Our National Parks - Chapters V-VI



CHAPTER V
THE WILD GARDENS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent. And 
perhaps it is so still, notwithstanding the lowland flora has in great 
part vanished before the farmers' flocks and ploughs. So exuberant was the 
bloom of the main valley of the state, it would still have been 
extravagantly rich had ninety-nine out of every hundred of its crowded 
flowers been taken away,--far flowerier than the beautiful prairies of 
Illinois and Wisconsin, or the savannas of the Southern states. In the 
early spring it was a smooth, evenly planted sheet of purple and gold, one 
mass of bloom more than four hundred miles long, with scarce a green leaf 
in sight.

Still more interesting in the rich and wonderfully varied flora of the 
mountains. Going up the Sierra across the Yosemite Park to the Summit 
peaks, thirteen thousand feet high, you find as much variety in the 
vegetation as in the scenery. Change succeeds change with bewildering 
rapidity, for in a few days you pass through as 

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many climates and floras, ranged one above another, as you would in 
walking along the lowlands to the Arctic Ocean.

And to the variety due to climate there is added that caused by the 
topographical features of the different regions. Again, the vegetation is 
profoundly varied by the peculiar distribution of the soil and moisture. 
Broad and deep moraines, ancient and well weathered, are spread over the 
lower regions, rough and comparatively recent and unweathered moraines 
over the middle and upper regions, alternating with bare ridges and domes 
and glacier-polished pavements, the highest in the icy recesses of the 
peaks, raw and shifting, some of them being still in process of formation, 
and of course scarcely planted as yet.

Besides these main soilbeds there are many others comparatively small, 
reformation of both glacial and weather soils, sifted, sorted out, and 
deposited by running water and the wind on gentle slopes and in all sorts 
of hollows, potholes, valleys, lake basins, etc.,--some in dry and breezy 
situations, others sheltered and kept moist by lakes, streams, and 
waftings of waterfall spray, making comfortable homes for plants widely 
varied. In general, glaciers give soil to high and low places almost 
alike, while water currents are dispensers of special blessings, 
constantly tending to make the ridges poorer and the valleys richer. 
Glaciers mingle all kinds of 

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material together, mud particles and boulders fifty feet in diameter: 
water, whether in oozing currents or passionate torrents, discriminates 
both in the size and shape of the material it carries. Glacier mud is the 
finest meal ground for any use in the Park, and its transportation into 
lakes and as foundations for flowery garden meadows was the first work 
that the young rivers were called on to do. Bogs occur only in shallow 
alpine basins where the climate is cool enough for sphagnum, and where the 
surrounding topographical conditions are such that they are safe, even in 
the most copious rains and thaws, from the action of flood currents 
capable of carrying rough gravel and sand, but where the water supply is 
nevertheless constant. The mosses dying from year to year gradually give 
rise to those rich spongy peat-beds in which so many of our best alpine 
plants delight to dwell. The strong winds that occasionally sweep the high 
Sierra play a more important part in the distribution of special soil-beds 
than is at first sight recognized, carrying forward considerable 
quantities of sand gravel, flakes of mica, etc., and depositing them in 
fields and beds beautifully ruffled and embroidered and adapted to the 
wants of some of the hardiest and handsomest of the alpine shrubs and 
flowers. The more resisting of the smooth, solid, glacier-polished domes 
and ridges can hardly be said to have any soil at all, 

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while others beginning to give way to the weather are thinly sprinkled 
with coarse angular gravel. Some of them are full of crystals,"which as 
the surface of the rock is decomposed are set free, covering the summits 
and rolling down the sides in minute avalanches, giving rise to zones and 
beds of crystalline soil. In some instances the various crystals occur 
only here and there, sprinkled in the gray gravel like daisies in a sod; 
but in others half or more is made up of crystals, and the glow of the 
imbedded or loosely strewn gems and their colored gleams and glintings at 
different times of the day when the sun is shining might well exhilarate 
the flowers that grow among them, and console them for being so completely 
outshone.

These radiant sheets and belts and dome-encircling rings of crystals are 
the most beautiful of all the Sierra soil-beds, while the huge taluses 
ranged along the walls of the great cañons are the deepest and roughest. 
Instead of being slowly weathered and accumulated from the cliffs overhead 
like common taluses, they were all formed suddenly and simultaneously by 
an earthquake that occurred at least three centuries ago. Though thus 
hurled into existence at a single effort, they are the least changeable 
and destructible of all the soil formations in the range. Excepting those 
which were launched directly into the channels of rivers, scarcely one 

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of their wedged and interlocked boulders has been moved since the day of 
their creation, and though mostly made up of huge angular blocks of 
granite, many of them from ten fifty feet cube, trees and shrubs make out 
to live and thrive on them, and even delicate herbaceous plants,--
draperia, collomia, zauschneria, etc.,--soothing their rugged features 
with gardens and groves. In general views of the Park scare a hint is 
given of its floral wealth. Only by patiently, lovingly sauntering about 
in it will you discover that it is all more or less flowery, the forests 
as well as the open spaces, and the mountain tops and rugged slopes around 
the glaciers as well as the sunny meadows.

Even the majestic cañon cliffs, seemingly absolutely flawless for 
thousands of feet and necessarily doomed to eternal sterility, are cheered 
with happy flowers on invisible niches and ledges wherever the slightest 
grip for a root can be found; as if Nature, like an enthusiastic gardener, 
could not resist the temptation to plant flowers everywhere. On high, dry 
rocky summits and plateaus, most of the plants are so small they make but 
little show even when in bloom. But in the opener parts of the main 
forests, the meadows, stream banks, and the level floors of Yosemite 
valleys the vegetation is exceedingly rich in flowers, some of the lilies 
and larkspurs being from eight to ten feet high. And on the 

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upper meadows there are miles of blue gentians and daisies, white and blue 
violets; and great breadths of rosy purple heathworts covering rocky 
moraines with a marvelous abundance of bloom, enlivened by humming-birds, 
butterflies and a host of other insects as beautiful as flowers. In the 
lower and middle regions, also, many of the most extensive beds of bloom 
are in great part made by shrubs,--adenostoma, manzanita, ceanothus, 
chamæbatia, cherry, rose rubus, spiræa, shad, laurel, azalea, honeysuckle, 
calycanthus, ribes, philadelphus, and many others, the sunny spaces about 
them bright and fragrant with mints, lupines, geraniums, lilies, daisies, 
goldenrods, castilleias, gilias, pentstemons, etc.

