn, Ovis Montana. To this last-named species belongs the wild sheep of the Sierra. Its range, according to the late Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution, extends, quote, from the region of Upper Missouri and Yellowstone to the Rocky Mountains and the high grounds adjacent to them on the eastern slope, and as far south as the Rio Grande. Westward, it extends to the coast ranges of Washington, Oregon, and California, and follows the highlands some distance into Mexico. And, quote, Footnote 1, Pacific Railroad Survey, Volume 8, Page 678. Throughout the vast region bounded on the east by the Wasatch Mountains, and on the west by the Sierra, there are more than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups treading north and south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which, according to my own observations, is or has been inhabited by this species. Compared with the Argali, which, considering its size and the vast extent of its range, is probably the most important of all the wild sheep, our species is about the same size, but the horns are less twisted and less divergent. The most important characteristics are, however, essentially the same, some of the best naturalists maintaining that the two are only varied forms of one species. In accordance with this view, Kuver, conjectures that since central Asia seems to be the region where sheep first appeared, and from which it has been distributed, the Argali may have been distributed over this continent from Asia by crossing the Bering Strait on ice. This conjecture is not so ill-founded as at first sight would appear, for the Strait is only about fifty miles wide, is interrupted by three islands, and is jammed with ice nearly every winter. Furthermore, the Argali is abundant on the mountain's adjacent to the Strait at East Cape, where it is well known to the Chukchi hunters and where I have seen many of their horns. On account of the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been derived from the few wild species, but the whole question is involved in obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very ancient period, the remains of a small breed differing from any now known, having been found in the famous Swiss lake dwellings. Compared with the best known domestic breeds, we find that our wild species is much larger, and instead of an all-wool garment, wears a thick overcoat of hair, like that of the deer, and an undercovering of fine wool. The hair, though rather coarse, is comfortably soft and spongy, and lies smooth as if carefully tended with a comb and brush. The predominant color during most of the year is brownish gray, varying to bluish gray in the autumn. The belly and a large conspicuous patch on the buttocks are white, and the tail, which is very short, like that of a deer, is black with a yellowish border. The wool is white and grows in beautiful spirals down out of sight among the shining hair, like delicate climbing vines among stalks of corn. The horns of the male are of an immense size, measuring in their greater diameter from five to six and a half inches, and from two and a half to three feet in length around the curve. They are yellowish white in color and ridged transversely, like those of the domestic ram. Their cross-section near the base is somewhat triangular in outline and flattened towards the tip. Rising boldly from the top of the head, they curve gently backward and outward, then forward and outward, until about three fourths of a circle is described, and until the flattened blunt tips are about two feet or two and a half feet apart. Those of the female are flattened throughout their entire length, are less curved than those of the male, and much smaller, measuring less than a foot along the curve. A ram in you that I obtain near the Modak lava beds from the northeast of Mount Shasta, measured as follows. Height at shoulders, ram three foot six inches, u three foot zero inches. Girth around the shoulders, ram three foot eleven inches, u three foot three and three quarters inches. Length from the nose to the root of the tail, ram five foot ten and one quarters inches, u four foot three and one half inches. Length of ears, ram four and three quarters inches, u five inches. Length of tail, ram four and a half inches, u five inches. Length of horns around curve, ram two foot nine inches, u eleven and a half inches. Distance across from tip to tip of horns, ram two foot five and one half inches, u not given. Circumference of horns at base, ram one foot four inches, u six inches. The measurements of a male obtained in the Rocky Mountains by Audubon vary but little as compared with the above. The weight of his specimen was three hundred and forty four pounds, footnote two, which is perhaps about an average for full grown males. The females are about a third lighter. Footnote two, Audubon and Bachman's quadrupeds of North America. Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above, we may observe that the domestic sheep, in a general way, is expressionless, like a dull bundle of something only half alive. While the wild is as elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable strength and character. The tame is timid, the wild is bold. The tame is always more or less ruffled and dirty, while the wild is as smooth and clean as the flowers of his mountain pastures. The earliest mention that I have been able to find of the wild sheep in America is by Father Piccolo, a Catholic missionary at Monterey, in the year 1797, who after describing it oddly enough as, quote, a kind of deer with a sheep-like head and about as large as a calf one or two years old, end quote, naturally hurries on to remark, quote, I have eaten of these beasts, their flesh is very tender and delicious, end quote. Mackenzie, in his northern travels, heard the species spoken of by the Indians as white buffaloes. And Lewis and Clark tell us that in a time of great scarcity on the headwaters of the Missouri they saw plenty of wild sheep, but they were, quote, too shy to be shot. A few of the more energetic of the Paute Indians hunt the wild sheep every season among the more accessible sections of the High Sierra, in the neighborhood of passes where, from having been pursued, they have become extremely wary. But in the rugged wilderness of peaks and canyons, where the foaming tributaries of the San Joaquin and the King's rivers take their rise, they fear no hunter, save the wolf, and are more guileless and approachable than their tame kindred. While engaged in the work of exploring high regions where they delight to roam, I have been greatly interested in studying their habits. In the months of November and December, and probably during a considerable portion of midwinter, they all flock together, male and female, old and young. I once found a complete band of this kind numbering upward of fifty, which, on being alarmed, went bounding away across a jagged lava bed at admirable speed, led by a majestic old ram, with the lambs safe in the middle of the flock. In spring and summer, the full-grown rams form separate bands of from three to twenty, and are usually found feeding along the edges of glacier meadows, or resting among the castle-like crags of the high summits. And whether quietly feeding or scaling the wild cliffs, their noble forms and the power and beauty of their movements never fail to strike the beholder with lively admiration. Their resting places seem to be chosen with reference to sunshine and a wide outlook, and most of all to safety. Their feeding grounds are among the most beautiful of the wild gardens, bright with daisies and gensions, and mats of purple brisannthus lying hidden away on rocky headlands and canyon sides, where sunshine is abundant, or down in the shady glacier valleys along the banks of the streams and lakes, where the plushy sod is greenest. Here they feast all summer, the happy wanderers, perhaps relishing the beauty as well as the taste of the lovely flora from which they feed. illustration snowbound on Mount Shasta This illustration is a sketch of a small herd of mountain sheep resting comfortably on a snow-covered cliff with one standing prominently and surveying the landscape. In contrast, a small box in the corner shows a man huddled in a blanket almost on top of his very small campfire. Return to text. When the winter storms set in, loading their highland pastures with snow, then, like the birds, they gather and go to lower climates, usually descending the eastern flank of the range to the rough volcanic table-lands and treeless ranges of the great basin adjacent to the Sierra. They never make haste, however, and seem to have no dread of storms, many of the strongest only going down leisurely to bear windswept ridges to feed on bushes and dry bunch grass, and then returning up into the snow. Once I was snowbound on Mount Shasta for three days, a little below the timber-line. It was a dark and stormy time, well calculated to test the skill and endurance of mountaineers. The snow-laden gale drove on night and day in hissing, blinding floods. And when at length it began to abate, I found that a small band of wild sheep had weathered the storm in the lee of a clump of dwarf pines a few yards above my storm-nest, where the snow was eight or ten feet deep. I was warm back of a rock with blankets, bread, and fire. My brave companions lay in the snow without food and with only the partial shelter of the short trees, yet they made no sign of suffering or faint heartedness. In the months of May and June, the wild sheep bring forth their young in solitary and almost