Exploration in the Great Tuolumne Canon.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1873
• Subjects: John Muir; Bibliography; Kimes; William F. Kimes; Maymie B. Kimes; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; naturalist; annotation; Arctic; Bouquet; Dome The; Greenland; Patience; Sphinx; The Needles; Thin Ridge; Ure; Williamson; glacier
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/79; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=jmb

r 1873.] . THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. 139 by a millennium of startling experiences compressed within eight - and - seventy years - until Death, not to be cajoled, nor charmed, nor caressed away, touched the body that had been so beautiful, the heart that had been so false, the lips that had been so eloquent, and made them as ghastly and loathsome as was in saddest truth the corruscating life of Giovanni Casanova. 1 f) ' ' L c EXPLORATIONS IN THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. THE rivers of the Sierra Nevada are very young. They are only childrerjleaping and chafing down chan- K*WTin which as yet they scarcely feel _Jlfc*home. It is generally believed that , rivers make their own valleys, but this is not true of the mountain rivers of California. "So far from having, since their birthday at the close of the gla- -cial epoch, eroded the valleys through which they flow, they have cut less than the 500,000th part of the canon's depth. Both flanks of the Sierra have been sculptured by the direct physical action of glaciers, just as a clay-bank is guttered and carved by the agency of rains. Observers who have obtained partial views of the larger Sierra cations, such as Yosemite and its branches, can not see how ice could possibly have accomplished so great a work; but the formation of these grand canons constitutes only a small fraction of the denudation due to glacial action. The ice of this portion of the Sierra, during the glacial period, did not consist of separate glaciers, like those now flowing compliantly along the crooked valleys of the Alps- it formed a continuous flood, filling all the cations and valleys, and sweeping over all the mountains between like a wind. And as the upper portions of the main wind-currents that overflow the mountains move steadily, while at bottom they are shattered, and deflected hither and thither upon the countless surfaces against which they strike, so also the upper portions of the heavy glacial wind of the Sierra flowed grandly and rigidly, high over crests and domes, while the bottom was broken into a thousand currents, that mazed and swedged down in crooked and dome-blocked cations of their own making. The State Geologist, in advocating his subsidence theory of the formation of Yosemite Valley, tells us that " the upper portion of the Half Dome is sublimely above any point that could possibly have been reached by denuding agencies; "* but at the time of which we are speaking it was sublimely beneath the most powerful of all denuding agents, with every other dome of this dome- paved region. This we will endeavor to show when we come to treat particularly of mountain structure and mountain sculpture. The Tuolumne and Merced rivers are twins, flowing from a glacier situated upon the north side of Mount Lyell. TJjat part of the crest on which we find the head of the glacier, is eroded to a thin blade, full of seams.and joints, so that a portion of the water produced by the melting of the ice flows through it from the north to the south side, giving rise to the highest trickling tributaries of the Merced; while the greater portion, flowing northward, feeds the highest branches of the Tuolumne. After diverging for a distance of ten or twelve * Whitney's " Guide Book" page 83. 140 THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. [August, miles, they both preserve a general westerly direction; and, on emerging from the mountains to unite their waters with those of the San Joaquin, they are not more than twelve miles apart. Since these twin rivers are so closely related-beginning and ending together, traveling in cafion pathways cut in the same kind of rocks, and making the same amount of vertical descent (about 12,000 feet in all), it will be interesting and instructive, to compare them and their basins; but in this article, devoted chiefly to the Great Tuolumne Cation, only a very brief sketch will be possible. The Merced River flows through five well-defined valleys, differing from one another only in size, each having been eroded from the same kind of granite by glaciers. Of these, Yosemite, the one best known from its peerless waterfalls, is the largest arid last. The first is about six miles from Mount Lyell. Below the last, the Merced Cafion re-' tains more or less of a Yosemitic character, until it enters the slate, after which most of its cross-sections would be found to be nearly V-shaped, in accordance with .the cleavage-planes of the slate. From the foot - hills of the Sierra to the San Joaquin River, the Merced flows in a shallow channel, without any well-marked valley. Like the Merced, the Tuolumne River also falls rapidly at first, making a descent of about 3,000 feet in the first three miles of its course. It then enters one of the very noblest canon-valleys of the range. It extends northward for a distance of about eight miles; then suddenly bends westward, and widens into a broad, flat-bottomed valley, created by the force of the confluent ice- streams that once descended