Adenostoma fasciculatum is a handsome, hardy, heathlike shrub belonging to 
the rose family, flourishing on dry ground below the pine belt, and often 
covering areas of twenty or thirty square miles of rolling sun-beaten 
hills and dales with a dense, dark green, almost impenetrable chaparral, 
which in the distance looks like Scotch heather. It is about six to eight 
feet high, has slender elastic branches, red shreddy bark, needle-shaped 
leaves, and small white flowers in panicles about a foot long, making 
glorious sheets of fragrant bloom in the spring. To running fires it 
offers no resistance, vanishing with the few other flowery shrubs and 
vines and liliaceous plants that grow with it about as fast as dry 

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grass, leaving nothing but ashes. But with wonderful vigor it rises again 
and again in fresh beauty from the root, and calls back to its hospitable 
mansions the multitude of wild animals that had to flee for their lives.

As soon as you enter the pine woods you meet the charming little 
Chamæbatia foliolosa, one of the handsomest of the Park shrubs, next in 
fineness and beauty to the heathworts of the alpine regions. Like 
adenostoma it belongs to the rose family, is from twelve to eighteen 
inches high, has brown bark, slender branches, white flowers like those of 
the strawberry, and thricepinnate glandular, yellow-green leaves, finely 
cut and fernlike, as if unusual pains had been taken in fashioning them. 
Where there is plenty of sunshine at an elevation of three thousand to six 
thousand feet, it makes a close, continuous growth, leaf touching leaf 
over hundreds of acres, spreading a handsome mantle beneath the yellow and 
sugar pines. Here and there a lily rises above it, an arching bunch of 
tall bromus, and at wide intervals a rosebush or clump of ceanothus or 
manzanita, but there are no rough weeds mixed with it--no roughness of any 
sort.

Perhaps the most widely distributed of all the Park shrubs and of the 
Sierra in general, certainly the most strikingly characteristic, are the 
many species of manzanita (Arctostaphylos). 

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Though one species, the Uva-ursa, or bearberry,--the kinikinic of the 
Western Indians,--extends around the world, the greater part of them are 
California. They are mostly from four to ten feet high, round-headed, with 
innumerable branches, brown or red bark, pale green leaves set on edge, 
and a rich profusion of small, pink, narrow-throated, urn-shaped flowers 
like those of arbutus. The branches are knotty, zigzaggy, and about as 
rigid as bones, and the bark is so thin and smooth, both trunk and 
branches seem to be naked, looking as if they had been peeled, polished, 
and painted red. The wood also is red, hard, and heavy.

These grand bushes seldom fail to engage the attention of the traveler and 
hold it, especially if he has to pass through closely planted fields of 
them such as grow on moraine slopes at an elevation of about seven 
thousand feet, and in cañons choked with earthquake boulders; for they 
make the most uncompromisingly stubborn of all chaparral. Even bears take 
pains to go around the stoutest patches of possible, and when compelled to 
force a passage leave tufts of hair and broken branches to mark their way, 
while less skillful mountaineers under like circumstances sometimes lose 
most of their clothing and all their temper.

The manzanitas like sunny ground. On warm ridges and sandy flats at the 
foot of sun-beaten 

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cañon cliffs, some of the tallest specimens have well-defined trunks six 
inches of a foot or more thick, and stand apart in orchard-like growths 
which in bloomtime are among the finest garden sights in the Park. The 
largest I ever saw had a round, slightly fluted trunk nearly four feet in 
diameter, which at a height of only eighteen inches from the ground 
dissolved into a wilderness of branches, rising and spreading to a height 
and width of about twelve feet. In spring every bush over all the 
mountains is covered with rosy flowers, in autumn with fruit. The red 
pleasantly acid berries, about the size of peas,' are like little apples, 
and the hungry mountaineer is glad to eat them, though half their bulk is 
made up of hard seeds. Indians, bears, coyotes, foxes, birds, and other 
mountain people live on them for months.

Associated with manzanita there are six or seven species of ceanothus, 
flowery, fragrant, and altogether delightful shrubs, growing in glorious 
abundance in the forests on sunny or half-shaded ground, up to an 
elevation of about nine thousand feet above the sea. In the sugar-pine 
woods the most beautiful species is C. integerrimus, often called 
California lilac, or deer brush. It is five or six feet high, smooth, 
slender, willowy, with bright foliage and abundance of blue flowers in 
close, showy panicles. Two species, prostatus and procumbens, spread 

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handsome blue-flowered mats and rugs on warm ridges beneath the pines, and 
offer delightful beds to the tired mountaineers. The commonest species, C. 
cordulatus, is mostly restricted to the silver fir belt. It is white-
flowered and thorny, and makes extensive thickets of tangled chaparral, 
far too dense to wade through, and too deep and loose to walk on, though 
it is pressed flat every winter by ten or fifteen feet of snow.

Above these thorny beds, sometimes mixed with them, a very wild, red-
fruited cherry grows in magnificent tangles, fragrant and white as snow 
when in bloom. The fruit is small and rather bitter, not so good as the 
black, puckery chokecherry that grows in the cañons, but thrushes, robins, 
chipmunks like it. Below the cherry tangles, chinquapin and goldcup oak 
spread generous mantles of chaparral, and with hazel and ribes thickets in 
adjacent glens help to clothe and adorn the rocky wilderness, and produce 
food for the many mouths Nature has to fill. Azalea occidentalis is the 
glory of cool streams and meadows. It is from two to five feet high, has 
bright green leaves and a rich profusion of large, fragrant white and 
yellow flowers, which are in prime beauty in June, July, and August, 
according to the elevation (from three thousand to six thousand feet.) 
Only the purple-flowered rhododendron of the redwood forests 

[image caption: AZALEA THICKET, YOSEMITE]

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rivals or surpasses it in superb abounding bloom.

