 section 11 of my first summer in the Sierra. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. My first summer in the Sierra by John Muir read by Adrian Pretzelis. August 4. It seems strange to sleep in a poultry hotel chamber after the spacious magnificence and luxury of the starry sky and silver fur grove. Bad farewell to my friend and the general. The old soldier was very kind and an interesting talker. He told me long stories of the Florida Seminole War in which he took part and invited me to visit him in Omaha. Calling Carlo I scrambled home through the Indian Canyon Gate rejoicing, pitying the poor professor and general, bounded by clocks, almanacs, orders, duties, etc., and compelled to dwell with lowland care and dust and din, where nature is covered and her voice smothered, while the poor, insignificant wanderer enjoys the freedom and glory of God's wilderness. Apart from the human interest of my visit today I greatly enjoyed Yosemite, which I had visited only once before, having spent eight days last spring in rambling amid its rocks and waters. Wherever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God's wild fields, we find more than we seek. Descending four thousand feet in a few hours we enter a new world. Climate, plants, sounds, inhabitants, and scenery all new or changed. Near camp the gold-cup oak forms sheets of chaparral, on top of which we may make our beds. Going down the Indian Canyon we observe this little bush changing by regular gradations to a large bush, a small tree, and then larger, until on the rocky talises near the bottom of the valley, we find it developed into a broad, wide-spreading, gnarled, picturesque tree from four to eight feet in diameter and forty or fifty feet high. Enumerable are the forms of water displayed. Every gliding reach, cascade, and fall has characters of its own. Had a good view of the vernal and Nevada, two of the main falls of the valley, less than a mile apart, and offering striking differences in voice, form, color, etc. The vernal, four hundred feet high and about seventy-five or eighty feet wide, drops smoothly over a round-lipped precipice, and forms a superb apron of embroidery, green and white, slightly folded and fluted, maintaining this form nearly to the bottom, where it is suddenly veiled in quick-flying billows of spray and mist, in which the afternoon sunbeams play with ravishing beauty of rainbow colors. The Nevada is white from its first appearance as it leaps out into the freedom of the air. At the head it presents a twisted appearance by an over-folding of the current from striking on the side of its channel just before the first free outbounding leap is made. About two-thirds of the way down, the hurrying throng of comet-shaped masses glance on an inclined part of the face of the precipice, and are beaten into yet whiter foam, greatly expanded and sent bounding outward, making an indescribably glorious show, especially when the afternoon sunshine is pouring into it. In this fall, one of the most wonderful in the world, the water does not seem to be under the dominion of ordinary laws, but rather as if it were a living creature full of the strength of the mountains and their huge, wild joy. From beneath the heavy, throbbing blasts of spray, the broken river is seen emerging in ragged, boulder-chafed strips. These are speedily gathered into a roaring torrent, showing that the young river is still gloriously alive. On it goes shouting, roaring, exulting in its strength, passes through a gorge with sublime display of energy, then suddenly expands on a gently inclined pavement, down which it rushes in thin sheets and folds of lacework into a quiet pool, emerald pool, as it is called, a stopping place, a period separating two grand sentences. Resting here long enough to part with its foam bells and gray mixtures of air, it glides quietly to the verge of the vernal precipice in a broad sheet and makes its new display in the vernal fall. Then more rapids and rock tossings down the canyon, shaded by live oak, Douglas spruce, fir, maple, and dogwood. It receives the illouette tributary and makes a long sweep out into the level sun filled valley to join the other streams which, like itself, have danced and sung their way down from snowy heights to form the main masade, the river of mercy. But of this there is no end, and life, when one thinks of it, is so short. Never mind, one day in the midst of these divine glories is well worth living and toiling and starving for. Before parting with Professor Butler, he gave me a book, and I gave him one of my pencil sketches for his little son Henry, who is a favourite of mine. He used to make many visits to my room when I was a student. Never shall I forget his patriotic speeches for the Union mounted on a tall stool when he was only six years old. It seems so strange that visitors to Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes were bandaged and their ears stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were looking down, as if wholly unconscious of anything going on about them, while the sublime rocks were trembling with the tones of the mighty chanting congregation of waters gathered from all the mountains round about, making music that might draw angels out of heaven. Yet respectable-looking, even wise-looking people were fixing bits of worms on bent pieces of wire to catch trout. Sport, they call it. Should churchgoers try to pass the time fishing in the baptismal fonts while dull sermons were being preached, the so-called sport might not be so bad. But to play in the Yosemite temple, seeking pleasure in the pain of fishes struggling for their lives while God himself is preaching his sublime water and stone sermons. Now I'm back at the campfire and cannot help thinking about my recognition of my friend's presence in the valley while he was four or five miles away, and while I had no means of knowing that he was not thousands of miles away. It seems supernatural, but only because it is not understood. Anyhow, it seems silly to make so much of it, while the natural and common is more truly marvellous and mysterious than the so called supernatural. Indeed, most of the miracles we hear of are infinitely less wonderful than the commonest of natural phenomena when fairly seen. Perhaps the invisible rays that struck me while I sat at work on the dome are something like those which attract and repel people at first sight, concerning which much nonsense has been written. The worst apparent effect of these mysterious odd things is blindness to all that is divinely common. Hawthorne, I fancy, could weave one of his weird romances out of this little telepathic episode, the one strange marvel of my life, probably replacing my good old professor by an attractive woman. August 5. We were awakened this morning before daybreak by the furious barking of Carlo and Jack and the sound of stampeding sheep. Billy fled from his punk bed to the fire and refused to stir into the darkness to try to gather the scattered flock or ascertain the nature of the disturbance. It was a bear attack as we afterward learned, and I suppose little was gained by attempting to do anything before daylight. Nevertheless, being anxious to know what was up, Carlo and I groped our way through the woods, guided by the rustling sounds made by the fragments of the flock, not fearing the bear, for I knew that the runaways would go from their enemy as far as possible, and Carlo's nose was also to be depended on. About half a mile east of the corral we overtook twenty or thirty of the flock and succeeded in driving them back. Then, turning to the westward, we traced another band of fugitives and got them back to the flock. After daybreak I discovered the remains of a sheep carcass, still warm, showing that Bruin must have been enjoying his mutton breakfast while I was seeking the runaways. He had eaten about half of it. Six dead sheep lay in the corral, evidently smothered by the crowding and piling up of the flock against the side of the corral wall when the bear entered. Making a wide circuit of the camp, Carlo and I discovered a third band of fugitives and drove them back to camp. We also discovered another dead sheep, half eaten, showing that there had been two of the shaggy freebooters at this early breakfast. They were easily traced. They'd each caught a sheep, jumped over the corral fence with them, carrying them as a cat carries a mouse, laid them at the foot of fir trees a hundred yards or so back from the corral and eaten their fill. After breakfast I set out to seek more of the lost and found seventy-five at a considerable distance from camp. In the afternoon I succeeded with Carlo's help in getting them back to the flock. I don't know whether all are together again or not. I shall make a big fire this evening and keep watch. When I asked Billy why he had made his bed against the corral in rotten wood when so many better places offered he replied that he wished to be as near the sheep as possible in case bears should attack