from the flanks of Mounts Dana, Gibbs, and other nameless mountains to the south of Gibbs, and formed a vast mer de glace, four or five miles in width. This ice-sea had two principal outlets: one on the south side of the Hoffman range, by which an immense flood of ice passed over the present water-divide into the Merced basin, and into the Yosemite Valley, which it entered by the Tenaya Canon; the other, on the north side of the Hoffman range, through the Great Tuolumne Cafion, which begins here, and extends westward unbrokenly a distance of more than twenty miles, varying in depth from 2,000 to 5,000 feet. From the foot of the Great Cafion down to the San Joaquin plain, and across it to the San Joaquin River, the Tuolumne flows through valleys .and cations in every way similar to those of the Mef- ced below Yosemite. Sometime in August, in the year 1869, in following the river three or four miles below the Soda Springs, I obtained a partial view of the Great Tuolumne Cafion before I had heard of its existence. The following winter I read what the State Geologist wrote concerning it: " "The river enters a cafion which is about twenty miles long, and probably inaccessible through its entire length."." It certainly can not be entered from its head. Mr. King followed this cafion down as far as he could, to where the river precipitated itself down in a grand fall over a mass of rock so rounded on the edge that it was impossible for him to approach near enough to look over. Where the canon opens out again twenty miles below, so as to be accessible, a remarkable counterpart to Yosemite is found, called the Hetch-Hetchy Valley.". ."Between this and Soda Springs there is a descent in the river of 4,500 feet, and what grand water-falls and stupendous scenery there may be here, it is not easy to say." " Adventurous climbers . should try to penetrate into this unknown gorge, which perhaps may admit of being entered through some of the side cafions coming in from the north.'* Since that time, I have entered the Great Cafion from the north by three different side-canons, and have passed through it from end to end, entering at the Hetch-Hetchy Valley and coming out at the Big Meadows below the Soda Springs, without encountering any extraordinary difficulties. I am sure that it may be entered at more than fifty different points along the walls by 1873 THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CAN.ON. 141 mountaineers of ordinary nerve and skill. At the head, it is easily accessible on both sides. In September, 1871, I began a careful exploration of all this mountain basins whose waters pass through the Yosemite Valley, where I had remained winter and summer for two years. I did not go to them for a Saturday, or a Sunday, or a stingy week, but with unmeasured time, and independent of companions or scientific associations. As I climbed out of Yosemite to begin my glorious toil, I gloated over the numberless streams I would have to follow to their hidden sources in wild, untrodden canons, over the unnumbered and nameless mountains I would have to climb and account for - over the glacial rivers whose history I would have to trace, in hieroglyphics ef sculptured rocks, forests, lakes, and meadows. "This was my "method of study:" I drifted about from rock to rock, from stream to stream, from grove to grove. Where night found me, there I camped. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell. When I came to moraines, or ice-scratches upon the rocks, I traced them back, learning what I could of the glacier that made them. I asked the bowlders I met, whence they came and whither they were going. I followed to their fountains the traces of the various soils upon which forests and meadows are planted; and when I discovered a mountain or rock of marked form and structure, I climbed about it, comparing it with its neighbors, marking its relations to living or dead glaciers, streams of water, avalanches of snow, etc., in seeking to account for its existence and character. It is astonishing how high and far we can climb in mountains that we love. Weary at times, with only the birds and squirrels to compare notes with, I rested beneath the spicy pines, among the needles and burs, or upon the plushy sod of a glacier meadow, touching my cheek to its enameling gentians and daisies, in order to absorb their magnetism or mountainism. No evil consequence from "waste of time" concerning which good people who accomplish nothing make such a sermonizing, has, thus far, befallen me. Early one afternoon, when my mountain freedom was about a week old, after drifting among the picturesque domes and ridges of the west rim of Yosemite Creek basin, I struck its northernmost tributary-a lovely stream in rapids and bonny cascades, and, from the abundance of moraine soil through which it flows, everywhere green and flowery. As I followed it up to its head, wading across spongy patches of meadow, and climbing Over fallen logs and heaps of bowlders, to the top of the Yosemite Creek divide, I felt the premonition of discovery. I found that here it was not a thin ridge, but a smooth, sedgy tableland, holding A shallow mirror-lake. A few yards from the margin, on a gravelly hillock, covered with a beautiful grove of the Williamson spruce (Abies Hook- eriand), I made my camp, and then proceeded to explore the plateau in a northeasterly direction. I had not gone far before I came in sight of a stately group of headlands, arching gracefully on the south, with here and there a