Back a little way from the azalea-bordered streams, a small wild rose 
makes thickets, often several acres in extent, deliciously fragrant on 
dewy mornings and after showers, the fragrance mingled with the music of 
birds nesting in them. And not far from these rose gardens Rubus Nutkanus 
covers the ground with broad velvety leaves and pure white flowers as 
large as those of its neighbor the rose, and finer in texture; followed at 
the end of summer by soft red berries good for bird and beast and man 
also. This is the commonest and the most beautiful of the whole blessed 
flowery fruity genus.

The glory of the alpine region in bloomtime are the heathworts, cassiope, 
bryanthus, kalmia, and vaccinium, enriched here and there by the alpine 
honeysuckle, Lonicera conjugialis, and by the purple-flowered Primula 
suffruticosa, the only primrose discovered in California, and the only 
shrubby species in the genus. The lowly, hardy, adventurous cassiope has 
exceedingly slender creeping branches, scalelike leaves, and pale pink or 
white waxen bell flowers. Few plants, large or small, so well endure hard 
weather and rough ground over so great a range. In July it spreads a 
wavering, interrupted belt of the loveliest bloom around glacier lakes and 
meadows and across wild moory expanses, between roaring 

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streams, all along the Sierra, and northward beneath cold skies by way of 
the mountain chains of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, 
to the Arctic regions; gradually descending, until at the north end of the 
continent it reaches the level of the sea; blooming as profusely and at 
about the same time on mossy frozen tundras as on the high Sierra moraines.

Bryanthus, the companion of cassiope, accompanies it as far north as 
southeastern Alaska, where together they weave thick plushy beds on 
rounded mountain tops above the glaciers. It grows mostly at slightly 
lower elevations; the upper margin of what may be called the bryanthus 
belt in the Sierra uniting with and overlapping the lower margin of the 
cassiope. The wide bell-shaped flowers are bright purple, about three 
fourths of an inch in diameter, hundreds to the square yard, the young 
branches, mostly erect, being covered with them. No Highlander in heather 
enjoys more luxurious rest than the Sierra mountaineer in a bed of 
blooming bryanthus. And imagine the show on calm dewy mornings, when there 
is a radiant globe in the throat of every flower, and smaller gems on the 
needle-shaped leaves, the sunbeams pouring through them.

In the same wild, cold region the tiny Vaccinium myrtillus, mixed with 
kalmia and dwarf 

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willows, spreads thinner carpets, the downpressed matted leaves profusely 
sprinkled with pink bells; and on higher sandy slopes you will find 
several alpine species of eriogonum with gorgeous bossy masses of yellow 
bloom, and the lovely Arctic daisy with many blessed companions; charming 
plants, gentle mountaineers, Nature's darlings, which seem always the 
finer the higher and stormier their homes.

Many interesting ferns are distributed over the Park from the foothills to 
a little above the timber line. The greater number are rock ferns, pellæa, 
cheilanthes, polypodium, adiantum, woodsia, cryptogramme, etc., with small 
tufted fronds, lining glens and gorges and fringing the cliffs and 
moraines. The most important of the larger species are woodwardia, 
aspidium, asplenium, and the common pteris. Woodwardia radicans is a 
superb fern five to eight feet high, growing in vaselike clumps where the 
ground is level, and on slopes in a regular thatch, frond over frond, like 
shingles on a roof. Its range in the Park is from the western boundary up 
to about five thousand feet, mostly on benches of the north walls of 
cañons watered by small outspread streams. It is far more abundant in the 
Coast Mountains beneath the noble redwoods, where it attains a height of 
ten to twelve feet. The aspidiums are mostly restricted to the moist parts 
of the lower forests, Asplenium filix-foemina 

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to marshy streams. The hardy, broad-shouldered Pteris aquilina, the 
commonest of ferns, grows tall and graceful of sunny flats and hillsides, 
at elevations between three thousand and six thousand feet. Those who know 
it only in the Eastern states can form no fair conception of its stately 
beauty in the sunshine of the Sierra. On the level sandy floors of 
Yosemite valleys it often attains a height of six to eight feet in fields 
thirty or forty acres in extent, the magnificent fronds outspread in a 
nearly horizontal position, forming a ceiling beneath which one may walk 
erect in delightful mellow shade. No other fern does so much for the color 
glory of autumn, with its browns and reds and yellows changing and 
interblending. Even after lying dead all winter beneath the snow it 
spreads a lively brown mantle over the desolate ground, until the young 
fronds with a noble display of faith and hope come rolling up into the 
light through the midst of the beautiful ruins. A few weeks suffice for 
their development, then, gracefully poised each in its place, they manage 
themselves in every exigency of weather as if they had passed through a 
long course of training. I have seen solemn old sugar pines thrown into 
momentary confusion by the sudden onset of a storm, tossing their arms 
excitedly as if scarce awake, and wondering what had happened, but I never 
noticed surprise or embarrassment in the behavior of this noble pteris.

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Of five species of pellæa in the Park, the handsome andromedæfolia, 
growing in brushy foothills with Adiantum emarginatum, is the largest. P. 
Breweri, the hardiest and at the same time the most fragile of the genus, 
grows in dense tufts among rocks on storm-beaten mountain sides along the 
upper margin of the fern line. It is a charming little fern, four or five 
inches high, has shining bronze-colored stalks which are about as brittle 
as glass, and pale green pinnate fronds. Its companions on the lower part 
of its range are Cryptogramme acrostichoides and Phegopteris alpestris, 
the latter soft and tender, not at all like a rock fern, though it grows 
on rocks where the snow lies longest. P. Bridgesii, with blue-green, 
narrow, simply pinnate fronds, is about the same size as Breweri and ranks 
next to it as a mountaineer, growing in fissures and round boulders on 
glacier pavements. About a thousand feet lower we find the smaller and 
more abundant P. densa, on ledges and boulder-strewn fissured pavements, 
watered until late in summer by oozing currents from snow-banks or thin 
outspread streams from moraines, growing in close sods,--its little bright 
green triangular tripinnate fronds, about an inch in length, as 
innumerable as leaves of grass. P. ornithopus has twice or thrice pinnate 
fronds, is dull in color, and dwells on hot rocky hillsides among 
chaparral.