them. Now that the bears have come he has moved his bed to the far side of the camp and seems afraid that he may be mistaken for a sheep. This has been mostly a sheep day and of course studies have been interrupted. Nevertheless the walk through the gloom of the woods before dawn was worthwhile and I've learned something about these noble bears. Their tracks are very telling and so are their breakfasts. Scares a trace of clouds today and of course our ordinary midday thunder is wanting. August six enjoyed the grand illumination of the camp grove last night from the fire we made to frighten the bears. Compensation for loss of sleep and sheep. The noble pillars of verdu, vividly aglow seemed to shoot into the sky like the flames that lighted them. Nevertheless one of the bears paid us another visit as if more attracted than repelled by the fire, climbed into the corral, killed the sheep and made off with it without being seen while still another was lost by trampling and suffocation against the side of the corral. Now that our mutton has been tasted I suppose it will be difficult to put a stop to the ravages of these freebooters. The dawn arrived today from the lowlands with provisions and a letter. On learning the losses he has sustained he determined to move the flock at once to the upper Tuolumne region, saying that the bears would be sure to visit the camp every night as long as we stayed and that no fire or noise we might make would avail to frighten them. No clouds save a few thin lustrous touches on the eastern horizon. Thunder heard in the distance. August seven. Early this morning bad goodbye to the bears and the blessed silver fur camp and moved slowly eastward along the monotrail. At sundown camped for the night on one of the many small flowery meadows so greatly enjoyed in my excursion to Lake Tenaya. The dusty noisy flock seems outrageously foreign and out of place in these nature gardens, more so than bears among sheep. The harm they do goes to the heart. But glorious hope lifts above all the dust and din and bids me to look forward to a good time coming when money enough will be earned to enable me to go walking where I like in pure wilderness with what I can carry on my back and when the bread sack is empty run down to the nearest point on the breadline for more. Nor will these run downs be blanks for whether up or down every step and jump on these blessed mountains is full of fine lessons. August eight. Camp at the west end of Lake Tenaya. Arriving early I took a walk on the glacier polished pavements along the north shore and climbed the magnificent mountain rock at the east end of the lake now shining in the late afternoon light. Almost every yard of its surface shows the scoring and polishing action of a great glacier that enveloped it and swept heavily over its summit, though it is about two thousand feet high above the lake and ten thousand above sea level. This majestic ancient ice flow came from the east wood as the scoring and crushing of the surface shows. Even below the waters of the lake the rock in some places is still grooved and polished. The lapping of the waves and their disintegrating action have not as yet obliterated even the superficial marks of glaciation. In climbing the steepest polished places I had to take off shoes and stockings. A fine region this for study of glacial action in mountain making. I found many charming plants arctic daisies, flocks, white sparia, brianthus and rock ferns, pelia, chelanthus, allosaurus, fringing weathered seams all the way up to the summit and sturdy junipers, grand old gray and brown monuments, stood bravely erect on fissured spots here and there telling storm and avalanche stories of hundreds of winters. The view of the lake from the top is I think the best of all. There is another rock more striking in form than this standing isolated at the head of the lake but it is not more than half as high. It is a knob or knot of burnished granite perhaps a thousand feet high apparently as flawless and strong in structure as a wave warm pebble and probably owes its existence to the superior resistance it offered to the action of the overflowing ice flood. Made sketch of the lake and salted back to camp my iron shod shoes clanking on the pavements disturbing the chipmunks and birds. After dark went out to shore not a breath of air a stir the lake a perfect mirror reflecting the sky and mountains with their stars and trees and wonderful sculpture all their grandeur refined and doubled a marvellously impressive picture that seemed to belong more to heaven than earth. August 9th I went ahead of the flock and crossed over the divide between the Merced and Ptolemy basins. The gap between the east end of the Hoffman spur and the mass of mountain rocks about Cathedral Peak though roughened by ridges and waving folds seems to be one of the channels of a broad ancient glacier that came from the mountains on the summit of the range. In crossing this divide the ice river made an ascent of about 500 feet from the Ptolemy meadows. This entire region must have been over swept by ice. From the top of the divide and also from the big Ptolemy meadows the wonderful mountain called Cathedral Peak is in sight. From every point of view it shows marked individuality. It is a majestic temple of one stone hewn from the living rock and adorned with spires and pinnacles in regular cathedral style. The dwarf pines on the roof look like mosses. I hope sometime to climb to it to say my prayers and hear the stone sermons. The big Ptolemy meadows are flowery lawns lying along the south pork of the Ptolemy river at a height of about 8500 to 9000 feet above the sea partially separated by forest bars of glaciated granite. Here the mountains seem to have cleared away or set back so that wide open views may be had in every direction. The upper end of the series lies on the base of Mount Lyell the lower range the lower below the east end of the Hoffman range so that the length must be about 10 or 12 miles. They vary in width from a quarter of a mile to perhaps three quarters and a good many branch meadows put out along the banks of the tributary streams. This is the most spacious and delightful high pleasure ground I have yet seen. The air is keen and bracing yet warm during the day and though lying high in the sky the surrounding mountains are so much higher one feels protected as if in a grand hall. Mount's Dana and Gibbs massive red mountains perhaps 13,000 feet high or more bound the view on the east. The Union and Unicorn peaks with many nameless peaks on the south. The Hoffman range on the west and a number of peaks unnamed as far as I know on the north. One of these last is much like the Cathedral. The grass of the meadows is mostly fine and silky with exceedingly slender leaves making a close sod above which the panicles of minute purple flowers seem to float in airy misty lightness. While the sod is enriched with at least three species of genitin and as many more of orthocarpus, pontilla, investia, solidargo, penstemon, with their gay colors, purple, blue, yellow and red all of which I may know better air long. A central camp will probably be made in this region from which I hope to make long excursions into the surrounding mountains. On the return trip I met the flock about three miles east of Lake Tanaya. Here we camp for the night near a small lake lying on top of the divide in a clump of the two-leaved pine. We are now about 9,000 feet above the sea. Small lakes are bound in all sorts of situations on ridges, along mountain sides, and in piles of moraine boulders, most of them mere pools. Only in those canyons of the larger streams at the foot of the clavities where the down thrust of the glaciers was heaviest do we find lakes of considerable size and depth. How grateful a task it would be to trace them all and study them! How pure their waters are! Clear as crystal in polished stone basins. None of them, so far as I have seen, have fishes, I suppose on account of falls making them inaccessible. Yet one would think their eggs might get into these lakes by some chance or other on duck's feet, for example, or in their mouths or in their crops or as some plant seeds are distributed. Nature has so many ways of doing such things. How did the frogs, found in all bogs and pools and lakes, however high, manage to get up these mountains? Surely not by jumping. Such excursions through miles of dry brush and boulders would be very hard on frogs. Perhaps their stringy gelatinous spawn is occasionally entangled or glued on the feet of water birds. Anyhow, here they are, an in hearty health and voice. I like their cheery trunk and crink. They take the place of songbirds at a pinch. August 10. Another of those charming, exhilarating days that make the blood dance and excites the nerve currents that render one unwearable and well-nigh immortal. Had another view of the broad ice-plowed divide and gazed again and again at the Sierra Temple and the great red mountains east of the meadows. We are camped