inaccessible cracks far above the nesting rocks of the eagle. I have frequently come upon the beds of the ewes and lambs at an elevation of from twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet above sea level. These beds are simply oval-shaped hollows pawed out among loose disintegrating rock-chips and sand, upon some sunny spot commanding a good outlook, and partially sheltered from the winds that sweep those lofty peaks almost without intermission. Such is the cradle of the little mountaineer, aloft in the very sky, rocked in storms, curtained in clouds, sleeping in thin icy air. But wrapped in his hairy coat, and nourished by a strong warm mother, defended from the talons of the eagle and the teeth of the sly coyote, the bony lamb grows a pace. He soon learns to nibble the tufted rock grasses and leaves of the white spearsie. His horns began to shoot, and before summer is done he is strong and agile, and goes forth with the flock, watched by the same divine love that tends the more helpless human lamb in its cradle by the fireside. Nothing is more commonly remarked by noisy, dusty trail travellers in the Sierra than the want of animal life. No songbirds, no deer, no squirrels, no game of any kind, they say. But if such could only go away quietly into the wilderness, sauntering a foot, and alone with natural deliberation, they would soon learn that these mountain mansions are not without inhabitants, many of whom, confiding and gentle, would not try to shun their acquaintance. Illustration, Head of the Merino Ram Domestic This illustration is a pencil or charcoal sketch of a Merino Ram in a photographic style. The ram has a fine coat of thick curly fur, spiraling horns, a whiskery muzzle, and a docile, incurious expression in its black eyes. Return to text. In the fall of 1873 I was tracing the south fork of the San Joaquin up its wild canyon to its farthest glacier fountains. It was the season of alpine Indian summer. The sun beamed lovingly, the squirrels were nutting in the pine trees, butterflies hovered about the last of the golden rods, the willow and maple thickets were yellow, the meadows brown, and the whole sunny, mellow landscape glowed like a countenance in the deepest and sweetest repose. On my way over the glacier polished rocks along the river I came to an expanded portion of the canyon, about two miles long and half a mile wide, which formed a level park enclosed with picturesque granite walls like those of Yosemite Valley. Down through the middle of it poured the beautiful river shining and spangling in the golden light, yellow groves on its banks, and strips of brown meadow. While the whole park was a stir with wildlife, some of which even the noisiest and least observing of travellers must have seen had they been with me. Dear, with their supple, well-grown fawns bounded from thicket to thicket as I advanced, grouse kept rising from the brown grass with a great whirring of wings, and a lighting on the lower branches of the pines and poplars allowed a near approach as if curious to see me. Further on a broad-shouldered wildcat showed himself, coming out of a grove and crossing the river on a flood-jam of logs, halting for a moment to look back. The bird-like tamillas frisked about my feet everywhere among the pine needles and seedy grass tufts. Cranes waded the shallows of the river-bends. The king-fisher rattled from perch to perch. The blessed oozle sang amid the spray of every cascade. Where may a lonely wanderer find a more interesting family of mountain-dwellers, earth-born companions and fellow-mortals? It was afternoon when I joined them, and the glorious landscape began to fade in the gloaming before I awoke from their enchantment. Then I sawed a campground on the river-bank, made a cup full of tea, and lay down to sleep on a smooth place among the yellow leaves of an aspen grove. Next day I discovered yet grander landscapes and grander life. Following the river over huge swelling rock bosses through a majestic canyon and past innumerable cascades, the scenery in general became gradually wilder and more alpine. The sugar-pine and silver furs gave place to the hardier cedar and hemlock spruce. The canyon walls became more rugged and bare, and gensions and arctic daisies became more abundant in the gardens and strips of meadow along the streams. Toward the middle of the afternoon I came to another valley, strikingly wild and original in all its features, and perhaps never before touched by human foot. As regards area of level-bottom land, it is one of the very smallest of the Yosemite type, but its walls are sublime, rising to a height of from two thousand to four thousand feet above the river. At the head of the valley, the main canyon forks, as is found to be the case in all Yosemites. The formation of this one is due chiefly to the action of two great glaciers whose fountains lay to the eastward on the flanks of Mount Humphrey and Emerson, and a cluster of nameless peaks farther south. Illustration, Head of Rocky Mountain Wild Sheep. This illustration is a pencil drawing of a wild ram's head, framed in a circle within a square. The illustration is dominated by the huge wide horns of the ram, far larger than his head. The ram's coat is flat and slightly wavy, and he regards the viewer directly with an alert expression showing a little of the whites of his protrubent eyes. Return to text. The gray, boulder-chafed river was singing loudly through the valley, but above its massy roar I heard the booming of a waterfall, which drew me eagerly on. And just as I emerged from the tangled groves and briar thickets at the head of the valley, the main fork of the river came in sight, falling fresh from its glacier fountains in a snowy cascade between granite walls two thousand feet high. The steep incline down which the glad waters thundered seemed to bar all further progress. It was not long, however, before I discovered a crooked seam in the rock, by which I was enabled to climb to the edge of a terrace that crosses the canyon, and divides the cataract nearly in the middle. Here I sat down to take breath, and make some entries in my notebook, taking advantage at the same time of my elevated position above the trees to gaze back over the valley into the heart of the noble landscape, little knowing the while what neighbors were near. After spending a few minutes in this way, I chanced to look across the fall, and there stood three sheep quietly observing me. Never did the sudden appearance of a mountain or fall or human friend more forcibly seize and rivet my attention. Anxiety to observe accurately held me perfectly still. Eagerly I marked the flowing undulations of their firm braided muscles, their strong legs, ears, eyes, heads, their graceful rounded necks, the color of their hair, and the bold, upsweeping curves of their noble horns. When they moved I watched every gesture, while they, in no wise disconcerted, either by my attention or by the tumultuous roar of the water, advanced deliberately alongside the rapids between the two divisions of the cataract, turning now and then to look at me. Presently they came to a steep, ice-burnished eclivity, which they ascended by a succession of quick, short, stiff-legged leaps reaching the top without a struggle. This was the most startling feat of mountaineering I had ever witnessed, and considering only the mechanics of the thing, my astonishment could hardly have been greater had they displayed wings and taken to flight. Sure-footed mules on such ground would have fallen and rolled like loose and boulders. Many a time, where the slopes are far lower, I have been compelled to take off my shoes and stockings, tie them to my belt, and creep bare-footed with the utmost caution. No wonder, then, that I watched the progress of these animal-mountaineers with keen sympathy and exalted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their invention, construction, and keeping. A few minutes later I caught sight of a dozen more in one band near the foot of the upper fall. They were standing on the same side of the river with me, only twenty-five or thirty yards away, looking as unworn and perfect as if created on the spot. It appeared by their tracks, which I had seen in the Little Yosemite, and by their present position, that when I came up the canyon they were all feeding together down in the valley, and that in their haste to reach high ground, where they could look about them to ascertain the nature of the strange disturbance, they were divided, three ascending on one side the river, the rest on the other. The main band, headed by an experienced chief, now began to cross the wild rapids between the two divisions of the cascade. This was another exciting feat, for among all the varied experiences of mountaineers the crossing of boisterous rock-dash torrents is found to be one of the most trying to the nerves. Yet these fine fellows walked fearlessly to the brink and jumped from boulder to boulder, holding themselves in easy poise above the whirling, confusing current, as if they were doing nothing extraordinary. Illustration Crossing a Canyon Stream This illustration is a sketch of a herd of mountain sheep crossing a stream. In the foreground a half-dozen sheep stand on one rocky bank, with a dominant sheep standing proudly and alertly, a little above them in the center of the drawing. In the background black silhouettes of sheep may be seen crossing a white torrent from rock to rock. Tall cliffs, clouds, and snowcaps in the distance give the picture a majestic feel. Return to text. In the immediate foreground of this rare picture