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Three species of Cheilanthes,--Californica, gracillima, and myriophylla, 
with beautiful two to four pinnate fronds, an inch to five inches long, 
adorn the stupendous walls of the cañons, however dry and sheer. The 
exceedingly delicate and interesting Californica is rare, the others 
abundant at from three thousand to seven thousand feet elevation, and are 
often accompanied by the little gold fern, Gymnogramme triangularis, and 
rarely by the curious little Botrychium simplex, the smallest of which are 
less than an inch high.

The finest of all the rock ferns is Adiantum pedatum, lover of waterfalls 
and the lightest waftings of irised spray. No other Sierra fern is so 
constant a companion of white spray-covered streams, or tells so well 
their wild thundering music. The homes it loves best are cave-like hollows 
beside the main falls, where it can float its plumes on their dewy breath, 
safely sheltered from the heavy spray-laden blasts. Many of these most-
lined chambers, so cool, so moist, and brightly colored with rainbow 
light, contain thousands of these happy ferns, clinging to the emerald 
walls by the slightest holds, reaching out the most wonderfully delicate 
fingered fronds on dark glossy stalks, sensitive, tremulous, all alive, in 
an attitude of eager attention; throbbing in unison with every motion and 
tone of the resounding waters, compliant to their faintest 

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impulses, moving each division of the frond separately at times as if 
fingering the music, playing on invisible keys.

Considering the lilies as you go up the mountains, the first you come to 
is L. Pardalinum, with large orange-yellow, purple-spotted flowers big 
enough for babies' bonnets. It is seldom found higher than thirty-five 
hundred feet above the sea, grows in magnificent groups of fifty to a 
hundred or more, in romantic waterfall dells in the pine woods shaded by 
overarching maple and willow, alder and dogwood, with bushes in front of 
the embowering trees for a border, and ferns and sedges in front of the 
bushes; while the bed of black humus in which the bulbs are set is 
carpeted with mosses and liverworts. These richly furnished lily gardens 
are the pride of the falls on the lower tributaries of the Tuolumne and 
Merced rivers, falls not like those of Yosemite valleys,--coming from the 
sky with rock-shaking thunder tones,--but small, with low, kind voices 
cheerily singing in calm leafy bowers, self-contained, keeping their snowy 
skirts well about them, yet furnishing plenty of spray for the lilies.

The Washington lily (L. Washingtonianum) is white, deliciously fragrant, 
moderate in size, with three to ten flowered racemes. The largest I ever 
measured was eight feet high, the raceme two feet long, with fifty-two 
flowers, fifteen of 

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them open; the others had faded or were still in the bud. This famous lily 
is distributed over the sunny portions of the sugar-pine woods, never in 
large garden companies like pardalinum, but widely scattered, standing up 
to the waist in dense ceanothus and manzanita chaparral, waving its lovely 
flowers above the blooming wilderness of brush, and giving their fragrance 
to the breeze. These stony, thorny jungles are about the last places in 
the mountains in which one would look for lilies. But though they toil not 
nor spin, like other people under adverse circumstances, they have to do 
the best they can. Because their large bulbs are good to eat they are dug 
up by Indians and bears; therefore, like hunted animals, they seek refuge 
in the chaparral, where among the boulders and tough tangled roots they 
are comparatively safe. This is the favorite Sierra lily, and it is now 
growing in all the best parks and gardens of the world.

The showiest gardens in the Park lie imbedded in the silver fir forests on 
the top of the main dividing ridges or hang likely gayly colored scarfs 
down their sides. Their wet places are in great part taken up by veratrum, 
a robust broad-leaved plant determined to be seen, and habenaria and 
spiranthes; the drier parts by tall columbines, larkspurs, castilleias, 
lupines, hosackias, erigerons, valerian, etc., standing deep in grass, 
with violets here and there around the borders. But the 

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finest feature of these forest gardens is Lilium parvum. It varies greatly 
in size, the tallest being from six to nine feet high, with splendid 
racemes of ten to fifty small orange-colored flowers, which rock and wave 
with great dignity above the other flowers in the infrequent winds that 
fall over the protecting wall of trees. Though rather frail-looking it is 
strong, reaching prime vigor and beauty eight thousand feet above the sea, 
and in some places venturing as high as eleven thousand.

Calochortus, or Mariposa tulip, is a unique genus of many species confined 
to the California side of the continent; charming plants, somewhat 
resembling the tulips of Europe, but far finer. The richest calochortus 
region lies below the western boundary of the Park; still five or six 
species are included. C. Nuttallii is common on moraines in the forests of 
the two-leaved pine; and C. cæruleus and nudus, very slender, lowly 
species, may be found in moist garden spots near Yosemite. C. albus, with 
pure white flowers, growing in shady places among the foothill shrubs, is, 
I think, the very loveliest of all the lily family,--a spotless soul, 
plant saint, that every one must love and so be made better. It puts the 
wildest mountaineer on his good behavior. With this plant the whole world 
would seem rich though none other existed. Next after Calochortus, Brodiæa 
is the most interesting genus. 

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Nearly all the many species have beautiful showy heads of blue, lilac, and 
yellow flowers, enriching the gardens of the lower pine region. Other 
liliaceous plants likely to attract attention are the blue-flowered 
camassia, the bulbs of which are prized as food by Indians; fritillaria, 
smilacina, chloragalum, and the twining climbing stropholirion.

