Hetch HetchyValley.
I873-] JUSTIFIABLE FICTION. 41 out, ' Don't shoot this way!' When the barrels of both revolvers are emptied, the combatants clinch, and, as they imagine, cut each other all to pieces with bowie-knives; although, when lights are brought, it turns out to be somebody else. Then the two r...
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Scholarly Commons
1873
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| Summary: | I873-] JUSTIFIABLE FICTION. 41 out, ' Don't shoot this way!' When the barrels of both revolvers are emptied, the combatants clinch, and, as they imagine, cut each other all to pieces with bowie-knives; although, when lights are brought, it turns out to be somebody else. Then the two royal Bengals shake hands, fraternize over a drink, and go off together to the gunsmith's to get their pistols reloaded. The survivors pick up the dead and wounded. There is a great deal of talk over the affair for several days. The bodies are kept until Sunday. Then there is a splendid funeral. The Odd Fellows, the Masons, the military companies, and the temperance societies, all turn out, with music and banners. The Sunday-school children, dressed in white, appear in the procession, singing, 'There is a happy land, far, far away,' etc. The minister preaches a very affecting discourse, and is very careful not to say anything which may wound the feelings of the two Bengal tigers, who stand in the front pew overlooking the coffins, as chief mourners, holding together by their left hands the same hymn-book, as they sing out of it, while the right of either grasps his revolver, ready to send a ball through the clerical organization, should he say anything in the funeral sermon personally offensive to them. Everybody for twenty miles around comes on horseback and in buggies. The saloons and shops do a good business, and the day commonly winds up with a grand ball and supper. All the young ladies are proud to dance with the two Bengals; all the young men envy them, and resolve to kill somebody at the first convenient opportunity. Before morning, there are probably two or three more 'fatal affrays,' and so the life and excitement peculiar to our free, easy, unconventional society is sustained, from month to month and year to year. " When all this is over, a subscription is generally set on foot in the camp for erecting monuments over the graves, and Vol. XI.-4. when the money is all raised, the man to whom it is intrusted goes to San Francisco to buy the marbles, and there he falls in with old friends, and drinks, sprees, and gambles all the money away. If he comes back and makes confession, either we blow the top of his head off, or we say: ' No matter. If you had a good time, it is just as well. Bob, Jim, and Tom will rest quite as easy without any monuments.' Then we put over them a cheap wooden tombstone, with a pretty verse painted on it. These boards} after a few years, rot away at the lower end, and the goats and cows, pastured in our camp burying-ground, rub against them and knock them over, and finally we gather and split them up for stove kindlings." They liked this sketch of California life. They relished it. They picked its very bones clean. At a certain social gathering, the name of Joaquin Miller was introduced. " Miller has been engaged in some affrays, I suppose" said a gentleman to me. I said, "He has slain many men." I burden Miller with every sort of crime. It does him no injury, here. A little blood gives his poems a game relish. "Do you know Miller?" he asked. " I do. He was my friend; but. ." Here I became agitated, and corrugated my brows. I continued - "I wish never to meet that man again. If I do ." Here my right hand traveled involuntarily toward my derringer-pocket. "The truth is, we once fought, in California, with double-barreled shot-guns, at six paces. We have not done fighting, yet - the war has scarcely begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north . I beg your pardon! but if we meet again-and no matter where we meet - the affair must be brought to a final conclusion. I trust the coming affray may never occur in any quiet Brit- m& \ 00 , 42 HETCH- HETCHY VALLEY. t) /l. [J ULY, Jl ish household; because I can not back public demand that we smell of blood, down, or back out of the customs of my bowie-knives, and the sulphurous vapors native West. With us, the contingencies involved by the doctrine of personal responsibility know no suspension by reason of time, place, circumstance, or company. We will fight, be it in the church, the theatre, or by the hospitable fireside of the stranger. And among our people, upon such occasions, everyone feels in duty and honor bound to take all the chances of being hit by the stray bullets which the combatants may