there was a fold of ice-burnished granite, traversed by a few bold lines in which rock ferns and tufts of bryanthus were growing. The gray canyon walls on the sides nobly sculptured and adorned with brown cedars and pines, the lofty peaks in the distance, and in the middle ground the snowy fall, the voice and soul of the landscape. Fringing bushes beating time to its thunder tones, the brave sheep in front of it, their gray forms slightly obscured in the spray, yet standing out in good heavy relief against the close white water, with their huge horns rising like the upturned roots of dead pine trees, while the evening sunbeams streaming up the canyon colored all the picture a rosy purple and made it glorious. After crossing the river, the dauntless climbers, led by their chief, at once began to scale the canyon wall, turning now right, now left, in long, single file, keeping well apart out of one another's way, and leaping in regular succession from crag to crag, now ascending slippery dome curves, now walking leisurely along the edges of precipices, stopping at times to gaze down at me from some flat-topped rock, with heads held as slant, as if curious to learn what I thought about it, or whether I was likely to follow them. After reaching the top of the wall, which at this place is somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand feet high, they were still visible against the sky as they lingered, looking down in groups of twos or threes. Throughout the entire ascent, they did not make a single awkward step, or an unsuccessful effort of any kind. I have frequently seen tame sheep and mountains jump upon a sloping rock surface, hold on tremulously for a few seconds, and fall back, baffled, in a resolute. But in the most trying situations, where the slightest want or inaccuracy would have been fatal, these always seemed to move in comfortable reliance on their strength and skill, the limits of which they have never appeared to know. Moreover, each one of the flock, while following the guidance of the most experienced, yet climbed with intelligent independence as a perfect individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or be compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required to form an individual, just as numerous flowerettes are required to make one complete sunflower. Those shepherds, who in summer drive their flocks to the mountain pastures, and while watching them night and day have seen them frightened by bears and storms and scattered like wind-driven chaff, will in some measure be able to appreciate the self-reliance and strength and noble individuality of nature's sheep. Like the alp-climbing ibex of Europe, our mountaineer is said to plunge headlong down the faces of sheer precipices, and a light on his big horns. I know only two hunters who claim to have actually witnessed this feat. I never was so fortunate. They describe the act as a diving head foremost. The horns are so large at the base that they cover the upper portion of the head down nearly to a level with the eyes, and the skull is exceedingly strong. I struck an old bleached specimen on Mount Ritter a dozen blows with my ice axe without breaking it. Such skulls would not fracture very readily by the wildest rock-diving, but other bones could hardly be expected to hold together in such a performance, and the mechanical difficulties in the way of controlling their movements after striking upon an irregular surface are in themselves sufficient to show this boulder-like method of progression to be impossible, even in the absence of all other evidence on the subject. Moreover, the ewes follow wherever the rams may lead, although their horns are mere spikes. I have found many pairs of the horns of the old rams considerably battered, doubtless a result of fighting. I was particularly interested in this question after witnessing the performance of this San Joaquin band upon the glaciated rocks at the foot of the falls. And as soon as I procured specimens and examined their feet, all the mystery disappeared. The secret, considered in connection with exceptionally strong muscles, is simply this, the wide posterior portion of the bottom of the foot, instead of wearing down and becoming flat and hard, like the feet of tame sheep and horses, bulges out in a soft rubber-like pad or cushion, which not only grips and holds well on smooth rocks, but fits into small cavities, and down upon or against slight protrusions. Even the hardest portions of the edge of the hoof are comparatively soft and elastic. Furthermore, the toes admit an extraordinary amount of both lateral and vertical movement, allowing the foot to accommodate itself still more perfectly to the irregularities of rock surfaces, while at the same time increasing the gripping power. At the base of sheep rock, one of the winter strongholds of the Shasta flocks, there lives a stock-raiser who has had the advantage of observing the movements of wild sheep every winter, and in the course of a conversation with him on the subject of their diving habits, he pointed to the front of a lava headland about a hundred and fifty feet high, which is only eight or ten degrees out of the perpendicular. There, said he, I followed a band of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder and expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them. I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the fence of the wall near the top, and comes to an end where they couldn't get away without falling and being killed, but they jumped off, and landed all right, as if that were the regular thing with them. What, said I, jumped a hundred and fifty feet perpendicular, did you see them do it? No, he replied, I didn't see them going down, for I was behind them, but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found their tracks, where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They just sailed right off, and landed on their feet right side up. That is the kind of animal they is, beats anything else that goes on four legs. Illustration, Wild Sheep Jumping Over a Precipice This illustration is a tall rectangular sketch that shows, from a distance, a herd of wild sheep jumping one at a time head first off a very tall steep cliff, high over the tops of the conifers at the base of the picture, and framed by mountain peaks and sky. Return to text. On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to another portion of this same cliff where it is still higher, and on being followed they were seen jumping down in perfect order one behind another by two men who happened to be chopping, where they had a fair view of them, and could watch their progress from top to bottom of the precipices. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent without evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and controlling the velocity of their half-falling, half-leaping movements by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the bottom, when they sailed off into the free air and alighted on their feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they appeared to be diving. It appears therefore that the methods of this wild mountaineering become clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted with the rocks and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon them. The Modak and Paute Indians are, or rather have been, the most successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the caves of Mount Shasta and the Modak lava beds where the Indians had been feasting in stormy weather, and also in the canyons of the Sierra opposite Owens Valley, while the heavy obsidian arrowheads found on some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going on. In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the topography of their hunting grounds, and with the habits and instincts of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found small nest-like enclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely run to the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind, they were shot at short range. Illustration Indians Hunting Wild Sheep This illustration is a pencil sketch showing two Native Americans on a small cliff above a mountain stream. One is clad in a fringe loincloth, and has upon his head a hood with protrusions that resemble small sheep horns, and both hold rifles. Next to the men is a slain mountain sheep, with some blood seeping onto the rock. Both men regard in the distance a herd of mountain sheep running up the bank of the river. Faint in the distance, on another ridge, is a line of structures that may be other men. Return to Text Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on the Wasock Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular spot, favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the sheep, they built a high-walled corral with long guiding wings diverging from the gateway, and into this enclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of course required, more indeed than they could usually muster, counting in squaws, children, and all. They were compelled, therefore, to build rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridgetops, which they wished to prevent the sheep from crossing. And without discrediting the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective. For with a few live Indians moving about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little distance from men by anyone not in on the secret. The whole ridgetop then seemed to be alive with hunters. The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of the sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat, Apoceras Montana, rich, which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He too is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing the wildest summits and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged, and much less dignified and demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns are only about five or six inches in length, and the long white hair with which he is covered obscures the expression of his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the Sierra, though possibly a few flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a comparatively short time ago. The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see but little of each other, the sheet being restricted mostly to the dry inland mountains, goat or chamois to the wet, snowy, glacier-laden mountains of the northwest coast of the continent in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. Probably more than two hundred dwell on the icy volcanic cone of Mount Rainier, and while I was exploring the glaciers of Alaska, I saw flocks of these admirable mountaineers nearly every day, and often followed their trails through the mazes of bewildering crevices in which they are excellent guides. Three species of deer are found in California, the black-tailed, white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned, Service Columbianus, is by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during the summer on high glacier meadows and along the edge of the timber line. But being a forest animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young and dense thickets, its seldom visits the wild sheep in its higher homes. The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter by the sheep while feeding along the edges of the sage planes and bare volcanic hills to the east of this era. So also is the mule deer, which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern region. The white-tailed species belongs to the coast ranges. Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but highlanders as a class have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther, slipping and crouching among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the antelope and deer, but seldom crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of the sheep. Neither can the bears be regarded as enemies, for though they seek to vary their everyday diet of nuts and berries by an occasional meal of mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and helpless flocks. Eagles and coyotes no doubt capture an unprotected lamb at times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow. But these cases are little more than accidents. So also a few perish in long-continued snowstorms, though in all my mountaineering I have not found more than five or six that seem to have met their fate in this way. A little band of three were discovered snowbound in Bloody Canyon a few years ago, and were killed with an axe by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the range in winter. Man is the most dangerous enemy of all, but even from him our brave mountain dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but being fertile and accessible they were required for human pastures. So also are many of the feeding grounds of the deer, hill, valley, forest, and meadow. But it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of the sheep. And when we consider how rapidly entire species of noble animals such as the elk, moose, and buffalo are being pushed to the very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness should rejoice with me in the rocky security of Ovis Montana, the bravest of all the Sierra mountaineers. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of The Mountains of California This reading by Kara Schellenberg The Mountains of California by John Muir Chapter 15 In the Sierra Foothills Murphy's Camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County at an elevation of 2400 feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center of a rough gravelly region rich in gold. Granites, slates, lavas, limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, oriferous gravels, remnants of dead fire rivers and dead water rivers, are developed here side by side, within a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before the student like a book, while the people and the region beyond the camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and variety. When I discovered this curious place I was tracing the channels of the ancient preglacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according to the poets, go on forever, but those of the Sierra are young as yet and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea, while at least one generation of them have died and vanished together with most of the basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their history is a series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked with gravel, and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are known as the Dead Rivers of California, and the gravel deposited in them is comprehensively called the Blue Lead. In some places the channels of the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly so, as those of the ancient rivers. But in general there is little correspondence between them, the entire drainage having been changed or rather made new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have become hollows, and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary channels, with their loads of oriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right angles to the present drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far beneath them, presenting impressive illustrations of the magnitude of the changes accomplished since those ancient streams were annihilated. The last volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the Sierra landscapes seems to have come on over all the range almost simultaneously, like the glacial period. Notwithstanding lavas of different age occur together in many places, indicating numerous periods of activity in the Sierra fire fountains. The most important of the ancient river channels in this region is a section that extends from the south side of the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the canyon of the Stanislaus. But on account of its depth below the general surface of the present valleys the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be inferred from the fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to the depth of two hundred feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus canyon available as a dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method, and although a long expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme might still prove profitable, for there is millions in it. The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known to miners. Even the superficial plasters of the present streams have derived much of their gold from them. According to all accounts the Murphy plasters have been very rich, terrific rich as they say here. The hills have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and valley torn to pieces and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and desperate energy hard to understand. Still any kind of effort making is better than inaction, and there is something sublime in seeing men working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object with glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a most eventful chapter of life on these calaveris rocks. But most of the pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy villages like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. We have no industry left now, they told me, and no men, everybody and everything hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers, out of the game, a thin scattering of poor, dilapidated cusses compared with what we used to be in the grand old gold days. We were giants then, and you can look around here and see our tracks. But although these lingering pioneers are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters, and they manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as yet. The sketches of Bret Hart, Hayes and Miller have not exhausted this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible in one and the same character, harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavour. Men who twenty years ago would not cease their shoveling to save their lives now play in the streets with children. Their long, macabre-like waiting after the exhaustion of the plasters has brought on an exaggerated form of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly discussing the quantity of tail required for a boy's kite, and one greybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the information that he was a boy. Always a boy and dash a man who was not a boy inside however ancient outside. Mines, morals, politics, the immorality of the soul, etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees and in saloons, the time for each being governed apparently by the temperature. Contact with nature and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking had made them all, to some extent, collectors, and like wood rats they had gathered all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins and now required me to examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting specimens. One of them offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning before setting out that I might not like him. Because, said he, people say I am eccentric, I notice everything, and gather beetles and snakes and anything that's queer, and so some don't like me and call me eccentric. I'm always trying to find out things. Now there's a weed. The Indians eat it for greens. What do you call those long-bodied flies with big heads? Dragonflies, I suggested. Well, their jaws work sidewise instead of up and down, and grasshoppers' jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the same species. I always notice everything like that, and just because I do they say I'm eccentric, etc. Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old goldfield, the good people had much to say about the marvellous beauty of Cave City Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and finding a guide who knew the way to the mouth of it, I set out from Murphy the next morning. The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally developed along the western flank of the Sierra, from the McLeod River on the north to the Koei on the south, a distance of over four hundred miles at an elevation of from two thousand to seven thousand feet above the sea. Besides this regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by long imposing ranks of sea caves, rugged and variable in architecture, carved in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of wave dashing, and innumerable lava caves, great and small, originating in the unequal flowing and hardening of the lava sheets in which they occur, fine illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc lava beds, and around the base of Icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may also notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the margins of the plains, and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates and granites, where bears and other mountaineers find shelter during the fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of the Sierra, as far as it has been laid bare to observation, is about as solid and caveless as a boulder. Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulce and coral, or up among the clouds on mountaintops, or in balloons, or even to creep-like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common everyday beauty. Our way from Murphy's to the cave lay across a series of picturesque, moory ridges in the Chaparral region between the brown foothills and the forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and there into a kind of rocky foam on the higher summits, and sinking into delightful bosky hollows empowered with vines. The day was a fine specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The sea breeze that usually comes up the foothills at this season, with cooling on its wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath leafy shade, or made short-languid flights in search of food, all save the majestic buzzard. With broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air unwirly from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like a butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardour, no heat or cold may abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering, unwirried as sunbeams. This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture, but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have almost wholly disappeared. Here also once roamed the mastodon and elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the river gravels and beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were riding slowly over bank and bray, basking in the unfeaverish sun-heat, we witnessed the upheaval of a new mountain range, a sierra of clouds abounding in landscapes as truly sublime and beautiful, if only we have a mind to think so and eyes to see, as the more ancient rocky sierra beneath it, with its forests and waterfalls, reminding us that, as there is a lower world of caves, so also there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy cumuli developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with visible motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher and higher in long, massive ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a picturesque valley and shadowy cave between. While the dark furs and pines of the upper benches of the sierra were projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of outline, these cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly as they were developed, leaving no detritus, but they were not a whit less real or interesting on this account. The more enduring hills over which we rode were vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a difference which is great or small according to the standpoint from which it is contemplated. At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads, embusomed in wild brush and vines, wherever the recession of the hills left patches of arable ground. These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grapevines at odd times, while their main business is mining and prospecting. In spite of all the natural beauty of these dell cabins they can hardly be called homes. They are only a better kind of camp, gladly abandoned, whenever the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is thrust upon them by exuberant nature, apart from which they are only a few logs and boards, rudely jointed, and without either ceiling or floor, a rough fireplace with corresponding cooking utensils, a shelf bed, and stool. The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting pans, picks, sluice boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the trend of their owner's hard lives. The ride from Murphy's to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we lingered among quartz ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long afternoon. At length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small house came in sight set in a thicket of fig trees at the base of a limestone hill. That, said my guide, pointing to the house, is Cave City, and the cave is in that gray hill. Arriving at the one house of this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken men who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide was then in the cave with a party of ladies. —And must we wait until he returns? we asked. —No, that was unnecessary. We might take candles and go into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to time, so as to be found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over the rocks or into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a trail from the house we were led around the base of the hill to the mouth of the cave, a small inconspicuous archway, mossy around the edges and shaped like the door of a water-usel's nest, with no appreciable hint or advertisement of the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within. Lighting our candles, which seemed to have no illuminating power in the thick darkness, we groped our way onward as best we could along narrow lanes and alleys, from chamber to chamber, around rustic columns and heaps of fallen rocks, stopping to rest now and then in particularly beautiful places. Fairy alcoves furnished with admirable variety of shelves and tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these we seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in springtime. Then we would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right and left into upper chambers ranged above one another three or four stories high, floors, ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable crystalline forms. After thus wandering exploringly and alone for a mile or so, fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the approach of the guide and his party, from whom, when they came up, we received a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half concealed in a side recess amongst the lagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping, crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn how the strange, sunless scenery of the underworld had impressed them. Ah! it's nice! it's splendid! they all replied, and echoed. The bridal chamber back here is just glorious. This morning we came down from the calaveris big tree grove, and the trees are nothing to it. After making this curious comparison they hastened sunward, the guide promising to join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we were to wait for him. This is a charming little lake-lit of unknown depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers, rimmed with meadows and snow, and reflecting sublime mountains. Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the hill, up and down, right and left, from chamber to chamber, more and more magnificent, all a glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty. We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a dancing-hall, another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit, and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone where a priest had said mass. Mass saying is not so generally developed in connection with natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara, dancing in the famous Bauer Cave above Coulterville, and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the making of an easy way to the top of it. It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of nature, and the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty results, such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic energy. Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building was going on in the dark with incessant activity. The archways and ceilings were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like inverted groves of leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal bud of a pine tree. The only appreciable sounds were the dripping and tinkling of water falling into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal floors. In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing folds, deeply placated like stiff silken drapery. In others, straight lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to size and tone in a regularly graduated system, like the strings of a harp, with musical tones corresponding there too, and on these stone harps we played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in faintest cadence. The music of fairyland. Here we lingered and reveled, rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much splendour in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains, buildings ever in process of construction yet ever finished, developing from perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance, every particle visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music of the spheres in a region regarded as the abode of eternal stillness and death. The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by wild beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and hiding places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more remarkable because, notwithstanding the darkness and oozing water, there is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them. When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked brighter, and we felt our faith in nature's beauty strengthened and saw more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal above, beneath, on land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness. Chapter 16 Part 1 From the Mountains of California. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Mountains of California by John Muir. Chapter 16 Part 1 When California was wild, it was one sweet bee garden throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the way across the snowy Sierra to the ocean. Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness, through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands, fronting the sea, over valley and plain, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piney slopes of the mountains, throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timberline, bee flowers bloomed in lavish abundance. Here they grew more or less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size. There, in broad, flowing folds, hundreds of miles in length, zones of polliny forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of preanthus and clover, and so on. Certain species blooming somewhere all the year round. But, of late years, plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire, and banishing many species of the best honey plants to rocky cliffs and fence corners. While, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given no adequate compensation, at least in kind. Only acres of alfalfa for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the Dells, and small square orchards and orange groves for broad mountain belts of chaparral. The great central plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey bloom. So marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than four hundred miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gillias, nemophilus, castellias, and innumerable compostae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine percent of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honey-full corollus, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed in the living light like a sunset sky. One sheet of purple and gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it, from the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their main tributaries sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections, fringed with trees. Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom land, countersunk between the general level, and wider towards the foothills, where magnificent oaks from three to eight feet in diameter cast grateful masses of shade over the open prairie-like levels. And close along the water's edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of wild rose and bramble bushes, and a great variety of climbing vines, wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and alders, and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons. Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in mid-summer, when the blackberries were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to feast. Men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains often joined by the farmers of the neighborhood who gathered this wild fruit with commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and their vineyards were laden with grapes. But though these luxuriant, shaggy riverbeds were thus distinct from the smooth treeless plain, they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains. When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of all the bee pastures of the state, it seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along the foothills at my feet. Descending the eastern slopes of the coast range through beds of gillias and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland, I at length waited out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered, not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about ankle deep next foothills, knee deep or more, five or six miles out. Here were Bahia, Madia, Madaria, Borealia, Chrysopsis, Corethrogyne, Grindelia, etc., growing in close social congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finally with the purples of Clarkia, Orthrocarpus, and Oynthera, whose delicate petals were drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling glow. Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season, most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up simultaneously and bloom together at about the same height above the ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller facilityus, penstemons, and groups of Salvia carduacea, the king of the mints. Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed against my feet at every step and closed over them as if I were waiting in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of sight in the Polynesad, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower air with their monotonous hum, monotonous yet forever fresh and sweet as every day's sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight elevation, and then bounding away with the unrivaled grace of motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track, nor indeed any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth, whatever. The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious botanical beds I had, oftentimes unawaking, I would find several new species leaning over me and looking me full in the face so that my studies would begin before rising. About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin River between the miles of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I had reached the Sierra Foothills, most of the vegetation had gone to seed and become as dry as hay. All the seasons of the Great Plain are warm or temperate, and bee-flowers are never wholly wanting. But the grand springtime, the annual resurrection, is governed by the rains, which usually set in about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the seeds that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh, as if they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life. The general brown and purple of the ground and the dead vegetation of the preceding year give place to the green of mosses and liverworts and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which lasts until May. The rainy season is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant cloudiness and rain, perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the winter and spring of 1868 through 69, every day of which I spent out of doors, on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced Rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th. January had only six rainy days, that is days on which rain fell, February 3, March 5, April 3, and May 3, completing the so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary rainstorm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds, which in settled weather come from the northeast, veer round into the opposite direction. The sky fills gradually and evenly with one general cloud, from which the rain falls steadily, often for days in succession, at the temperature of about 45 degrees or 50 degrees. More than 75 percent of all the rain of this season came from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm from the northwest fell on March 21st. A massive round-browed cloud came, swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing majesty, its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of the sun, while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a cataract, beating down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry water-courses as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the so-called cloud bursts. But in less than half an hour not a trace of the heavy mountain-like cloud structure was left in the sky, and the bees were on the wing as if nothing more gratefully refreshing could have been sent them. By the end