The common orchidaceous plants are corallorhiza, goodyera, spiranthes, and 
habenaria. Cypripedium montanum, the only moccasin flower I have seen in 
the Park, is a handsome, thoughtful-looking plant living beside cool 
brooks. The large oval lip is white, delicately veined with purple; the 
other petals and sepals purple, strap-shaped, and elegantly curved and 
twisted.

To tourists the most attractive of all the flowers of the forest is the 
snow plant (Sarcodes sanguinea). It is a bright red, fleshy, succulent 
pillar that pushes up through the dead needles in the pine and fir woods 
like a gigantic asparagus shoot. The first intimation of its coming is a 
loosening and upbulging of the brown stratum of decomposed needles on the 
forest floor, in the cracks of which you notice fiery gleams; presently a 
blunt dome-shaped head an inch or two in diameter appears, covered with 
closely imbricated scales and bracts. In a week or so it grows to a height 
of six to twelve inches. Then the long fringed bracts spread and curl 
aside, 

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allowing the twenty or thirty five-lobed bell-shaped flowers to open and 
look straight out from the fleshy axis. It is said to grow up through the 
snow; on the contrary it always waits until the ground is warm, though 
with other early flowers it is occasionally buried or half buried for a 
day or two by spring storms. The entire plant--flowers, bracts, stem, 
scales, and roots--is red. But notwithstanding its glowing color and 
beautiful flowers, it is singularly unsympathetic and cold. Everybody 
admires it as a wonderful curiosity, but nobody loves it. Without 
fragrance, rooted in decaying vegetable matter, it stands beneath the 
pines and firs lonely, silent, and about as rigid as a graveyard monument.

Down in the main cañons adjoining the azalea and rose gardens there are 
fine beds of herbaceous plants,--tall mints and sunflowers, iris, 
ænothera, brodiæa, and bright beds of erythræa on the ferny meadows. 
Bolandera, sedum, and airy, feathery, purple-flowered heuchera adorn mossy 
nooks near falls, the shading trees wreathed and festooned with wild 
grapevines and clematis; while lightly shaded flats are covered with gilia 
and eunanus of many species, hosackia, arnica, chænactis, gayophytum, 
gnaphalium, monardella, etc.

Thousands of the most interesting gardens in the Park are never seen, for 
they are small and 

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lie far up on ledges and terraces of the sheer cañon walls, wherever a 
strip of soil, however narrow and shallow, can rest. The birds, winds, and 
down-washing rains have planted them with all sorts of hardy mountain 
flowers, and where there is sufficient moisture they flourish in 
profusion. Many of them are watered by little streams that seem lost on 
the tremendous precipices, clinging to the face of the rock in lacelike 
strips, and dripping from ledge to ledge, too silent to be called falls, 
pathless wanderers from the upper meadows, which for centuries have been 
seeking a way down to the rivers they belong to, without having worn as 
yet any appreciable channel, mostly evaporated or given to the plants they 
meet before reaching the foot of the cliffs. To these unnoticed streams 
the finest of the cliff gardens owe their luxuriance and freshness of 
beauty. In the larger ones ferns and showy flowers flourish in wonderful 
profusion,--woodwardia, columbine, collomia, castilleia, draperia, 
geranium, erythræa, pink and scarlet mimulus, hosackia, saxifrage, 
sunflowers and daisies, with azalea, spiræa, and calycanthus, a few 
specimens of each that seem to have been culled from the large gardens 
above and beneath them. Even lilies are occasionally found in these 
irrigated cliff gardens, swinging their bells over the giddy precipices, 
seemingly as happy as their relatives down in the waterfall dells. Most of 

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the cliff gardens, however, are dependent on summer showers, and though 
from the shallowness of the soil beds they are often dry, they still 
display a surprising number of bright flowers,-- scarlet zauschneria, 
purple bush penstemon, mints, gilias, and bosses of glowing golden bahia. 
Nor is there any lack of commoner plants; the homely yarrow is often found 
in them, and sweet clover and honeysuckle for the bees.

In the upper cañons, where the walls are inclined at so low an angle that 
they are loaded with moraine material, through which perennial streams 
percolate in broad diffused currents, there are long wavering garden beds, 
that seem to be descending through the forest like cascades, their fluent 
lines suggesting motion, swaying from side to side of the forested banks, 
surging up here and there over island-like boulder piles, or dividing and 
flowing around them. In some of these floral cascades the vegetation is 
chiefly sedges and grasses ruffled with willows; in others, showy flowers 
like those of the lily gardens on the main divides. Another curious and 
picturesque series of wall gardens are made by thin streams that ooze 
slowly from moraines and slip gently over smooth glaciated slopes. From 
particles of sand and mud they carry, a pair of lobe-shaped sheets of soil 
an inch or two thick are gradually formed, one of them hanging down from 
the brow of the slope, the other leaning up 

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from the foot of it like stalactite and stalagmite, the soil being held 
together by the flowery, moisture-loving plants growing in it.

Along the rocky parts of the cañon bottoms between lake basins, where the 
streams flow fast over glacier-polished granite, there are rows of pothole 
gardens full of ferns, daisies, golden-rods, and other common plants of 
the neighborhood nicely arranged like bouquets, and standing out in 
telling relief on the bare shining rock banks. And all the way up the 
cañons to the Summit mountains, wherever there is soil of any sort, there 
is no lack of flowers, however short the summer may be. Within eight or 
ten feet of a snow bank lingering beneath a shadow, you may see belated 
ferns unrolling their fronds in September, and sedges hurrying up their 
brown spikes on ground that has been free from snow only eight or ten 
days, and likely to be covered again within a few weeks; the winter in the 
coolest of these shadow gardens being about eleven months long, while 
spring, summer, and autumn are hurried and crowded into one month. Again, 
under favorable conditions, alpine gardens three or four thousand feet 
higher than the last are in their prime in June. Between the Summit peaks 
at the head of the cañons surprising effects are produced where the 
sunshine falls direct on rocky slopes and reverberates among boulders. 
Toward the end of August, in 

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one of these natural hothouses on the north shore of a glacier lake 11,500 
feet above the sea, I found a luxuriant growth of hairy lupines, thistles, 
goldenrods, shrubby potentilla, spraguea, and the mountain epilobium with 
thousands of purple flowers an inch wide, while the opposite shore, at a 
distance of only three hundred yards, was bound in heavy avalanche snow,--
flowery summer on one side, winter on the other. And I know a bench garden 
on the north wall of Yosemite in which a few flowers are in bloom all 
winter; the massive rocks about it storing up sunshine enough in summer to 
melt the snow about as fast as it falls. When tired of the confinement of 
my cabin I used to camp out in it in January, and never failed to find 
flowers, and butterflies also, except during snowstorms and a few days 
after.