distribute among the company." British society insists on providing this bloody niche for the western American. Why not fill it? The British of the pistol. When a man finds, ready made for him, such a robe of dark and tragic hue, should he not wear it-especially when the public insist on admiring him wrapped, stern, bloody, vindictive, and sanguinary, therein ? I like it. I never harmed man, woman, or child; yet, now, I feel permeated by the reckless, life-scorning, murder-loving spirit of my countrymen. I count my victims by the score; I see them lying weltering in the usual gore; I travel through my own private necropolis I visit my own private dead-house, full of my slain, as yet unclaimed, unrecognized. HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. THE LOWER TUOLUMNE YOSEMITE. 1 MONG the endless variety of natural forms, not one stands solitary and unrelated. Though no two are exactly alike, and each possesses a certain individuality, the partition-walls are so thin, that, to the eye of Science, they form either one great unit or a vast company of individuals harmoniously correlated. Ignorance and a love of the marvelous incline us to find anomalous curiosities in every direction; and of the bands of pilgrims who come seeking for fountain beauty into our little Yosemite world, the greater part go away under the impression that here we have an exceptional creation, destined to remain the latest, most uncompanioned wonder of the earth. Cool-headed scientists, standing on the valley floor, and looking up to its massive walls, have been unable to interpret its history. The magnitude of the characters in which the account of its origin is recorded, has prevented its being read. "We have interrogated" says the sci entist, "all the known valley-producing causes. The torrent has replied, ' It was not I ;' the glacier has answered, ' It was not I;' and the august forces that fold and crevasse whole mountain chains disclaim all knowledge of it." But, during my few years' acquaintance with it, I have found it not full of chaos, uncompanioned and parentless. I have found it one of many Ijosemite valleys, which differ not more than one pine-tree differs from another. Attentive study and comparison of these throws a flood of light upon the origin of the Yosemite; uniting her, by birth, with sister valleys distributed through all the principal river-basins of the range. / 1, The Lower Tuolumne Yosemite, that I am about to sketch - called "Hetch- Hetchy" by the Indians--is said to have been discovered by one Joseph Screech, a hunter, in the year 1850, one year before Captain Boling and his party discovered Yosemite, in their pursuit of I873-] HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. 43 marauding Indians. It lies in a northwesterly direction from Yosemite, at a distance of eighteen or twenty miles; but by any trail practicable with horses the distance is not less than forty miles. My first excursion to Hetch-Hetchy was undertaken in the early portion of November, 1871. I had devoted the previous summer to explorations among the canons which radiate from Yosemite, reserving Hetch - Hetchy for the last raid of the season. I went alone, my outfit consisting of a pair of blankets and a quantity of bread and coffee. There is a weird charm in carrying out such a free and pathless plan as I had projected: passing through untrodden forests, from cation to cation, from mountain to mountain constantly coming upon new beauties and new truths. Thus, in leaving Yosemite, before its brown meadows and yellow groves were out of sight, over the shoulder of Tissiack rose Mount Starr King, robed with grand folds of forest, and girdled with a circle of guardian domes; beyond were the red-and- purple mountains of the Merced group, all hushed and asleep in the clear, blue sky; and yet beyond were mountains nameless and unnumbered, growing more indistinct till they melted from sight. As I drifted over the dome- paved basin of Yosemite Creek, Hetch- Hetchy and Yosemite were alike forgotten, and sunset found me only three miles back from the brow of El Capitan, near the head of a round, smooth gap- the deepest groove in the El Capitan ridge. Here I laid down, and thought of the time when the groove in which I rested was being ground away at the bottom of a vast ice-sheet, that flowed over all the Sierra like a slow wind. It is now forested with magnificent firs (Picea amabilis), many of which are over 200 feet in height, growing upon soil not derived from the solid granite by the slow rusting action of rain or frost, or by the more violent erosion of torrents of water, but by the steady crushing and grinding of glaciers. Besides supporting so.noble a forest, this moraine deposit gives birth to a happy-voiced tributary of