near the soda springs on the north side of the river. A hard time we had getting the sheep across. They were driven into a horseshoe bend and fairly crowded off the bank. They seemed willing to suffer death rather than risk getting wet, though they swim well enough when they have to. Why sheep should be so unreasonably afraid of water, I don't know, but they do fear it as soon as they are born and perhaps before. I once saw a lamb only a few hours old approach a shallow stream about two feet wide an inch deep after it had walked only about a hundred yards on its life's journey. All the flock to which it belonged had crossed this inch-deep stream and, as the mother and her lamb were the last to cross, I had a good opportunity to observe them. As soon as the flock was out of the way the anxious mother crossed over and called the unxter. It walked cautiously to the brink, gazed at the water, bleated piteously, and refused to venture. The patient mother went back to it again and again to encourage it, but long without a veil. Like the pilgrim on Jordan's stormy bank it feared to launch away, at length gathering its trembling and experienced legs for the mighty effort, throwing up its head as if it knew all about drowning and was anxious to keep its nose above water, it made the tremendous leap and landed in the middle of the inch-deep stream. It seemed astonished to find that, instead of sinking overhead in ears only its toes were wet, gazed at the shining water a few seconds and then sprang to the shore, safe and dry through the dreadful adventure. All kinds of wild sheep are mountain animals and their descendants dread of water is not easily accounted for. August 11th, fine shining weather with a 10 minutes noon thunderstorm and rain, rambling all day, getting acquainted with the region north of the river. Found a small lake and many charming glacier meadows emblosened in an extensive forest of the two-leaved pine. The forest is growing on broad almost continuous deposits of moraine material is remarkably even in its growth and the trees are much closer together than in any of the fir or pine woods farther down the range. The evenness of the growth would seem to indicate that the trees are all of the same age or nearly so. This regularity has probably been in great part the result of fire. I saw several large patches and strips of dead, bleached spars, the ground beneath them covered with a young, even growth. Fire can run in these woods not only because the thin bark of the trees is dripping with resin but because the growth is close and the comparatively rich soil produces good crops of tall, broad-leafed grasses on which fire can travel even when the weather is calm. Besides these fire-killed patches there are a good many fallen, up-rooted trees here and there, some with the bark and needles still on, as if they had been lately blown down in some thunderstorm blast. So a large black-tailed deer, a buck with antlers like the upturned roots of a fallen pine. After a long ramble through the dense encumbered woods I emerged upon a smooth meadow full of sunshine like a lake of light, about a mile and a half long, a quarter or half a mile wide and bounded by tall, arrowy pines. The sod, like that of all the glacier meadows hereabouts, is made of silky agrosis and calomagrosis, chiefly. They're panicles of purple flowers and purple stems exceeding light and airy, seem to float above the green plush of leaves like a thin, misty cloud. While the sod is brightened by several species of gentian, ponteela, ivesta, orthocarpus, and their corresponding bees and butterflies. All the glacier meadows are beautiful, but few are so perfect as this one. Compared with it, the most carefully-leveled, licked, snipped artificial lawns of pleasure grounds are coarse things. I should like to live here always. It is so calm and withdrawn, while open to the universe in full communion with everything good. To the north of this glorious meadow, I discovered the camp of some Indian hunters. Their fire was still burning, but they had not yet returned from the chase. From meadow to meadow, everyone beautiful beyond telling. And from lake to lake, through groves and belts of arrowy trees, I held my way northward toward Mount Conness, finding telling beauty everywhere, while the encompassing mountains were calling come. Hope I may climb them all. End of section 11. Section 12 of my first summer in the Sierra. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. My first summer in the Sierra by John Muir, read by Adrian Pretzelis. August 12. The sky scenery has changed but little so far with the change in elevation. Clouds about 0.05. Glorious, pearly cumuli, tinted with purple of ineffable firmness of tone. Moved camp to the side of the Glacier meadow mentioned above. To let sheep trample so divinely fine a place seems barbarous. Fortunately, they prefer the succulent broadleaved triticum and other woodland grasses to the silky species of the meadows, and therefore sell them, bite them, or set foot on them. The shepherd and the don cannot agree about methods of herding. Billy sets his dog Jack on the sheep far too often, so the don thinks. And after some disputes today in which the shepherd loudly claimed the right to dog the sheep as often as he pleased, he started for the plains. Now, I suppose, the care of the sheep will fall on me, though Mr. Delaney promises to do the herding himself for a while, then return to the lowlands and bring another shepherd, so as to leave me free to rove as I like. Had another rich ramble. Pushed northward beyond the forests to the head of the general basin, where traces of glacial action are strikingly clear and interesting. The recesses among the peaks look like quarries, so raw and fresh are the moraine chips and boulders that strew the ground in nature's glacial workshops. Soon after my return to camp, who received a visit from an Indian, probably one of the hunters whose camper had discovered, he came from mono, he said, with others of his tribe to hunt deer. One that he had killed a short distance from here he was carrying on his back, its legs tied together in an ornamental bunch on his forehead. Throwing down his burden he glazed stolidly for a few minutes in silent Indian fashion, then cut off eight or ten pounds of venison for us and begged a little, little, of everything he saw or could think of, flour, bread, sugar, tobacco, whiskey, needles, etc. We gave a fair price for the meat in flour and sugar and added a few needles. A strangely dirty and irregular life these dark-eyed, dark-haired, half-happy savages lead in this clean wilderness. Starvation and abundance. Deathlike calm, indolence and admirable, indefatigable action succeeding each other in stormy rhythm like winter and summer. Two things they have that civilized toilers might well envy them. Pure air and pure water. These go far to cover and cure the grossness of their lives. Their food is mostly good berries, pine nuts, clover, lily bulbs, wild sheep antelope, deer, grouse, sage hens, and the larvae of ants, wasps, bees, and other insects. August 13. All day sunshine. Dawn and evening purple. Noon gold. No clouds. Air motionless. Mr. Delaney arrived with two shepherds, one of them an Indian. On his way up from the plains he left some provisions at the Portuguese camp on Porcupine Creek near our old Yosemite camp, and I set out this morning with one of the pack animals to fetch them. Arrived at the Porcupine camp at noon, I might have returned to the twangly late in the evening, but concluded to stay overnight with the Portuguese shepherds at their pressing invitation. They had sad stories to tell of losses from the Yosemite bears, and were so discouraged they seemed on the point of leaving the mountains, for the bears came every night and helped themselves to one or several of the flock, in spite of all their efforts to keep them off. I spent the afternoon in a grand ramble along the Yosemite walls. From the highest of the rocks, called the Three Brothers, I enjoyed a magnificent view, comprehending all the upper half of the floor of the valley, and nearly all the rocks of the walls on both sides and at the head, with snowy peaks in the background. So also the vernal and Nevada falls. A truly glorious picture. Rocky strength and permanence, combined with beauty of plants, frail and fine and effervescent. Water descending in thunder, and the same water gliding through meadows and groves in gentlest beauty. This standpoint is about 8,000 feet above the sea, or 4,000 feet above the floor of the valley, and every tree, though looking small and feathery, stands in admirable clearness, and the shadows they cast are as distinct in outline as if seen at a distance of a few yards. They appear even more so. No words will ever describe the exquisite beauty and charm of this mountain park. Nature's landscape garden at once tenderly beautiful and sublime. No wonder it draws nature lovers from all over the world. Glacial action, even on this lofty summit, is plainly