From Yosemite one can easily walk in a day to the top of Mount Hoffman, a 
massive gray mountain that rises in the centre of the Park, with easy 
slopes adorned with castellated piles and crests on the south side, rugged 
precipices banked with perpetual snow on the north. Most of the broad 
summit is comparatively level and smooth, and covered with crystals of 
quartz, mica, hornblende, feldspar, garnet, zircon, tourmaline, etc., 
weathered out and strewn loosely as if sown broadcast; their radiance so 
dazzling in some places as to fairly hide the multitude of 

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small flowers that grow among them; myriads of keen lance rays infinitely 
fine, white or colored, making an almost continuous glow over all the 
ground, with here and there throbbing, spangling lilies of light, on the 
larger gems. At first sight only these crystal sunflowers are noticed, but 
looking closely you discover minute gilias, ivesias, eunanus, phloxes, 
etc., in thousands, showing more petals than leaves; and larger plants in 
hollows and on the borders of rills,--lupines, potentillas, daisies, 
harebells, mountain columbine, astragalus, fringed with heathworts. You 
wander about from garden to garden enchanted, as if walking among stars, 
gathering the brightest gems, each and all apparently doing their best 
with eager enthusiasm, as if everything depended on faithful shining; and 
considering the flowers basking in the glorious light, many of them 
looking like swarms of small moths and butterflies that were resting after 
long dances in the sunbeams. Now your attention is called to colonies of 
woodchucks and pikas, the mounds in front of their burrows glittering like 
heaps of jewelry,--romantic ground to live in or die in. Now you look 
abroad over the vast round landscape bounded by the down-curving sky, 
nearly all the Park in it displayed like a map,--forests, meadows, lakes, 
rock waves, and snowy mountains. Northward lies the basin of Yosemite 
Creek, paved with bright domes and lakes like larger crystals; 

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eastward, the meadowy, billowy Tuolumne region and the Summit peaks in 
glorious array; southward, Yosemite; and westward, the boundless forests. 
On no other mountain that I know of are you more likely to linger. It is a 
magnificent camp ground. Clumps of dwarf pine furnish rosiny roots and 
branches for fuel, and the rills pure water. Around your camp fire the 
flowers seem to be looking eagerly at the light, and the crystals shine 
unweariedly, making fine company as you lie at rest in the very heart of 
the vast, serene, majestic night.

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie at an elevation of about nine 
thousand feet, imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light. 
They are smooth and level, a mile or two long, and the rich, well-drained 
ground is completely covered with a soft, silky, plushy sod enameled with 
flowers, not one of which is in the least weedy or coarse. In some places 
the sod is so crowded with showy flowers that the grasses are scarce 
noticed, in others they are rather sparingly scattered; while every leaf 
and flower seems to have its winged representative in the swarms of happy 
flower-like insects that enliven the air above them.

With the winter snowstorms wings and petals are folded, and for more than 
half the year the meadows are snow-buried ten or fifteen feet deep. In 
June they begin to thaw out, small patches of 

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the dead sloppy sod appear, gradually increasing in size until they are 
free and warm again, face to face with the sky; myriads of growing points 
push through the steaming mould, frogs sing cheeringly, soon joined by the 
birds, and the merry insects come back as if suddenly raised from the 
dead. Soon the ground is green with mosses and liverworts and dotted with 
small fungi, making the first crop of the season. Then the grass leaves 
weave a new sod, and the exceedingly slender panicles rise above it like a 
purple mist, speedily followed by potentilla, ivesia, bossy orthocarpus, 
yellow and purple, and a few pentstemons. Later come the daisies and 
goldenrods, asters and gentians. Of the last there are three species, 
small and fine, with varying tones of blue, and in glorious abundance, 
coloring extensive patches where the sod is shallowest. Through the midst 
flows a stream only two or three feet wide, silently gliding as if careful 
not to disturb the hushed calm of the solitude, its banks embossed by the 
common sod bent down to the water's edge, and trimmed with mosses and 
violets; slender grass panicles lean over like miniature pine trees, and 
here and there on the driest places small mats of heathworts are neatly 
spread, enriching without roughening the bossy down-curling sod. In spring 
and summer the weather is mostly crisp, exhilarating sunshine, though 
magnificent mountain ranges of cumuli 

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are often upheaved about noon, their shady hollows tinged with purple 
ineffably fine, their snowy sun-beaten bosses glowing against the sky, 
casting cooling shadows for an hour or two, then dissolving in a quick 
washing rain. But for days in succession there are no clouds at all, or 
only faint wisps and pencilings scarcely discernible.

Toward the end of August the sunshine grows hazy, announcing the coming of 
Indian summer, the outlines of the landscapes are softened and mellowed, 
and more and more plainly are the mountains clothed with light, white 
tinged with pale purple, richest in the morning and evening. The warm, 
brooding days are full of life and thoughts of life to come, ripening 
seeds with next summer in them or a hundred summers. The nights are 
unspeakably impresssive and calm; frost crystals of wondrous beauty grow 
on the grass,--each carefully planned and finished as if intended to 
endure forever. The sod becomes yellow and brown, but the late asters and 
gentians, carefully closing their flower at night, do not seem to feel the 
frost; no nipped, wilted plants of any kind are to be seen; even the early 
snowstorms fail to blight them. At last the precious seeds are ripe, all 
the work of the season is done, and the sighing pines all the coming of 
winter and rest.