Yosemite Creek. My huge camp-fire glowed like a sun; and, warm in its light, against the deepest shadows a splendid circumference of firs stood out and lived in a consciousness and individuality that they can seldom attain in the penetrating radiance of day. My happy brook sung confidingly, and by its side I made my bed of rich, spicy boughs, elastic and warm. Upon so luxurious a couch, in such a forest, and by such a fire and brook, sleep is gentle and pure. Wild-wood sleep is always refreshing; and to those who receive the mountains into their souls, as well as into their sight-living with them clean and free- sleep is a beautiful death, from which we arise every dawn into a new-created world, to begin a new life, in a new body. In my second day's journey, extending to the northernmost tributary of the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne, I crossed a great number of glacier canons, of moderate depth, belonging to the richly sculptured basins of Cascade Creek and the Tuolumne River. The ice- polish upon the bottoms and sides of these canons is as perfect, in many places, as if the glaciers which accomplished it had been removed but yesterday. It burns and spangles in the sun- rays like the still surface of a lake, and is delicately striated; enabling one, by close observation, to ascertain the direction in which the bottom of the producing glacier moved. In crossing these bright canons, the clank and ring of my mountain-shoes is ofttimes hushed in the loose dirt of a moraine, or in the spongy velvet of one of those glacier meadows which abound in all kinds of places-at the bottoms of the canons, or on their sides, or on the top of their dividing ridges. The heads of these basins are prevented from 44 HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. reaching to the summit mountains of the range by the intervening basin of Yosemite Creek and the canon of the main Tuolumne River; therefore they contain no lofty mountains, but their surfaces are nobly diversified and adorned by meadows and bright eye-lakes, moraines and forests, -and a thousand cascades, harmoniously measured and combined by the great Landscape-Builder, whose gardens, at all stages of their development, are units of finished beauty. My second camp, in a fringe of Tuolumne pines, was as beautiful as my. first, with abundance of balsam-filled logs for fire, and of the soothing hushes of water for sleep. In the morning, after climbing a long, timbered slope, and crossing a few bushy, groove-shaped valleys, I came suddenly on the top of the wall of the main Tuolumne Canon, a mile or two above Hetch- Hetchy Valley. The view from this point is one of the very grandest I ever beheld. Immediately beneath me-down, ■ i- UU*-Y, Like symbols of a desolate future, the sunburned domes, naves, and peaks, lie dead and barren beneath a thoughtless, motionless sky; weed-like trees'darken their gray hollows and wrinkles, with scarcely any cheering effect. To quote from a Boston professor": ffThe heights are bewildering, the distances overpowering, the stillness oppressive, and the utter barrenness and desolation indescribable.*' But if you go to the midst of these bleached bones of mountains, and dwell confidingly and waitingly with them, be assured that every death - taint will speedily disappear; the hardest rocks will pulse with life, secrets of divine beauty and love will be revealed to you by lakes, and meadows, and a thousand flowers, and an atmosphere of spirit be felt brooding over all. \f ■ I feasted in a general way, for awhile, upon these grand Tuolumne mountains, noting rock-forms of special significance in mountain sculpture, and tracing the pathways of glaciers that once flowed as down, at the depth of more than 4,000 tributaries into the grand trunk glacier Coh'-j (•« feet-lay a yellow, sun-lit ribbon, with a silvery thread in the middle. That ribbon was a strip of autumn-colored meadow, and the silver thread is the main Tuolumne River. The opposite wall of the cation rises in precipices, steep and angular, like those of Yosemite; and from this wall, as a sort of foundation, extends a most sublime wilderness of mountains, rising rapidly higher, dome over dome, crest over crest, to a line of snowy peaks on the summit of the range. Of all this glorious congregation of mountains, Castle Peak, 12,500 feet high, is king-robed with lights and shades, dipping unnumbered spires deep into the thin blue sky, and maintaining, amid noble companions, a perfect and commanding individuality. To most persons unacquainted with the genius of the Sierra Nevada-especially to those whose lives have been spent in shadows - the impression produced by such a landscape is dreary and hopeless. of the main Tuolumne Canon, on a moraine of which I was then