feathery pine-tree on their sides, but vertical and bare on the north. They are drawn up side by side in exact order, their necks stiffly curved, like high-mettled cavalry- horses ready for a charge. From the base of their precipitous fronts there extends a large, shallow mountain-bowl, in the bottom of which ten smaller bowls have been scooped, each forming the basin of a bright lakelet, abundantly fringed with spruce-trees, and bordered close to the water with yellow sedge. Looking northward from the edge of the great lake-bowl, I observed several gaps 142 THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. [August, that seemed to sink suddenly, suggesting the existence of a deep gorge running at right-angles to their courses, and I began to guess that I was near the rim of the Great Tuolumne Cation. I looked back at the wild headlands, and down at the ten lakes, and northward among the gaps, veering for some minutes like a confused compass-needle. When I settled to a steady course, it was to follow a ridge-top that extends from near the edge of the lake-bowl in a direction a little east of north, and to find it terminating suddenly in a sheer front over 4,000 feet in depth. This stupendous precipice forms a portion of the south wall of the Great Tuolumne Cafion, about half-way between the head and foot. Until I had reached this brink, I could obtain only narrow strips and wedges Of landscape through gaps in the trees; but now the view was bounded only by the sky. Never have I beheld a nobler atlas of mountains. A thousand pictures "composed that one mountain countenance, glowing with the Holy Spirit of Light! I crept along on the rugged edge of the wall until I found a place where I could sit down to absorb the glorious landscape in safety. The Tuolumne River shimmered and spangled below, showing two or three miles of its length, curving past sheer precipices and meandering through groves and small oval meadows. Its voice I distinctly heard, giving no tidings of heavy falls; but cascade tones, and those of foaming rapids, were in it, fused into harmony as smooth as the wind-music of the pines. The opposite wall of the cafion, mainly made up of the ends of ridges shorn off abruptly by the great Tuolumne glacier that once flowed past them, presents a series of elaborately sculptured precipices, like those of Yosemite Valley. Yet, sublime as is the scenery of this magnificent cafion, it offers no violent contrasts to the rest of the landscape; for the mountains beyond rise gradually higher in corresponding grandeur, and tributary canons come in from the ice- fountains of the summits, that are every way worthy of the trunk canon. Many a spiry peak rises in sharp relief against the sky; in front are domes innumerable,' and broad, whale-backed ridges, darkly fringed about their bases with - pines, through openings in which I could here and there discern the green of meadows and the flashes of bright eye- lakes. There was no stretching away of any part of this divine landscape into dimness, nor possible division of it into back, and middle, and foreground. All its mountains appeared equally near, like the features of one face, on which the sun was gazing kindly, ripening and mellowing it like autumn fruit. The forces that shaped the mountains- grinding out canons and lake- basins, sharpening peaks and crests, digging out domes from the inclosing rocks - carving their plain flanks into their present glorious forms, may be seen at their work at many points in the high Sierra. From where I was seated, sphinx-like, on the brink of the mighty wall, I had extensive views of the channels of five immense tributary glaciers that came in from the summits toward the north-east. Everyone of these five ice-rivers had been sufficiently powerful to thrust their heads down into the very bottom of the main Tuolumne glacier. I could also trace portions of the courses of smaller tributaries, whose canons terminated a thousand feet above the bottom of the trunk cafion. So fully are the lives of these vanished glaciers recorded upon the clean, unblurred pages of the mountains, that it is difficult to assure ourselves that we do not actually see them, and feel their icy breath. As I gazed, notwithstanding the kindly sunshine, the waving of grass, and the humming of flies, the stupendous cafion at my feet filled again with creeping ice, I873-] THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. H3 winding in sublime curves around massive mountain brows its white surface sprinkled with many a gray bowlder, and traversed with many a yawning crevasse. The wide basins of the summits were heaped with fountain - snow, glowing white in the thin sunshine, or blue in the shadows cast from black, spiry peaks. The last days of this glacial winter are not yet past, so young is our world. I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day. By the time the glaciers were melted from my mind, the sun was nearing the horizon. Looking once more at the Tuolumne, glistening far beneath, I was seized with an invincible determination to descend the cation-wall to the bottom. Unable to discover any way that I cared to try, from where I stood, I ran back along the ridge by which I approached the valley, then westward about a mile, and clambered out upon another point that stood boldly forward into the cation. From here I had a commanding view of a small side-cafion on my left, running down at a steep angle; which I judged, from the character of the opposite wall, might possibly