Ascending the range you find that many of 

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the higher meadows slope considerably, from the amount of loose material 
washed into their basins; and sedges and rushes are mixed with the grasses 
or take their places, though all are still more or less flowery and 
bordered with heathworts, sibbaldea, and dwarf willows. Here and there you 
come to small bogs, the wettest smooth and adorned with parnassia and 
butter-cups, others tussocky and ruffled like bits of Arctic tundra, their 
mosses and lichens interwoven with dwarf shrubs. On boulder piles the red 
iridescent oxyria abounds, and on sandy, gravelly slopes several species 
of shrubby, yellow-flowered eriogonum, some of the plants, less than a 
foot high, being very old, a century or more as is shown by the rings made 
by the annual whorls of leaves on the big roots. Above these flower-dotted 
slopes the gray, savage wilderness of crags and peaks seems lifeless and 
bare. Yet all the way up to the tops of the highest mountains, commonly 
supposed to be covered with eternal snow, there are bright garden spots 
crowded with flowers, their warm colors calling to mind the sparks and 
jets of fire on polar volcanoes rising above a world of ice. The principal 
mountain-top plants are phloxes, drabas, saxifrages, silene, cymopterus, 
hulsea, and polemonium, growing in detached stripes and mats,--the highest 
streaks and splashes of the summer wave as it breaks against these wintry 

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heights. The most beautiful are the phloxes (douglasii and cæspitosum), 
and the red-flowered silene, with innumerable flowers hiding the leaves. 
Though herbaceous plants, like the trees and shrubs, are dwarfed as they 
ascend, two of these mountain dwellers, Hulsea algida and Polemonium 
confertum, are notable exceptions. The yellow-flowered hulsea is eight to 
twelve inches high, stout, erect,--the leaves, three to six inches long, 
secreting a rosiny, fragrant gum, standing up boldly on the grim lichen-
stained crags, and never looking in the least tired or discouraged. Both 
the ray and disk flowers are yellow; the heads are nearly two inches wide, 
and are eagerly sought for by roving bee mountaineers. The polemonium is 
quite as luxuriant and tropical-looking as its companion, about the same 
height, glandular, fragrant, its blue flowers closely packed in eight or 
ten heads, twenty to forty in head. It is never far from hulsea, growing 
at elevations of between eleven and thirteen thousand feet wherever a 
little hollow or crevice favorably situated with a handful of wind-driven 
soil can be found.

From these frosty Arctic sky gardens you may descend in one straight swoop 
to the abronia, mentzelia, and oenothera gardens of Mono, where the 
sunshine is warm enough for palms.

But the greatest of all the gardens is the belt of forest trees, profusely 
covered in the spring 

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with blue and purple, red and yellow blossoms, each tree with a gigantic 
panicle of flowers fifty to a hundred feet long. Yet strange to say they 
are seldom noticed. Few travel through the woods when they are in bloom, 
the flowers of some of the showiest species opening before the snow is off 
the ground. Nevertheless, one would think the news of such gigantic 
flowers would quickly spread, and travelers from all the world would make 
haste to the show. Eager inquiries are made for the bloomtime of 
rhododendron-covered mountains and for the bloom-time of Yosemite streams, 
that they may be enjoyed in their prime; but the far grander outburst of 
tree bloom covering a thousand mountains-- who inquires about that? That 
the pistillate flowers of the pines and fires should escape the eyes of 
careless lookers is less to be wondered at, since they mostly grow aloft 
on the topmost branches, and can hardly be seen from the foot of the 
trees. Yet even these make a magnificent show from the top of an 
overlooking ridge when the sunbeams are pouring through them. But the far 
more numerous staminate flowers of the pines in large rosy clusters, and 
those of the silver firs in countless thousands on the under side of the 
branches, cannot be hid, stand where you may. The mountain hemlock also is 
gloriously colored with a profusion of lovely blue and purple flowers, a 
spectacle to gods and men. 

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A single pine or hemlock or silver fir in the prime of its beauty about 
the middle of June is well worth the pains of the longest journey; how 
much more broad forests of them thousands of miles long!

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest 
trees and to get into close tingling touch with them, and then look broad. 
Speaking of the benefits of tree climbing, Thoreau says: "I found my 
account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a 
hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I 
discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before. I 
might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, 
and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I 
discovered around me,--it was near the middle of June,--on the ends of the 
topmost branches, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, the 
fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway 
to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who 
walked the streets,--for it was court week,--and to farmers and lumbermen 
and woodchoppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, 
but they wondered as at a star dropped down."

The same marvelous blindness prevails here, although the blossoms are a 
thousandfold more 

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abundant and telling. Once when I was collecting flowers of the red silver 
fir near a summer tourist resort on the mountains above Lake Tahoe, I 
carried a handful of flowery branches to the boarding house, where they 
quickly attracted a wondering, admiring crowd of men, women, and children. 
"Oh, where did you get these?" they cried. "How pretty they are--mighty 
handsome--just too lovely for anything--where do they grow?" "On the 
commonest trees about you," I replied. "You are now standing beside one of 
them, and it is in full bloom; look up." And I pointed to a blossom-laden 
Abies magnifica, about a hundred and twenty feet high, in front of the 
house, used as a hitching post. And seeing its beauty for the first time, 
their wonder could hardly have been greater or more sincere had their 
silver fir hitching post blossomed for them at that moment as suddenly as 
Aaron's rod.