standing. A short distance farther down, I came upon a very interesting group of glacial records, that led me away a considerable distance from the trail. Returning,'11 hastened down the cation-side, raising many admonitory shouts for the benefit of Mother Bruin and her babes, whose tracks I saw in the path before me. I could not avoid thinking, at times, that so remarkably well-worn and well-directed a trail must formerly have been laid out by the Indians; but on reaching a long slope of debris near the bottom of the main cation, I observed that it suddenly branched, and faded in all directions in dense chapparal, which Indian trails never do. But when I reached the river meadows, its cause was apparent enough, in groves of black-oak-under which the ground was colored brown with acorns - and fields of pine - trees 00*2%1873-] HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. 45 and manzanita-bushes, which produce the nuts and berries of which they are so fond. An acorn orchard at one terminus, nut and berry orchards at the other. At sundown, the drooping plumes of a close group of libocedrus trees furnished me with abundance of spicy bedding. The sandy ground was covered with bear-tracks; but that gave me no anxiety, because I knew that bears never eat men where acorns and berries abound. Night came in most impressive stillness. My blazing fire illumined the brown columns of my guardian trees, and from between their bulging roots a few withered breckans and golden-rods leaned forward, as if eager to drink the light. Here and there a star glinted through the shadowy foliage overhead, and in front I could see a portion of the mighty cation walls massed in darkness against the sky; making me feel as if at the bottom of the sea. The near, soothing hush of the river joined faint, broken songs of cascades. I became drowsy, and, on the incense-like breath of my green pillow, I floated away into sleep. | ■ , The following morning, leaping out of the pine-grove and into the meadow, I had my first wide view of the walls, from the depths of Hetch-Hetchy. It is estimated that about 10,000 White persons have visited the Yosemite Valley. If this multitude could be set down suddenly in Hetch-Hetchy, perhaps not one per cent, of the number would entertain the slightest doubt of their being in Yosemite. They would find themselves among rocks, water-falls, meadows, and groves, of Yosemite size and kind, grouped in Yosemite style and, amid such a vast assemblage of sublime mountain forms, only acute observers, and those most familiar with the Yosemite Valley, would be able to note special differences. The only questions they would be likely to put would be, "What part of the valley is this ?" " Where are the hotels?" The Yosemite Valley is situated halfway between the foot-hills and the top of the range; so, also, is Hetch-Hetchy Valley. The Merced River meanders leisurely down through Yosemite; so does the Tuolumne River through Hetch- Hetchy. The bottom of Yosemite is about 4,000 feet above the level of the sea; the bottom of Hetch-Hetchy is about 3,800. In both, the walls are of gray granite, and rise precipitously from a level bottom, with but little debris along their bases. Standing boldly out into the valley, from the southern wall, is the rock Ko- la-ua-seeming still to bid defiance to the mighty glacier that once flowed grind- ingly over and around it. Tall pines and spruces feather its base, and a few tough, storm - loving ones have made out to climb upon its head. It is the most independent and most picturesque rock in the valley, forming the outermost of a group corresponding in every way with the Cathedral Rocks of Yosemite. On the authority of the State Geological Survey, it is 2,270 feet in height. That strength of structure and form which enabled it to withstand the thrust of the ice, is still conspicuous; subsequent erosion of every kind, acting incessantly or periodically throughout thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands ) of years, having accomplished scarcely any perceptible change; and the same is generally true of all the more prominent rocks in and around the valley. Wherever a rock of sufficient hardness has been freely exposed to glacial friction, and has been subsequently acted upon by the exceptional forces of streams of water, or avalanches of bowlders, or snow, it still presents a polished and striated surface of dazzling brightness, as if it never had received the after- touch of a single storm. Facing Kolana, on the opposite side HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. [July, of the valley, is a rock 1,800 feet high, which presents a sheer, precipitous front like El Capitan, of Yosemite; offering, as does its grand counterpart, a great problem to the