displayed. Not only has all the lovely valley, now smiling in sunshine, been filled to the brim with ice, but it has been deeply overflowed. I visited our old Yosemite campground at the head of Indian Creek, and found it fairly patted and smoothed down with bear tracks. The bears had eaten all the sheep that were gathered in the corral, and some of the grand animals must have died, for Mr. Delaney, before leaving camp, put a large quantity of poison in the carcasses. All sheepmen carry strickenin' to kill coyotes, bears, and panthers, though neither coyotes nor panthers are at all numerous in the upper mountains. The little dog-like wolves are far more numerous in the foothill region and on the plains, where they find a better supply of food, so only one pant the track above 8,000 feet. On my return after sunset to the Portuguese camp, I found the shepherds greatly excited over the behaviour of the bears that have learned to like mutton. They are getting worse and worse, they lamented. Not willing to wait decently until after dark for their suppers, they come and kill and eat their fill in broad daylight. The evening before my arrival, when the two shepherds were leisurely driving the flock towards camp, half an hour before sunset, a hungry bear came out of the chaparral within a few yards of them and shuffled deliberately toward the flock. Portuguese Joe, who always carried a gun loaded with buckshot, fired excitedly, threw down his gun, fled to the nearest suitable tree, and climbed to a safe height without waiting to see the effect of his shot. His companion also ran, but said that he saw the bear rise on its hind legs and throw out its arms as if feeling for somebody, and then go into the brush as if wounded. As another of their camps in this neighbourhood, a bear with two cubs attacked the flock before sunset, just as they were approaching the corral. Joe promptly climbed a tree out of danger, while Antone rebuking his companion for cowardice in abandoning his charge, said that he was not going to let bears eat up the sheeps in daylight and rushed toward the bears, shouting and setting his dogs on them. The frightened cubs climbed a tree, but the mother ran to meet the shepherd and seemed anxious to fight. Antone stood astonished for a moment, eyeing the oncoming bear, then turned and fled, closely pursued. Unable to reach a suitable tree for climbing, he ran to the camp and scrambled up to the roof of the little cabin. The bear followed, but it did not climb to the roof. Only stood glaring up at him for a few minutes, threatening him and holding him in mortal terror. Then went to her cubs, called them down, went to the flock, caught a sheep for supper, and vanished in the brush. As soon as the bear left the cabin, the trembling Antone begged Joe to show him a good safe tree, up which he climbed like a sailor climbing a mast, and remained as long as he could hold on, the tree being almost branchless. After these disastrous experiences the two shepherds chopped and gathered large piles of dry wood, and made a ring of fire around the corral every night, while one with a gun kept watch from a comfortable stage built on a neighbouring pine that commanded a view of the corral. This evening the show made by the circle of fire was very fine, bringing out the surrounding trees in most impressive relief, and making the thousands of sheep eyes glow like a glorious bed of diamonds. August 14th Up to the time I went to bed last night, all was quiet, though we expected the shaggy freebooters every minute. They did not come till near midnight, when a pair walked boldly to the corral between two of the great fires, climbed in, killed two sheep, and smothered ten, while the frightened watcher in the tree did not fire a single shot, saying that he was afraid he might kill some of the sheep, for the bears got into the corral before he got a good clear view of them. I told the shepherds they should at once move the flock to another camp. Oh, no use, no use, they lamented. Where we go, the bears go too. See, my poor dead sheeps, soon all dead. No use try another camp, we go down to the plains. And, as I afterwards learned, they were driven out of the mountains a month before the usual time. Were bears much more numerous and destructive, the sheep would be kept away altogether. It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risk of guns and fires and poisons, should never attack men, except in defence of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lay asleep. Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles. Mosquitoes and other insects would, I suppose, devour a helpless man in some parts of the world, and so might lions, leopards, wolves, hyenas and panthers at times, if pressed by hunger. But under ordinary circumstances, perhaps only the tiger among land animals may be said to be a man-eater, unless we add man himself. Clouds, as usual, about .05. Another glorious Sierra Day. Warm, crisp, fragrant and clear. Many of the flowering plants have gone to seed, and many others are unfolding their petals every day, and the furs and pines are more fragrant than ever. The seeds are nearly ripe, and will soon be flying in the merriest flocks that ever spread a wing. On the way back to our Tuolumne camp, I enjoyed the scenery, if possible, more than when it first came to view. Every feature seems familiar, as if I had lived there always. I never weary gazing at the wonderful cathedral. It has more individual character than any other rock or mountain I ever saw, excepting perhaps the Yosemite South Dome. The forests too seem kindly familiar, and the lakes and meadows and glad singing streams. I should like to dwell with them forever. Here with bread and water, I should be content. Even if not allowed to roam and climb, tethered to a stake or a tree in some meadow or grove, even then I should be content forever. Bathed in such beauty, watching the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and winds and birds would be endless pleasure. And what glorious cloudlands I should see, storms and calms, a new heaven and a new earth every day, I and new inhabitants. And how many visitors I should have, I feel sure I should not have one dull moment. And why should this appear extravagant? It is only common sense, a sign of health, genuine, natural, all-awake health. One would be at an endless, godful play, and what speeches and music and acting and scenery and lights. Sun, moon, stars, auroras, creation just beginning, the morning stars still seeing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy. End of section 12. Section 13 of my first summer in the Sierra. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. My first summer in the Sierra by John Muir, read by Adrian Pretzelis. Section 13. August 21. Have just returned from a fine, wild excursion across the range to Mona Lake by way of the Mono or Bloody Canyon Pass. Mr. Delaney has been good to me all summer, lending me a helping, sympathizing hand at every opportunity, as if my wild notions and rambles and studies were his own. He is one of those remarkable California men who have been overflowed and enuded and remodeled by the excitements of the gold fields, like the Sierra landscapes by grinding ice, bringing the harder bosses and ridges of character into relief. A tall, lean, big-boned, big-hearted Irishman educated for a priest at Maynooth College, lots of good in him shining out now and then in this mountain light. Recognizing my love of wild places, he told me one evening that I ought to go through Bloody Canyon, for he was sure I should find it wild enough. He had not been there himself, he said, but he had heard many of his mining friends speak of it as the wildest of all the Sierra Passes. Of course, I was glad to go. It lies just to the east of our camp and swoops down from the summit of the range to the edge of the mono desert, making a descent of about 4,000 feet in a distance of about four miles. It was known and travelled as a pass by wild animals and the Indians long before its discovery by white men in the gold year of 1858, as is shown by the old trails which come together at the head of it. The name may have been suggested by the red colour of the metamorphic slates in which the canyon abounds, or by the blood stains on the rocks from the unfortunate animals that were compelled to slide and shuffle over the sharp-angled boulders. Early in the morning I tied my notebook and some bread to my belt and strode away full of eager hope, feeling that I was going to have a glorious revel. The glacier meadows that lay along my way served to soothe my morning speed, for the sod was full of blue gentians and daisies, calmyr and dwarf vicinity, calling for recognition as old friends, and I had to stop many times to examine the shining rocks over which the ancient glacier had passed with tremendous pressure, polishing them so well that they reflected the sunlight like glass in some places, while fine striae still seen clearly through a lens indicated the