be practicable all the way. Then I hastened back among the latest sun-shadows to my camp in the spruce-trees, resolved to make an attempt to penetrate the heart of the Great Cafion next day. I awoke early, breakfasted, and waited for the dawn. The thin air was frosty, but, knowing that I would be warm in climbing, I tightened my belt, and set out in my shirt-sleeves, limb-loose as a pugilist. By the time I reached the mouth of the narrow cafion-way I had chosen, the sun had touched all the peaks with beamless light. I was exhilarated by the pure, divine wildness that imbued mountain and sky, and I could not help shouting as I dashed down the topmost curves of the cafion, there covered with a dense plush of ca- rex, easy and pleasant to the tread. After accomplishing a descent of four or five hundred feet, I came to a small mirror-lake set here on the slanting face of the canon upon a kind of shelf. This side - canon was formed by a small glacier, tributary to the main Tuolumne glacier, which, in its descent, met here with a very hard seamless bar of granite, that extended across its course, compelling it to rise, while the softer granite in front of it was eroded and carried away, thus forming a basin for the waters of the cafion stream. The bar or dam is beautifully molded and polished, giving evidence of tremendous pressure. Below the lake, both the sides and bottom of the cafion became rougher, and I was compelled to scramble down and around a large number of small precipices, fifty or a hundred feet high, that crossed the cafion, one above another, like gigantic stairs. Below the foot of the stairs are extensive willow-tangles, growing upon rough slopes of sharp-angled rocks, through which the stream mumbles and gropes its way, most of the time out of sight. These tangles are too dense to walk among, even if they grew upon a smooth bottom, and too tall and flexible to walk upon. Crinkled and loosely felted as they are by the pressure of deep snow for half the year, they form more impenetrable jungles than I ever encountered in the swamps of Florida. In descending, one may possibly tumble and crush over them in some way, but to ascend them, with their longer branches presented against you like bayonets, is very nearly impossible. In the midst of these tangles, and along their margins, 144 THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. [August, small garden-like meadows occur where the stream has been able to make a level deposit of soil. They are planted with luxuriant carices, whose long, arching leaves wholly cover the ground. Out of these rise splendid larkspurs six to eight feet high, columbines, lilies, and a few polygonums and erigerons. In these moist garden - patches, so thoroughly hidden, the bears like to wallow like hogs. I found many places that morning where the bent and squeezed sedges showed that I had disturbed them, and knew I was likely at any moment to come upon a cross mother with her cubs. Below the region of beargardens and willow-tangles, the canon becomes narrow and smooth, the smoothness being due to the action of snow- - avalanches that sweep down from the mountains above and pour through this steep and narrow portion like torrents of water. 1 had now accomplished a descent of nearly 2,500 feet from the top, and there remained about 2,000 feet to be accomplished before I reached the river. As I descended this smooth portion, I found that its bottom became more and more steeply inclined, and I halted to scan it closely, hoping to discover some way of avoiding it altogether, by passing around on either of the sides. But this I quickly decided to be impossible, the sides being apparently as bare and seamless as the bottom. I then began to creep down the smooth incline, depending mostly upon my hands, wetting them with my tongue, and striking them flatly upon the rock to make them stick by atmospheric press-, ure. In this way I very nearly reached a point where a seam comes down to the bottom in an easy slope, which would enable me to escape to a portion of the main wall that I knew must be climba- ble from the number of live-oak bushes growing upon it. But after cautiously measuring the steepness-scrutinizing it again and again, and trying my wet hands upon it-both mind and limbs declared it unsafe, for the least slip would insure a tumble of hundreds of feet. I was, therefore, compelled to retrace my devious slides and leaps up the cafion, making a vertical rise of about 500 feet, in order that I might reach a point where I could climb out to the main cafion-wall, my only hope of reaching the bottom that day being by picking my way down its face. I knew from my observations of the previous day that this portion of the cafion was crossed by well-developed planes of cleavage, that prevented the formation of smooth vertical precipices of more than a few hundred feet in height, and the same in width. These may usually be passed without much difficulty. After two or three hours more of hard scrambling, I at length stood among cool shadows on the river-bank, in the heart of the great unexplored canon, having made a descent of about 4,500 feet, the bottom of this portion of the cafion above the level of the sea being quite 4,600 feet. The canon is here fully 200 yards wide (about twice the size of the Merced at Yosemite), and timbered richly with li- bocedrus and pine. A beautiful reach stretches away from where 1 sat resting, its border-trees leaning toward each other, making a long arched lane, down which the joyous