student of physical geology. Over the massive brow of this sublime rock flows a stream, which makes, without exception, the most graceful fall I have ever beheld. Its Indian name is Tu-ee-u-ld-la; which, being too long and difficult for common use, we will contract to Lala. From the brow of the cliff it leaps, clear and free, for a thousand feet; then half disappears in a rage of spattering cascades among the bowlders of an earthquake talus. Toward the end of summer, it becomes entirely dry, because its head streams do not reach back to the lasting snows of the summits. When I last saw it (in June, 1872), it was indescribably lovely. The only fall that I know with which it can possibly be compared is the Yosemite Bridal Veil; but it far excels even that fall in its elements of peculiar beauty- floating, swaying gracefulness, and tender repose. For if we attentively observe the Bridal Veil, even toward the end of summer, when its waters are less abundant, we may discover, when the wind blows aside the outer folds of mist, dense, hard - headed comets shooting downward with tremendous energy-revealing the earnestness and fixedness of purpose with which it seeks the new world below; but from the top of the cliff where the Hetch-Hetchy Veil first floats free, all the way to the bottom, its snowy form is in perfect repose, like a plume of white cloud, becalmed in bright sky. Moreover, Bridal Veil dwells far back in a shadow-haunted corner of the valley wall, and is therefore inaccessible to the main wind-river of the valley, having to depend for its principal gestures upon broken waves and whirlpools of air, that ofttimes compel it to sway and curve in a somewhat fitful and teasing manner; but the Hetch-Hetchy Veil, be ing fully exposed to the principal wind- stream of its valley, is ever ready to yield graceful compliance to the demands and suggestions .of calm or storm. Most persons, unacquainted with the behavior of mountain streams when they are traveling loose in the air, down over vertical precipices, would naturally think that, in theirheadlong career, they would at once lose all self-control, and be broken up into a noisy chaos of mist and spray; yet no supposition could be more universally wrong. Imagine yourself in Hetch-Hetchy. It is a bright day in June; the air is drowsy with flies; the pines sway dreamily, and you are sunk, shoulder-deep, in grasses and flowers. Looking northward across the valley, you behold, rising abruptly out of the grass and trees, a bare granite wall, 1,800 feet high, all glowing with sun-gold, from its green-grovy base to its brow in blue air. At wide intervals along its dizzy edge stand a few venturesome pines, looking wistfully outward; and before its sunny face, immediately in front of you, Lala waves her silvery scarf, gloriously embroidered, and burning with white sun-fire in every tissue. In approaching the tremendous precipice, her waters flow fast but confidingly in their smooth granite channel. At their first leap out into the air, a little eagerness appears; but this eagerness is speedily hushed in divine repose, and their tranquil progress to the base of the cliff is like that of a downy feather in a still room. Now observe the marvelous distinctness and delicacy of the various sun- filled tissues into which her waters are woven. They sift and float down the face of that grand gray rock in so leisurely and unconfused a manner, and with such exquisite gentleness, that we can examine their texture and patterns as we would a piece of embroidery held in the hand. Near the top, where the water is more dense, you see groups of cometlike forms shooting outward and down- I873-] HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. 47 ward - their solid heads separate and glowing with silver light, but their long, streaming tails interlaced among delicate shadows-constantly forming, constantly dissolving, worn out by the friction produced in rushing through the air. Occasionally one of these comets, of larger size, shoots far out, as if eager to escape from the milky-way of the fall, into free space, to swing around the sun; but most of them disappear a few hundred feet from the top, giving place to a glorious abundance of loose-flowing drapery, ever varying, like clouds, in texture and pattern, yet clear and unconfused as the grandly sculptured wall in front of which it is waving. Near the bottom, the width of the fall has increased from 25 to 100 feet. Here it is composed of yet finer tissue, that is far more air than water, yet still without a trace of disorder--air, water, and sunlight, woven into cloth that spirits might wear. Do you not feel that so glorious a fall would be more than sufficient to drape with water-beauty the one side of any valley ? But what think you when