direction in which the ice had flowed. On some of the sloping polished pavements, abrupt steps occur, showing that occasionally large masses of the rocks had given way before the glacial pressure as well as small particles. Moraines too, some scattered, others regular, like long curving embankments and dams, occur here and there, giving the general surface of the region a young, new-made appearance. I watched the gradual dwarfing of the pines as I ascended, and the corresponding dwarfing of nearly all the rest of the vegetation. On the slopes of Mammoth Mountain, to the south of the pass, I saw many gaps in the woods reaching from the upper edge of the timber line down to the level meadows, where avalanches of snow had descended, sweeping away every tree in their paths as well as the soil they were growing in, leaving the bedrock bare. The trees are nearly all uprooted, but a few that had been extremely well anchored in clefts of the rock were broken off near the ground. It seems strange at first sight that trees that had been allowed to grow for a century or more undisturbed should, in their old age, be thus swished away at a stroke. Such avalanches can only occur under rare conditions of weather and snowfall. No doubt on some positions of the mountain slopes, the inclination and smoothness of the surface is such that avalanches must occur every winter or even after every heavy snowstorm, and of course no trees or even bushes can grow in their channels. I noticed a few clean swept slopes of this kind. The uprooted trees that had grown in the pathways that might be called century avalanches were piled in wind rows and tucked snugly against the wall trees of the gaps, heads downward, accepting a few that were carried out into the open ground of the meadow, where the heads of the avalanches had stopped. Young pines, mostly the two-leaved and the white barked, are already springing up in these cleared gaps. It would be interesting to ascertain the age of these saplings, for thus we should gain a fair approximation to the year that the great avalanches occurred. Perhaps most or all of them occurred the same winter. How glad I should be if free to pursue such studies. Near the summit at the head of the pass I found a species of dwarf willow lying perfectly flat on the ground, making a nice, soft, silky grey carpet, not a single stem or branch more than three inches high. But the catkins, which are now nearly ripe, stand erect and make a close, nearly regular grey growth, being larger than all the rest of the plants. Some of these interesting dwarfs have only one catkin. Willow bushes reduced to their lowest terms. I found patches of dwarf vercinium also forming smooth carpets, closely pressed to the ground or against the sides of stones, and covered with round pink flowers in lavish abundance, as if they had fallen from the sky, like hail. A little higher, almost at the very head of the pass, I found the blue arctic daisy and purple-flowered brianthus, the mountain's own darlings, gentle mountaineers face-to-face with the sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles, seeming always the finer and purer, the wilder and stormier their homes. The trees, tough and resiny, seem unable to go a step farther, but up and up, far above the tree line, these tender plants climb, cheerily spreading their grey and pink carpets right up to the very edge of the snowbanks, in deep hollows and shadows. Here too is the familiar robbing, tripping on the flowery lawns, bravely singing the same cheery song I first heard when a boy in Wisconsin newly arrived from Old Scotland. In this fine company of sauntering, enchanted, taking no heed of time, I at length encountered the gate of the pass, and the huge rocks began to close around me in all their mysterious impressiveness. Just then I was startled by a lot of queer, hairy, muffled creatures, coming shuffling, shambling, wallowing toward me, as if they had no bones in their bodies. Had I discovered them while they were yet a good way off, I should have tried to avoid them. What a picture they made, contrasting with the others I had just been admiring. When I came up to them, I found that they were only a band of Indians from Mono, on their way to Yosemite for a load of acorns. They were wrapped in blankets made of the skins of sage-rabbits. The dirt on some of the faces seemed old enough and thick enough to have a geological significance. Some were strangely blurred, and divided into sections by seams and wrinkles that looked like cleavage joints, and had a worn, abraded look as if they had lain exposed to the weather for ages. I tried to pass them without stopping, but they wouldn't let me, forming a dismal circle about me. I was closely besieged while they begged whiskey or tobacco, and it was hard to convince them that I hadn't any. How glad I was to get away from the gray, grim crowd, and to see them vanish down the trail. Yet it seemed sad to feel such desperate repulsion from one's fellow beings, however degraded. To prefer the society of squirrels and woodchucks to that of our own species must surely be unnatural. So, with a fresh breeze and a hill or a mountain between us, I must wish them godspeed, and try to pray and sing with burns. It's coming yet for all that, that man to man, the world or shall brothers be for all that. How the day passed, I hardly know. By the map I have come only about 10 or 12 miles, though the sun is already low in the west, showing how long I must have lingered, observing, sketching, taking notes among the glaciated rocks and moraines and alpine flowerbeds. At sundown the somber crags and peaks were inspired with the ineffable beauty of the alpine glow, and a solemn, awful stillness hushed everything in the landscape. Then I crept into a hollow by the side of a small lake near the head of the canyon, smoothed the sheltered spot, and gathered a few pine tassels for a bed. After the short twilight began to fade, I kindled a sunny fire, made a tin cup full of tea, and lay down to watch the stars. Soon the night wind began to flow from the snowy peaks overhead. At first only a gentle breathing, then gaining strength in less than an hour, rumbled in massive volume, something like a boisterous stream in a bolder choked channel, roaring and moaning down the canyon, as if the work it had to do was tremendously important and fateful. And mingled with these storm tones were those of the waterfalls on the north side of the canyon, now sounding distinctly, now smothered by the heavier cataracts of air, making a glorious psalm of savage wildness. My fire squirmed and struggled, as if ill at ease, for though in a sheltered nook detached masses of icy wind often fell like icebergs on top of it, scattering sparks and coals, so that I had to keep well back to avoid being burned. But the big resiny roots and knots of the dwarf pine could neither be beaten out nor blown away, and the flames now rushing up in long glances, now flattened and twisted on the rocky ground, roared as if trying to tell the storm stories of the trees they belonged to as the light given out was telling the story of the sunshine they had gathered in centuries of summers. The stars shone clear in the strip of sky between the huge dark cliffs, and as I lay recalling the lessons of the day, suddenly the full moon looked down over the canyon wall. Her face, apparently filled with eager concern, which had a startling effect, as if she had left her place in the sky and had come down to gaze on me alone, like a person entering one's bedroom. It was hard to realise that she was in her place in the sky, and was looking abroad on half the globe, land and sea, mountains, planes, lakes, rivers, oceans, ships, cities with their myriads of inhabitants sleeping and waking, sick and well. No, she seemed to be just on the rim of bloody canyon, and looking only at me. This was indeed getting near to nature. I remember watching the harvest moon rising above the oak trees in Wisconsin, apparently as big as a cartwheel, and not farther than half a mile distant. With these exceptions I might say I never before had seen the moon, and this night she seemed so full of life and so near. The effect was marvellously impressive, and made me forget the Indians, the great black rocks above me, and the wild uproar of the winds and the waters, making their way down the huge jagged gorge. Of course, I slept but little, and gladly welcomed the dawn over the monodesert. By the time I had made a cup full of tea, the sunbeams were pouring through the canyon, and I set forth, gazing eagerly at the tremendous walls of red slates, savagely hacked and scarred, and apparently ready to fall in avalanches great enough to choke the pass and fill up the chain of lakelets. But soon its beauties came to view, and I bounded lightly from rock to rock, admiring the polished bosses shining in the slant sunshine with glorious effect. In the general roughness of moraines and avalanche tallices, even toward the head of the canyon, near the highest fountains