waters sung in foaming rapids. Stepping out of the river- grove to a small sandy flat, I obtained a general view of the cafion-walls, rising to a height of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet, composed of rocks of every form of which Yosemites are made. About a mile up the cafion, on the south side, there is a most imposing rock, nearly related in form to the Yosemite Half- Dome. The side-cation by which I descended looked like an insignificant notch or groove in the main wall, though not less than 700 or 800 feet deep in most places. It is one of the many small glacier - canons that are always found 1873] THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. HS upon the south sides of trunk canons when they have a direction approaching to east and west. The continuity of the north walls of such trunk canons is also broken by side-canons, but those of the north side are usually much larger, and have a more steady and determined direction, being related to cations that reach back to high glacier-fountains; while many of those of the south side may be strictly local. The history of their formation is easily read: they were eroded by the action of small, lingering glaciers that dwelt in the shade of the walls, long years after the exposed sun-beaten north walls were dry and bare. These little south- side canons are apt to be cut off high above the bottom of the trunk cafion, because the glaciers that made them were swept round, and carried away by the main trunk glacier, at heights determined by the respective forces of their currents. This should always- be taken into consideration when we are weighing the probabilities of being able to reach the bottom of a trunk cafion by these tributaries. Immediately opposite the point I descended are "royal arches" like those of Yosemite, formed by the breaking-up and removal of a portion of a number of the concentric layers of a dome. All of the so-called "royal arches" of this region are produced in the same way. About a mile farther down the cafion, I came to the mouth of a tributary that enters the trunk cafion on the north. Its glacier must have been of immense size, for it eroded its channel down to a level with the bottom of the main canon. The rocks of both this tributary and of the main canon present traces of all kinds of ipe-action-moraines, polished and striated surfaces, and rocks of special forms. Just at the point where this large tributary enters the trunk cafion, there is a corresponding increase in size and change in direction of the latter. In deed, after making a few corrections that are obviously required, for planes of cleavage, differences of hardness, etc., in the rocks concerned, the direction, size, and form of any main cafion below a tributary are always resultants of the forces of the glaciers that once occupied them, and this signifies that glaciers make their own chatmels. In front of this great tributary the cafion is about half a mile wide, and nobly gardened with groves and meadows. The level and luxuriant groves almost always found at the mouths of large tributaries are very distinct in appearance and history from the strips and patches of forest that adorn the walls of canons. The soil upon which the former grow is reformed moraine matter, collected, mixed, and spread out in lake-basins by streams. The trees are closely grouped into villages, social and trim; while those of the walls are roughish, and scattered like the settlements of the country. Some of these lake-basin groves are breezy from the way the winds are compelled to tumble and flow, but most are calm at the bottom of pits of air. I pushed on down .the canon a couple of miles farther, passing over leafy level floors, buried in shady greenwood, and over hot sandy flats covered with the common pteris, the sturdiest of ferns, that bearswith patience the hot sun of Florida and the heavy snows of the high Sierra. Along the river-bank there are abundance of azaleas and brier-roses growing in thickets. In open spots, there is a profusion of golden composite. Tall grasses brushed my shoulders, and yet taller lilies and columbines rung their bells above my head. Nor was there any lack of familiar birds and flies, bees and butterflies. Myriads of sunny wings stirred all the air into music. The stellar-jay, garrulous and important, flitted from pine to pine; squirrels were gathering nuts; woodpeckers hammered the dead limbs; water-ousels 146 THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. [August, sung divinely on wet bowlders among the rapids and the robin - redbreast of the orchards was everywhere. Here was no field, nor camp, nor ruinous cabin, nor hacked trees, nor down-trodden flowers, to disenchant the Godful solitude. Neither did I discover here any trace or hint of lawless forces. Among these mighty cliffs and domes there is no word of chaos, or of desolation every rock is as elaborately and thoughtfully carved and finished as a crystal or shell. I followed the river three miles. In this distance it makes a vertical descent of about 300 feet, which it accomplishes by rapids. I would fain have lingered here for months, could I have lived with the bears on cherries and berries, and found bedding and blanketing like theirs. I thought of trying their board and lodging for a few days; but at length, as I was in my shirt-sleeves and without food, I began my retreat. Let those who become breathless in ascending a few stairs, think of climbing these Yosemite attics to a bed 5,000 feet above