I tell, that, side by side with it, down thunders the great Hetch-Hetchy Fall - so near, that, standing in front of them, you have both in full view. This fall is called Wa-pa-ma by the Indians. It is about 1,800 feet in height, and, seen immediately in front, appears to be nearly vertical; . but, viewed in profile from farther up the valley, it is seen to be considerably inclined. Its location is similar to that of the Yosemite Fall, but the stream that feeds it is much larger than Yosemite Creek. No two falls could be more utterly unlike, to make one perfect whole, like rock and cloud, like sea and shore. Lala speaks low like a pine-tree half asleep; Wapama, in downright thunder and roar. Lala descends so softly that you scarcely feel sure she will alight at all; Wapama descends with the weight and energy of a rock avalanche, and with that weight and energy so fully displayed, that you half expect him to penetrate the ground like a hard shot. Lala dwells confidingly with the winds, withouttouch- ing the rock, except when blown against it; but Wapama lives back in a jagged gorge, unreached by the winds, which, if they could go to him, would find him , inflexibly bent on following his own rocky way. Lala whispers, "He dwells in peace; " Wapama is the thunder of His chariot-wheels in power. This noble pair are the principal falls of the valley. A few other small streams come over the walls, swooping from crag to crag with bird-like song--too small to be much noticed of men, yet as essential to the perfection of the grand harmonies as the loudest-voiced cataracts of the range. That portion of the wall immediately above Wapama corresponds with astonishing minuteness, both in outlines and details of sculpture, with the same relative portion of the Yosemite wall. In the neighborhood of the Yosemite fall, the steep face of the wall is broken and terraced by two conspicuous benches, timbered with live-oak, and extending in ahorizontal direction at the heights of 500 and 1,500 feet above the bottom of the valley. Two benches, similarly situated and timbered in the same way, occur upon the same relative portion of the Hetch-Hetchy wall, and on no other. The upper end of the Yosemite Valley is closed by the great Half- Dome Rock. The upper end of Hetch-Hetchy is closed in the same way, by a rock differing from Half- Dome only in those features that are directly referable to peculiarities of physical structure, and to the comparative forces and directions of the glaciers which made them. They both occupy angles formed by the confluence of two immense glaciers; a fact whose significance in its bearing upon mountain sculpture and mountain structure can hardly be overrated. HETCH-HETCHY VALLEY. [July, In front of this head-rock, the Tuolumne River forks, just as the Merced forks in front of Half-Dome. The right fork, as you ascend, is the main river, which takes its rise in a distant glacier that rests upon the north side of Mount Lyell. I have not yet followed the left fork to its highest source; but, judging from the general trend of the ridges, as seen from the top of the south wall of the valley, it must be somewhere on or near Castle Peak. Upon the first four miles of this Castle Peak stream there is a most enchanting series of cascades, five in number, scattered along a picturesque gorge, that is deep and narrow, and well filled with shadows. Suppose that you are so fortunate as to be in Hetch-Hetchy during June days, and that you seek the acquaintance of these five falls. You rise and start in the early morning. The river hushes are soon faint and far behind you, lost in the wildly exhilarating tones of the first cascade. You rush away, brushing through the grasses of dry, sandy fiats, clanking over ice-burnished rocks, and in five minutes you shout, "I see it!" and leap to its side. It is a broad fan of white water, half sliding, half leaping down a steep, glossy slope. At the head, the clear waters glide smoothly over the brow; then faster, faster, dashed with foam, burst gloriously into bloom, in a dancing shower of crystal spray. At the bottom you watch the weary stream taking breath and soothing itself, until it again becomes clear, firm water, and sets out, refreshed and singing happily, on its final flow to the river. You linger along its border, drinking its music, and warming in its radiant beauty, as you warm at your camp-fire till at last, reluctantly turning away, you discover, a short distance above, a new water-creature, so specially impressive that you are at once absorbed, and sing with it as part of itself. This cascade is framed in deep rock-walls, painted yellow and red with lichens, fringed along the top with the Sabine pine, and tufted with evergreen-oak. At the bottom, in dewy nooks, are a few