of the ice. Here too are most of the lowly plant people seen yesterday on the other side of the divide now opening their beautiful eyes. None could fail to glory in nature's tender care for them in so wild a place. The little oozle is flitting from rock to rock along the rapidly swirling canyon creek, diving for breakfast in icy pools, and merrily singing as if the huge rugged avalanche-swept gorge was the most delightful of all its mountain homes. Besides a high fall on the north wall of the canyon, apparently coming direct from the sky, there are many narrow cascades, bright silvery ribbons zigzagging down the red cliffs, tracing the diagonal cleavage joints of the metamorphic slates, now contracted and out of sight, now leaping from ledge to ledge in filmy sheets through which the sunbeams sift, and on the main canyon creek, to which all these are tributary, is a series of small falls, cascades and rapids extending all the way down to the foot of the canyon, interrupted only by the lakes in which the tossed and beaten waters rest. One of the finest of the cascades is outspread on the face of a precipice. Its waters separated into ribbon-like strips, and woven into diamond-like pattern by tracing the cleavage joints of the rocks, while tufts of brianthus, grass, sedge, saxifrage form beautiful fringes. Who could imagine beauty so fine and so savage a place? Gardens are blooming in all sorts of nooks and hollows. At the head Alpine-Ariagonum, Erygeron, Saxifrage, Gentians, Cowania, Bush Primula, in the middle region, Laksberg, Columbine, Orthocarpus, Castilia, Hairbell, Epilobium, Violence, Mintz, Yarrow, near the foot Sunflowers, Lilies, Briarows, Iris, Lonichora, Climatis. One of the smallest of the cascades, which I name Bower Cascade, is in the lower region of the pass where the vegetation is snowy and luxuriant. Wild rose and dogwood form dense masses overarching the stream, and out of this bower the creek, grown strong with many indashing tributaries, leaps forth into the light and descends in a fluted curve, thick sown with crisp flashing spray. At the foot of the canyon there is a lake formed in part, at least, by the damming of the stream, by a terminal moraine. The three other lakes in the canyon are in basins eroded from the solid rock, where the pressure of the glacier was greatest, and the most resisting portions of the basin rims are beautifully, tellingly polished. Below Moraine Lake at the foot of the canyon there are several old lake basins lying between the large lateral moraines which extend out into the desert. These basins are now completely filled up by the material carried in by the streams, and changed to dry sandy flats covered mostly by grass and Artemisia and sun-loving flowers. All these lower lake basins were evidently formed by terminal moraine dams, deposited where the receding glacier had lingered during short periods of less waste, or greater snowfall, or both. Looking up the canyon from the warm sunny edge of the monoplane, my morning ramble seems a dream, so great is the change in the vegetation and climate. The lilies on the bank of moraine lake are higher than my head, and the sunshine is hot enough for palms. Yet the snow round the arctic gardens at the summit of the pass is plainly visible, only about four miles away, and between lie specimen zones of all the principal climates of the globe. In little more than an hour one may swoop down from winter to summer, from an arctic to a torrid region, through as great changes of climate as one would encounter in travelling from Labrador to Florida. The Indians I had met near the head of the canyon had camped at the foot of it the night before they made the ascent, and I found their fire still smoking on the side of a small tributary stream near moraine lake. And on the edge of what is called the mono desert, four or five miles from the lake, I came to a patch of elements, or wild rye, growing in magnificent waving clumps, six or eight feet high, bearing heads six to eight inches long. The crop was ripe, and Indian women are gathering the grain in baskets by bending down large handfuls, beating out the seed and fanning it in the wind. The grains are about five-eighths of an inch long, dark-coloured, and sweet. I fancy the bread made from it must be as good as wheat bread. A fine squirrelish employment this wild grain gathering seems, and the women were evidently enjoying it, laughing and chattering, and looking almost natural, though most Indians I have seen are not a whit more natural in their lives than we civilised whites. Perhaps if I knew them better I should like them better. The worst thing about them is their uncleanliness. Nothing truly wild is unclean. Down on the shore of mono lake I saw a number of their flimsy huts on the banks of streams that dashed swiftly into that dead sea, mere brushed tents where they lie and eat at their ease. Some of the men were feasting on buffalo berries, lying beneath the tall bushes, now red with fruit. The berries are rather insipid, but they must needs be wholesome, since for days and weeks the Indians it is said eat nothing else. In the season they in like manner depend chiefly on the fat larvae of a fly that breeds in the salt water of the lake, or on the big fat corrugated caterpillars of a species of silkworm that feeds on the leaves of the yellow pine. Occasionally a grand rabbit drive is organised, and hundreds are slain with clubs on the lakeshore, chased and frightened into a dense crowd by dogs, boys, girls, men and women, and rings of sagebrush fire, when of course they are quickly killed. The skins are made into blankets. In the autumn the more enterprising of the hunters bring in a good many deer, and rarely a wild sheep from the high peaks. Antelopes used to be abundant on the desert at the base of the interior mountain ranges. Sage hens, grouse and squirrel helped to vary their wild diet of worms. Pine nuts also from the small interesting Pinus monophila, and a good bread and good mush are made from acorns and wild rye. Strange to say, they seem to like the lake larvae best of all. Long windrows are washed up on the shore, which they gather and dry like grain for winter use. It is said that wars, on account of encroachment on each other's worm grounds, are of common occurrence among the various tribes and families. Each claims a certain marked portion of the shore. The pine nuts are delicious. Large quantities are gathered every autumn. The tribes of the west flank of the range trade acorns for worms and pine nuts. The squalls carry immense loads on their backs across the rough passes and down the range, making journeys of about 40 or 50 miles each way. The desert around the lake is surprisingly flowery. In many places among the sage bushes I saw Menzelia, Ambronia, Astor, Bigelovia and Gilea, all of which seem to enjoy the hot sunshine. The abronia in particular is a delicate, fragrant and most charming plant. Opposite the mouth of the canyon, a range of volcanic cones extends southward from the lake, rising abruptly out of the desert like a chain of mountains. The largest of the cones are about 2,500 feet high above lake level, have well-formed craters, and all of them are evidently comparatively recent additions to the landscape. At a distance of a few miles they look like heaps of loose ashes that have never been blast by either rain or snow. But for all that and all that, yellow pines are climbing their grey slopes, trying to clothe them and give beauty for ashes. A country of wonderful contrasts, hot deserts bounded by snow-laden mountains, cinders and ashes scattered on glacier-polished pavements, frost and fire working together in the making of beauty. In the lake are several volcanic islands which show that the waters were once mingled with fire. Glad to get back to the green side of the mountains, though I have enjoyed the grey east side and hope to see more of it. Reading these grand mountain manuscripts, displayed through every vicissitude of heat and cold, calm and storm, upheaving volcanoes and down-grinding glaciers, we see that everything in nature called destruction must be creation, a change from beauty to beauty. Our glacier meadow camp north of Soda Springs seems more beautiful every day. The grass covers all the ground, though the leaves are thread-like in fineness, and in walking on the sod it seems like a plush carpet of marvellous richness and softness, and the purple panicles brushing against one's feet are not felt. This is a typical glacier meadow, occupying the basin of a vanished lake, very definitely bounded by walls of the arrowy two-leaved pines, drawn up in handsome, orderly array, like soldiers on parade. There are many other meadows of the same kind here about, embedded in the woods. The main big meadows along the river are the same in general and extend with but little interruption for ten or twelve miles, but none I have seen are so finely finished and perfect as this one. It is richer in flowering plants than the prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois were when in all their wild glory. The showy flowers are mostly three species of gentian, a purple and a yellow orthocarpus, a goldenrod or two, a small blue pencemon, almost like a gentian, pontentilla, hevesia, pedicularis, white violet, chalmia and brianthus. There are no coarse weedy plants. Through this flowery lawn flows a stream silently gliding, swirling, slipping as if careful not to make the slightest noise. It is only about three feet wide in most places, widening here and there into pools six or eight feet in diameter with no apparent current, the banks bossily rounded by the down-curving mossy sod, grass panicles over-leaning, like miniature pine trees, and rugs of brianthus, spreading here and there over sunken boulders. At the foot of the meadow, the stream, rich with the juices of the plants it has refreshed, sings merrily down over shelving rock ledges on its way to the Tuolumne River. The sublime, massive Mount Dana, and its companions, green, red and white, loom impressively above the pines along the eastern horizon, a ray or spur of gray, rugged granite crags and mountains on the north, the curiously crested and battlemented Mount Hoffman on the west, and the cathedral range on the south, with its grand cathedral peak, cathedral spires, unicorn peak, and several others, gray and pointed, or massively rounded. End of section 13. Section 14 of My First Summer in the Sierra. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir, read by Adrian Pretzelis. August 22. Clouds none, cool west wind, slight holefrost on the meadows. Carlo is missing, have been seeking him all day. In the thick woods between camp and the river, among tall grass and fallen pines, I discovered a baby fawn. At first it seemed inclined to come to me, but when I tried to catch it and got within a rod or two, it turned and walked softly away, choosing its steps like a cautious, stealthy, hunting cat. Then, as if suddenly called or alarmed, it began to buck and run like a grown deer, jumping high above the fallen trunks, and was soon out of sight. Possibly its mother may have called it, but I did not hear her. I don't think fawns ever leave the home thicket or follow their mothers until they are called or frightened. I'm distressed about Carlo. There are several other camps and dogs not many miles from here, and I still hope to find him. He never left me before. Panthers are very rare here, and I don't think any of these cats would dare touch him. He knows bears too well to be caught by them, and as for Indians, they don't want him. August 23. Cool, bright day, hinting Indian summer. Mr. Delaney has gone to the Smith Ranch on the Twalumly, below Hetchatchee Valley, 30 or 40 miles from here, so I'll be alone for a week or more. Not really alone, for Carlo has come back. He was at a camp a few miles to the northwest wood. He looked sheepish and ashamed when I asked him where he had been, and why he had gone away without leave. He is now trying to get me to caress him and show signs of forgiveness. A wondrous wise dog. A great load is off my mind. I could not have left the mountains without him. He seems very glad to get back to me. Rose and crimson sunset, and soon after the stars appeared, the moon rose in most impressive majesty over the top of Mount Dana. I sauntered up the meadow in the white light. The jet-black tree shadows were so wonderfully distinct and substantial looking, I often stepped high in crossing them, taking them for black charred logs. August 24. Another charming day, warm and calm soon after sunrise, clouds only about 0.01. Faint silky cirrus wisps, scarcely visible. Slight frost, Indian summerish. The mountains growing softer in outline and dreamy looking. Their rough angles melted off, apparently. Sky at evening with fine, dark, subdued purple, almost like the evening purple of the San Joaquin plains in settled weather. The moon is now gazing over the summit of Mount Dana. Glorious, exhilarating air. I wonder if in all the world there is another mountain range of equal height, blessed with weather so fine and so openly kind and hospitable and approachable. August 25. Cool as usual in the morning, quickly changing to the ordinary, serene, generous warmth and brightness. Toward evening the west wind was cool and sent us to the campfire. Of all nature's flowery, carpeted mountain halls, none can be finer than this glacier meadow. Bees and butterflies seem as abundant as ever. The birds are still here, showing no sign of leaving for winter quarters, though the frost must bring them to mind. For my part I should like to stay here all winter, or all my life, or even all eternity. August 26. Frost this morning. All the meadow grass and some of the pine needles sparkling with iris crystals, flowers of light, large picturesque clouds, craggy like rocks up high on Mount Dana, reddish in colour like the mountain itself. The sky, for a few degrees around the horizon, is pale purple into which the pines dip their spires with fine effect. Spent the day as usual looking about me, watching the changing lights, the ripening autumn colours of the grass, seeds, late blooming gentians, asters, golden rods, parting the meadow grass here and there, and looking down into the underworld of mosses and liverworts, watching the busy ants and beetles and other small people at work and play like squirrels and bears in a forest, studying the formation of lakes and meadows, moraines, mountain sculpture, making small beginnings in these directions, charmed by the serene beauty of everything. The day has been extra cloudy, though bright on the whole, for the clouds were brighter than common. Clouds are pout .15, which in Switzerland would be considered extra clear. Probably more free sunshine falls on this majestic range than on any other in the world I've ever seen or heard of. It has the brightest weather, brightest glacier polished rocks, the greatest abundance of iris spray from its glorious waterfalls, the brightest forest of silver furs and silver pines, more star shine, moonshine, and perhaps more crystal shine than any other mountain chain, and its countless mirror lakes having more light poured into them glow and spangle most. And how glorious the shining after the short summer showers and after frosty nights when the morning sunbeams are pouring through the crystals on the grass and pine needles, and how ineffably spiritually fine is the morning glow on the mountain tops and the open glow of evening. Well may the Sierra be named not the snowy range, but the range of light. August 27. Clouds only .05, mostly white and pink cumuli over the Huffman spur toward evening, frosty morning. Crystals grow in marvellous beauty and perfection of form these still nights. Everyone built as carefully as the grandest, holiest temple as if planned to endure forever. Contemplating the laced-like fabric of streams outspread over the mountains, we are reminded that everything is flowing, going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks, as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches, the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance. Water streams carrying rocks both in solution and in the form of mud particles, sand, pebbles and boulders. Rocks flow from volcanoes like water from springs, and animals flock together and flow in currents, modified by stepping, leaping, gliding, flying, swimming, etc. While the stars go streaming through space, pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in nature's warm heart. August 28, the dawn a glorious song of colour, sky absolutely cloudless, a fine crop of hoar frost, warm after ten o'clock. The Gentians don't mind the first frost, though their petals seem so delicate. They close every night as if going to sleep, and awake fresh as ever in the morning sun-glory. The grass is a shade browner since last week, but there are no nipped wilted plants of any sort as far as I have seen. Butterflies and the grand host of smaller flies are benumbed every night, but they hover and dance in the sunbeams over the meadows before noon, with no apparent lack of playful, joyful life. Soon they must fall like petals in an orchard, dry and wrinkled, not a wing of all the mighty host left to tingle the air. Nevertheless, new myriads will arise in the spring, rejoicing, exalting, as if laughing cold death to scorn. August 29. Clouds about point zero five. Slight frost, bland, serene Indian summer weather. Have been gazing all day at the mountains watching the changing lights. More and more they are clothed with light as a garment, white tinged with pale purple, palest during the midday hours, richest in the morning and evening. Everything seems consciously peaceful, thoughtful, faithfully waiting God's will. August 30. This day just like yesterday. A few clouds motionless and apparently with no work to do beyond looking beautiful. Frost enough for crystal building. Glorious fields of ice diamonds, destined to last but a night. How lavish is nature