of January four species of plants were in flower and five or six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of life, but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to effect greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads of the flowers of raid composite. This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new plants bloomed every day, the air became more tuneful with humming wings and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing their benumbed limbs and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before their doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs or weaving new ones. In March the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color. Claytonia, Calendrinia, a large white gillia, and two nemophilus were in bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to bend in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade. In April, plant life as a whole reached its greatest height, and the plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred plush of purple and golden corollas. By the end of this month most of the species had ripened their seeds, but, on Decade, still seemed to be in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucrous and whirls of chaffy scales on the composite. In May the bees found in flower only a few deep-set lilacious plants and aragonums. June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep, a winter of dry heat, followed in October by a second outburst of bloom at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation, crinkle and turn to dust beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, herenzonia vergata, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent, like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of three thousand flowers, five-eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant. Both its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible at a distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The ray and disc flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the texture of the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden pansies. The prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the southeast, so that, in facing northwestward, we have the flowers looking us in the face. In my estimation, this little plant, the last born of the brilliant host of composite that glorify the plain, is the most interesting of all. It remains in flower until November, uniting with two or three species of wiry ergonums, which continue the floral chain around December to the spring flowers of January. Thus, although the main bloom and honey season is only about three months long, the floral circle, however thin, around some of the hot, rainless months, is never completely broken. How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this honey garden, nobody knows. Probably ever since the main body of the present flora gained possession of the land toward the close of the glacial period. The first brown honeybees brought to California are said to have arrived in San Francisco in March 1853. A beekeeper by the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of twelve swarms, from someone at Aspenwall who had brought them from New York. When landed at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they finally dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San Jose. The little immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the Santa Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The owner was killed shortly afterward, and, unsettling up his estate, two of the swarms were sold at auction for a hundred and five and one hundred and ten dollars, respectively. Other importations were made, from time to time, by way of the isthmus, and though great pains were taken to ensure success, about one-half usually died on the way. Four swarms were brought safely across the plains in 1859, the hives being placed in the rear end of a wagon, which was stopped in the afternoon to allow the bees to fly and feed in the floweriest places that were within reach until dark when the hives were closed. In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York, a single swarm was brought over from San Jose and let fly in the great central plain. Bee culture, however, has never gained much attention here, notwithstanding the extraordinary abundance of honey bloom and the high price of honey during the early years. A few hives are found here and there among settlers who chance to have learned something about the business before coming to the state. But sheep, cattle, grain, and fruit raising are the chief industries as they require less skill and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In 1856, honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars a pound. Twelve years later, the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868, I sat down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep shears at a ranch on the San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer. In all my walks, however, I have never come upon a regular bee ranch in the Central Valley like those so common and so skillfully managed in the southern counties of the state. The few pounds of honey and wax produced are consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners have a weary, perplexing time of it and seeking suitable homes. Most of them find their ways to the foothills of the mountains, or to the trees that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came upon an old coon trap hidden among some tall grass near the edge of the river upon which he sat down to rest. Shortly afterward his attention was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying excitedly about his head when he discovered that he was sitting upon their hive, which was found to contain more than two hundred pounds of honey. Out in the broad swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes, or stiff, wiry grass only slightly protected from the weather, and endanger every spring of being carried away by floods. They have the advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture accessible only to themselves. The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from that we have sketched about twenty years ago when the gold plasters had been pretty thoroughly exhausted. The attention of fortune seekers, not home seekers, was in great part turned away from the mines to the fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless wild agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box cabin built. Then a gangplow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies worth ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if the land had been under cultivation for years, tough perennial roots being almost wholly absent. Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden huts, as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening circles. But the arch-destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks of hooved locusts sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling down every rod that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole plain were a cottage garden plot without a fence. But, notwithstanding these destroyers, a thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering honey. The greater portion is still covered every season with a repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals, and many of them are not relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to develop and mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The ground is therefore kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as a suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness. The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble valley will be tilled, like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the mountains now flowing to the sea will be distributed to every acre, giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose, there will be left few, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished primeval flora. In the meantime, the pure waste going on, the wanton destruction of the innocents, is a sad sight to see, and the sun may well be pitted in being compelled to look on. The bee pastures of the coast ranges last longer, and are more varied than those of the Great Plain, on account of differences of soil and climate, moisture and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of 4,000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur in great abundance and variety in the wooded areas, while open parks flooded with sunshine and hill-girt valleys lying at different elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess the required conditions for the development of species and families of plants widely varied. Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with a rich and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the plain itself, as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into flowing folds, with all its flowers in place only toned down a little as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the hill-lupines, ments, and gillias. The colors show finely, when thus held to view on the slopes, patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white, blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance like a map colored in sections. Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten feet high. Mancinita and seonithus of several species, mixed with romness, serses, picoringia, cherry, abalanchir, and adenostoma, and shaggy interlocking thickets, and many species of hosakia, clover, monardalia, castileia, etc., in the openings. The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes, enclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a great perfusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state. But these are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation. Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool deep shade of these majestic trees, the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants, oxalis, trientalis, erythronium, fritillaria, smillax, and other shade-lovers. But all along the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill slopes looking to the south, where the giant trees stand back and give the ground to the small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood walls of these little bee acres, there is usually a fringe of chestnut oak, laurel and madronio, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful tree and a great favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest specimens are 7 or 8 feet thick and about 50 feet high, the bark red and chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large and glossy, like those of Magnolia, Grandi, Florida, while the flowers are yellowish white and urn shaped in well proportioned panicles from 5 to 10 inches long. When in full bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener guess that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going on. How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn gardens of the woods, long vistas opening to the sea, sun shines sifting and pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous shifting mosaic as the light waves in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying breeze, shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees mingling together in springtime harmony and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand, thousand fountains. In these balmy dissolving days, when the deep heartbeats of nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything alike, common business and friends are happily forgotten and even the natural honey work of bees and the care of birds for their young and mothers for their children seem slightly out of place. To the northward in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole hillsides are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of bee bloom in the spring, and the western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massy thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied by Manzanita. While the valleys, with their varying moisture and shade, yield a rich variety of smaller honeyflowers such as mentha, lycopus, micromeria, Audi birchia, trichostema, and other mints, with vicinium, wild strawberry, geranium, chalets, and goldenrod, and in the cool glens along the stream banks, where the shade of trees is not too deep, spiraria, dogwood, hetero mellis, and calicanthus, and many species of rubus form interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in bloom for months. Though the coast region was first to be invaded and settled by white men, it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of the other main divisions, chiefly no doubt, because of the unevenness of the surface, and because it is owned and protected instead of lying exposed to the flocks of the wandering sheepmen. These remarks apply more particularly to the north half of the coast. Farther south there is less moisture, less forest shade, and the honey flora is less varied. The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the bee lands of the state, and the most regularly varied in its subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the central plain to the alpine summits. The foothill region is about as dry and sunful from the end of May until the settling end of the winter rains as the plain. There are no shady forests, no damp glens at all like those lying at the same elevations in the coast mountains. The social composite of the plains with a few species formed the bulk of the herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and sabine pines, and interrupted by patches of sanithus and buckeye. Above this, and just below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral, composed almost exclusively of adenostima fascisculata, a bush belonging to the Rose family, from five to eight feet high with small round leaves and fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white flowers and panicles on the ends of the upper branches. Where it occurs, at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close and penetrable growth, scarcely broken for miles. Up through the forest region to a height of about 9,000 feet above sea level, there are ragged patches of monsonita and five or six species of sanithus called deerbrush or california lilac. These are the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of this year. Chamabatia foliolosa, a little shrub about a foot high with flowers like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines and seems to be a favorite with the bees, while pines themselves furnish unlimited quantities of pollen and honeydew. The product of a single tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be sufficient for the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams, there is a rich growth of lilies, larchspurs, pedicolaris, castellius, and clover. The alpine region contains the flowery glacier meadows and countless small gardens in all sorts of places, full of potentilia of several species, spragheria, ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of briantis and the charming cassiope, covered with sweet bells. Even the tops of the mountains are blessed with flowers, dwarf flocks, polemonium, rives, hossia, etc. I have seen wild bees and butterflies feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many, however, that go up these dangerous heights never come down again. Some, undoubtedly, perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom, from swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands. The honey bee is now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up to an elevation of 8,000 feet above sea level. At this height they flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even higher than this, several bee trees have been cut which contained over 200 pounds of honey. The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain pastures as on those of the Great Plain, but in many places it has been more complete, owing to the more freeable character of the soil and its sloping position. The slant, digging, and down-raking action of hooves on the steeper slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the tender plants from year to year, without allowing them time to mature their seeds. The shrubs, too, are badly bitten, especially the various species of Cianothus. Fortunately, neither sheep nor cattle care to feed on the Manzanita, Spireia, or Adenostoma, and these fine honey bushes are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and inaccessible to be trodden underfoot. Also, the canyon walls and gorges, which form so considerable a part of the area of the range, while inaccessible to domestic sheep, are well-frenched with honey shrubs, and contain thousands of lovely bee gardens, lying hid in narrow side canyons and recesses fenced with avalanche tellises, and on the top of flat, projecting headlands, where only bees would think to look for them. But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape the feed and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means of running fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for the purpose of burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush with a view to improving the pastures, and making more open ways for the flocks. These destructive sheep fires sweep through nearly the entire forest belt of the range from one extremity to the other, consuming not only the underbrush, but the young trees and seedlings on which the permanence of the forests depends. Thus setting in motion a long train of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and beekeepers. The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable extent, neither has it accomplished much in the foothills. Thousands of bee ranches might be established along the margin of the plain and up to a height of 4,000 feet, wherever water could be obtained. The climate at this elevation admits of the making of permanent homes, and by moving the hives to higher pastures as the lower pass out of bloom, the annual yield of honey would be nearly doubled. The foothill pastures, as we have seen, fail about the end of May. Those of the shaperow belt and lower forests are in full bloom in June. Those of the upper and alpine region in July, August and September. In Scotland, after the best of the lowland blooms past, the bees are carried in carts to the highlands and set free on the heather hills. In France, too, and in Poland, they are carried from pasture to pasture among orchards and fields in the same way, and among the rivers and barges to collect the honey of the delightful vegetation of the banks. In Egypt, they are taken far up the Nile and floated slowly home again, gathering the honey harvest of the various fields on the way, timing their movements in accord with the seasons. Where similar methods pursued in California, the productive season would last nearly all the year. End of Section 16A. Read for LibriVox by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California. Spring, 2007.