ferns, lilies, and fragrant azaleas; and in this fitting granite body dwells its cascade, pure and white, like a visible and happy soul. Three or four hundred yards farther up, you reach the third cascade - the largest of the five. It is formed ofa , close family group of smaller ones, inimitably combined. The most vivid and substantial iris-bow that I ever saw was one that appeared here in June. It seemed to be so firm and elastic in the texture of its flesh, that I could not help wishing I might saw off a section two feet long, and carry it to camp for a pillow. A short distance farther on, the steep- walled gorge disappears, and the bare stream, without any well-marked channel, spreads broad and thin down the side of a smooth granite nave, in a silvery sheet, which measures about 150 feet across at the widest part, and is several hundred yards in length. Its waters are woven, throughout nearly its whole length, into overlapping sheets and fringes, lace-like in structure, thick-sown with diamond-sparks - closely resembling the sheets of cascade tissue that are spread between the Vernal and Nevada falls of Yosemite. Still advancing, you are next excited by a deep, muffled booming, that comes through the trees, and you dash onward across^ flowery openings, and through thickets of dogwood and briers, at a faster and faster pace, encouraged by occasional glimpses of white water, until at length you find the fountain of those deep tones in a mealy fall, with surging rapids both at top and bottom. You are not long in discovering the cause of its wild chords, so powerful for its- size; for the precipice down which it thunders is fretted over all its surface with angular projections, forming polish- 50 NOT A CREATOR. [July, owner, named Smith, who drives stock into it every summer, by a trail which was built by Joseph Screech. It is often called Smith's Valley. Besides Smith's shepherd, the valley is inhabited during the summer by a few Digger Indians, whose cabin and huts form the only improvements. In returning to Yosemite, I left Hetch- Hetchy by the cattle - trail; following it a few miles, then striking straight across the»'mountains five or six miles west of the track by which I entered. During the first night a few inches of snow fell, but I slept safely beneath a cedar-log, and pursued my journey next day, charmed with the universal snow-bloom that was upon every tree, bush, and weed, and upon all the ground, in lavish beauty. I reached home the next day, rejoicing in having added to my mountain wealth one more Yosemite Valley. jS / NOT A CREATOR. THE individual man is a solecism among his fellows. Not only is there no exact physical counterpart of him among the myriads of his kind, but there also is no mental nor moral constitution of the same type. Did not this endless and unconfusing " variety of likeness " exist in Nature, its conception and arrangement would assume the proportions of a gigantic impossibility. The compass of a diversity so marvelous, a fertility of contrasts so exhaustless, as are presented in the lights and shades of human character, confounds the imagination and surpasses the ingenuity of the most comprehensive mind. Figures alike in their general outlines, with a materiality of the same base, are, in the range of human mechanical skill, soon exhausted of all expedients for introducing any dissimilarity of features. The faculty of creation is not a human attribute; although in every line of effort we claim to "originate"--which is but another term for, and means the same as "create" if it means anything. The contemplation of surrounding and already created objects suggests and furnishes copies for all our so-called "originalities." We "originate" only by novelty of combination blending together the features of various things in a single object, which we call new, but whjch is only comparatively, and never intrinsically new. A shape that has had no previous fashion, either in part or in whole, is beyond the art of mortal fabrication. Divested of the faculty of observation and the power of mimicry, human inventiveness would become extinct. Man is not, and never can be, with his present organization, anything more than a master-mimic. The inceptional - or creative-principle is a mystery to his reason, and an impossibility to his will. He can, and does, produce objects that unite in themselves special parts of a hv.ndred different things, and which, therefore, present an originality of outline never before projected, to "excite our special wonder; " but it is, after all, only a novelty in combination, and not a creation. Although man has a comparative infinit https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1091/thumbnail.jpg |
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