building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful. Mr. Delaney arrived this morning, felt not a trace of loneliness when he was gone. On the contrary, I never enjoyed grand accompany. The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. No wonder when we consider that we all have the same father and mother. August 31. Clouds point zero five. Silky, cirrus, wisps and fringes, so fine they almost escape notice. Frost enough for another crop of crystals on the meadows, but none on the forests. The gentians, goldenrods, asters, etc. don't seem to feel it. Neither petals nor leaves are touched, though they seem so tender. Every day opens and closes like a flower. Noiseless, effortless. Divine peace glows on all the majestic landscape like the silent enthusiastic joy that sometimes transfigures a noble human face. September 1. Clouds point zero five. Motionless, of no particular color. Ornaments with no hint of rain or snow in them. All day, calm. Another grand throb of nature's heart, ripening late flowers and seeds for next summer, full of life and the thoughts and plans of life to come, and full of ripe and ready death, beautiful as life, telling divine wisdom and goodness and immortality. Have been up to Mount Dana, making haste to see as much as I can now that the time of departure is drawing nigh. The views from the summit reach far and wide, eastward over the Manu Lake and desert. Mountains beyond mountains, looking strangely barren and gray and bare, like heaps of ashes dumped from the sky. The lake, eight or ten miles in diameter, shines like a burnished disk of silver. No trees about its gray, ashy, sinjury shores. Looking westward, the glorious forests are seen sweeping over countless ridges and hills, girdling domes and subordinate mountains, fringing in long, curving lines, the dividing ridges, and filling every hollow where the glaciers have spread soil beds, however rocky or smooth. Looking northward and southward along the axis of the range, you see the glorious array of high mountains, crags and peaks and snow, the fountain heads of rivers that are flowing west to the sea through the famous Golden Gate, and east to hot salt lakes and deserts to evaporate and hurry back into the sky. Enumerable lakes are shining like eyes beneath heavy rock brows, bare or tree-fringed or embedded in black forests. Meadow openings in the woods seem as numerous as the lakes, or perhaps more so. Far up the moraine covered slopes and among crumbling rocks I have found many delicate, hardy plants, some of them still in flower. The best gains of this trip were the lessons of unity and interrelation of all the features of the landscape revealed in general views. The lakes and meadows were located just where the ancient glaciers bore the heaviest at the foot of the steepest part of their channels, and of course their longest diameters are approximately parallel with each other and with the belts of forests growing in long, curving lines on the lateral and medial moraines, and in broad, outspreading fields on the terminal beds deposited toward the end of the ice period when the glaciers were receding. The domes, ridges and spurs also show the influence of glacial action in their forms, which approximately seem to be the forms of greatest strength with reference to the stress of over-sweeping, past-sweeping, down-grinding ice streams, survivals of the most resisting masses, all those most favorably situated. How interesting everything is. Every rock, mountain, stream, plant, lake, lawn, forest, garden, bird, beast, insect seems to call and invite us to come and learn something of its history and relationship. But shall the poor ignorant scholar be allowed to try the lessons they offer? It seems too great and good to be true. I'll soon be going to the lowlands. The bread-camp must soon be removed. If I had a few sacks of flour and axe and some matches, I would build a cabin of pine logs, pile up plenty of firewood about it, and stay all winter to see the grand, fertile snowstorms, watch the birds and animals that winter thus high, how they live, how the forests look snow-laden or buried, and how the avalanches look and sound on their way down the mountains. But now I'll have to go, for there is nothing to spare in the way of provisions. I'll surely be back, however. Surely I'll be back. No other place has ever so overwhelmingly attracted me as this hospitable, godful wilderness. September 2. A grand, red, rosy, crimson day, a perfect glory of a day. What it means, I don't know. It is the first marked change from tranquil sunshine with purple mornings and evenings, and still white noons. There is nothing like a storm, however. The average cloudiness only about .08, and there is no sighting in the woods to be token a big weather change. The sky was red in the morning and evening, the colour not diffused like the ordinary purple glow, but loaded upon separate, well-defined clouds that remained motionless, as if anchored around the jagged, mountain-fenced horizon. A deep red cap, bluffy around its sides, lingered a long time on Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs, drooping so low as to hide most of their bases, but leaving Dana's round summit free, which seemed to float separate and alone over the big crimson cloud. Mammoth Mountain, to the south of Gibbs and Bloody Canyon, striped and spotted with snow-banks and clumps of dwarf pine, was also favoured with a glorious crimson cap, in the making of which there was no trace of economy. A huge, bossy pile, coloured with a perfect passion of crimson, that seemed important enough to be sent off to burn among the stars in majestic independence. One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of nature, inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet, when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty, and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last. I watched the growth of these red lands of the sky as eagerly as if new mountain ranges were being built. Soon the group of snowy peaks in whose recesses lie the highest fountains of the Tuolumne, Messaed and North Fork of the San Joaquim, were decorated with majestic, coloured clouds, like those already described, but more complicated to correspond with the grand fountain heads of the rivers they overshadowed. The Sierra Cathedral, to the south of camp, was overshadowed like Sinai. Never before noticed so fine a union of rock and cloud in form and colour and substance, drawing earth and sky together as one, and so human is it. Every feature and tint of colour goes to one's heart, and we shout, exulting in wild enthusiasm, as if all the divine show were our own. More and more in a place like this we feel ourselves part of wild nature, kin to everything. Spent most of the day high up on the North Rim of the valley, commanding views of the clouds in all their red glory, spreading their wonderful light over all the basin, while the rocks and trees and many small alpine plants at my feet seemed hushed and thoughtful, as if they also were conscious spectators of the glorious new cloud world. Here and there, as I plodded farther and higher, I came to small garden patches and fernaries, just where one would naturally decide that no plant creature could possibly live. But, as in the region about the head of Monopas and the top of Dana, it was in the wildest, highest places that the most beautiful and tender and enthusiastic plant people were found. Again and again, as I lingered over these charming plants, I said, how came you here? How do you live through the winter? Our roots, they explained, reach far down the joints of the summer warmed rocks, and beneath our fine snow mantle killing frosts cannot reach us, while we sleep away the half-dark of the year, dreaming of spring. Ever since I was allowed entrance into these mountains I have been looking for Cassiope, said to be the most beautiful and best loved of the heath warts, but, strange to say, I have not yet found it. On my high mountain walks I kept muttering, Cassiope, Cassiope. This name, as Calvinists say, is driven in upon me, notwithstanding the glorious host of plants that come about me uncalled as soon as I show myself. Cassiope seems the highest name of all the small mountain heath people, and as if conscious of her worth, keeps out of my way. I must find her soon, if at all, this year. September 4. All the vast skydome is clear, filled only with mellow Indian summer light. The pine and hemlock and fir cones are nearly ripe, and are falling fast from morning to night, cut off and gathered by the busy squirrels. Almost all the plants have matured their seeds, their summer work done, and the summer crop of birds and deer will soon be able to follow their parents to the foothills and plains at the approach of winter, when the snow begins to fly. September 5. No clouds, weather, cool, calm, bright, as if no great thing was yet ready to be done, have been sketching the North Twalumny Church, the sunset gloriously coloured. End of section 14.