the basement. I pushed up the first 3,000 feet almost without stopping to take breath, making only momentary halts to look at striated surfaces, or to watch the varying appearances of peaks and domes as they presented themselves at different points. / As I neared the summit I became very tired, and the last thousand feet seemed long indeed, although I began to rest frequently, turning to see the setting sun feeding the happy rosy mountains. I reached the top of the wall at sunset; then I had only to skim heedlessly along a smooth horizontal mile to camp. I made a fire and cooked my supper, which, with me, means steeping a tin- cupful of tea, and eating a craggy bowlder of bread. How few experience profound mountain weariness and mountain hunger! No healthy man who delivers himself into the hands of Nature can possibly doubt the doubleness of his life. Soul and body receive separate nourishment and separate exercise, and speedily reach a stage of development wherein each is easily known apart from the other. Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves. Our torpid souls are hopelessly entangled with our torpid bodies, and not only is there a confused mingling of our own souls with our own bodies, but we hardly possess a separate existence from our neighbors. The life of a mountaineer is favorable to the development of soul - life, as well as limb-life, each receiving abundance of exercise and abundance of food. We little suspect the great capacity that our flesh has for knowledge. Oftentimes in climbing cafion-walls I have come to polished slopes near the heads of precipices that seemed to be too steep to be ventured upon. After scrutinizing them, and carefully noting every dint and scratch that might give hope for a foothold, I have decided that they were unsafe. Yet my limbs, possessing a separate sense, would be of a different opinion, after they also had examined the descent, and confidently have set out to cross the condemned slopes against the remonstrances of my other will. My legs sometimes transport me to camp, in the darkness, over cliffs and through bogs and forests that are inaccessible to city legs during the day, even when piloted by the mind which owns them. In like manner the soul sets forth at times upon rambles of its own. Brooding over some vast mountain landscape, or among the spiritual countenances of mountain flowers, our bodies disappear, our mortal, coils come off without .any shuffling, and we blend into the rest of , Nature, utterly blind to the boundaries that measure human quantities into separate individuals. But it is after both the body and soul of a mountaineer have 1873-] THE GREAT TUOLUMNE CANON. 147 worked hard, and enjoyed much, that they are most palpably separate. Our weary limbs, lying restingly among the pine-needles, make no attempt to follow after or sympathize with the nimble spirit, that, apparently glad of the opportunity, runs off alone down the steep gorges, along the beetling cliffs, or away among the peaks and glaciers of the farthest landscapes, or into realms that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; and when at length we are ready to return home to our other self, we scarcely for a moment know in what direction to seek for it. I have often been unable to make my muscles move at such times. I have ordered my body to rise and go to bed, when it seemed to me as if the nerves concerned were cut, and that my soul- telegram had not reached the muscles at all. Few persons have anything like an adequate conception of the abundance, strength, and tender loveliness of the plants that inhabit these so-called frightful gorges. Had I been able, in descending this one small side-canon, to "pluck up by the spurs " one of each of the mountain-pines that I met, together with one of each of the other qpne'.-bear- ing trees, my big resiny bouquet would have consisted of, first, the short straggling Pinus flexilis, then P. contorta, P.ponderosa, P. ?no?iticola, and P. La?n- bertiana two spruces - the elegant drooping Abies Hookeriana, and the noble A. Douglassii; the burly brown- barked Juniperus occide?italis, the grand Libocedrus decurrens, and the two sil-. ver firs, Picea amabilis and P. grandis. Had we gathered the shrubs, we would have had two maples, four willows, two dogwoods, two honeysuckles, three man- zanitas, one kalmia, one mountain-ash, one amelanchier, one vaccinium, one ledum, two ceanothus, one bryanthus, one cassiope, two spiraeas, one rose, two brambles, one azalea, one kamnus, three currants, and a few others. This little cafion is a botanical garden, with dwarf arctic-willows not two inches high at one end, bush composites and wandy half-tropical grasses at the other; the two ends only half a day apart, yet among its miniature bogs, prairies, and heathy moorlands, the botanist may find representatives of as many climates as he would in traveling from Greenland to Florida. The next morning after my raid in the Tuolumne country, I passed back over the border to Merced, glad that I had seen so much, and glad that so much was so little of the whole. The grand rocks, I .said, of this Tuolumne Yosemite are books never yet opened; and, after studying the mountains of the Merced basin, I shall go to them as to a library, where all kinds of rock-structure and rock - formation will be explained, and where I shall yet discover a thousand water-falls. 148 UPON THE PARAPET. UPON THE PARAPET. The sun https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1078/thumbnail.jpg