The mountain hemlock extends an almost continuous belt along the Sierra 
and northern ranges to Prince William's Sound, accompanied part of the way 
by the pines; our two silver firs, to Mount Shasta, thence the fir belt is 
continued through Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia by four other 
species, Abies nobilis, grandis, amabilis, and lasiocarpa; while the 
magnificent Sitka spruce, with large, bright, purple flowers, adorns the 
coast region from California to Cook's 

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Inlet and Kodiak. All these, interblending, form one flowery belt--one 
garden blooming in June, rocking its myriad spires in the hearty weather, 
bowing and swirling, enjoying clouds and the winds and filling them with 
balsam; covering thousands of miles of the wildest mountains, clothing the 
long slopes by the sea, crowning bluffs and headlands and innumerable 
islands, and, fringing the banks of the glaciers, one wild wavering belt 
of the noblest flowers in the world, worth a lifetime of love work to know 
it.



CHAPTER VI
AMONG THE ANIMALS OF THE YOSEMITE

The Sierra bear, brown or gray, the sequoia of the animals, tramps over 
all the park, though few travelers have the pleasure of seeing him. On he 
fares through the majestic forests and cañons, facing all sorts of 
weather, rejoicing in his strength, everywhere at home, harmonizing with 
the trees and rocks and shaggy chaparral. Happy fellow! his lines have 
fallen in pleasant places,--lily gardens in silver-fir forests, miles of 
bushes in endless variety and exuberance of bloom over hill-waves and 
valleys and along the banks of streams, cañons full of music and 
waterfalls, parks fair as Eden,--places in which one might expect to meet 
angels rather than bears.

In this happy land no famine comes nigh him. All the year round his bread 
is sure, for some of the thousand kinds that he likes are always in season 
and accessible, ranged on the shelves of the mountains like stores in a 
pantry. From one to another, from climate to climate, up and down he 
climbs, feasting on each in turn,--enjoying 

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as great variety as if he traveled to far-off countries north and south. 
To him almost every thing is food except granite. Every tree helps to feed 
him, every bush and herb, with fruits and flowers, leaves and bark; and 
all the animals he can catch,--badgers, gophers, ground squirrels, 
lizards, snakes, etc., and ants, bees, wasps, old and young, together with 
their eggs and larvæ and nests. Craunched and hashed, down all go to his 
marvelous stomach, and vanish as if cast into a fire. What digestion! A 
sheep or a wounded deer or a pig he eats warm, about as quickly as a boy 
eats a buttered muffin; or should the meat be a month old, it still is 
welcomed with tremendous relish. After so gross a meal as this, perhaps 
the next will be strawberries and clover, or raspberries with mushrooms 
and nuts, or puckery acorns and chokecherries. And as if fearing that 
anything eatable in all his dominions should escape being eaten, he breaks 
into cabins to look after sugar, dried apples, bacon, etc. Occasionally he 
eats the mountaineer's bed; but when he has had a full meal of more 
tempting dainties he usually leaves it undisturbed, though he has been 
known to drag it up through a hole in the roof, carry it to the foot of a 
tree, and lie down on it enjoy a siesta. Eating everything, never is he 
himself eaten except by man, and only man is an enemy to be feared. "B'ar 
meat," said a hunter from whom I was seeking information, 

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"b'ar meat is the best meat in the mountains; their skins make the best 
beds, and their grease the best butter. Biscuit shortened with b'ar grease 
goes as far as beans; a man will walk all day on a couple of them biscuit."

It my first interview with a Sierra bear we were frightened and 
embarrassed, both of us, but the bear's behavior was better than mine. 
When I discovered him, he was standing in a narrow strip of meadow, and I 
was concealed behind a tree on the side of it. After studying this 
appearance as he stood at rest, I rushed toward him to frighten him, that 
I might study his gait in running. But, contrary to all I had heard about 
the shyness of bears, he did not run at all; and when I stopped short 
within a few steps of him, as he held his ground in a fighting attitude, 
my mistake was monstrously plain. I was then put on my good behavior, and 
never afterward forgot the right manners of the wilderness.

This happened on my first Sierra excursion in the forest to the north of 
Yosemite Valley. I was eager to meet the animals, and many of them came to 
me as if willing to show themselves and make my acquaintance; but the 
bears kept out of my way.

An old mountaineer, in reply to my questions, told me that bears were very 
shy, all save grim old grizzlies, and that I might travel the mountains 
for years without seeing one, unless I gave 

Page 175

my mind to them and practiced the stealthy ways of hunters. Nevertheless, 
it was only a few weeks after I had received this information that I met 
the one mentioned above, and obtained instruction at first-hand.

I was encamped in the woods about a mile back of the rim of Yosemite, 
beside a stream that falls into the valley by the way of Indian Cañon. 
Nearly every day for weeks I went to the top of the North Dome to sketch; 
for it commands a general view of the valley, and I was anxious to draw 
every tree and rock and waterfall. Carlo, a St. Bernard dog, was my 
companion,--a fine, intelligent fellow that belonged to a hunter who was 
compelled to remain all summer on the hot plains, and who loaned him to me 
for the season for the sake of having him in the mountains, where he would 
be so much better off. Carlo knew bears through long experience, and he it 
was who led me to my first interview, though he seemed as much surprised 
as the bear at my unhunter-like behavior. One morning in June, just as the 
sunbeams began to stream through the trees, I set out for a day's 
sketching on the dome; and before we had gone half a mile from camp Carlo 
snuffed the air and looked cautiously ahead, lowered his bushy tail, 
drooped his ears, and began to step softly like a cat, turning every few 
yards and looking me in the face with a telling expression, saying plainly 
enough, "There is a bear a 

Page 176

little way ahead." I walked carefully in the indicated direction, until I 
approached a small flowery meadow that I was familiar with, then crawled 
to the foot of a tree on its margin, bearing in mind what I had been told 
about the shyness of bears. Looking out cautiously over the instep of the 
tree, I saw a big, burly cinnamon bear about thirty yards off, half erect, 
his paws resting on the trunk of a fir that had fallen into the meadow, 
his hips almost buried in grass and flowers. He was listening attentively 
and trying to catch the scent, showing that in some way he was aware of 
our approach. I watched his gestures, and tried to make the most of my 
opportunity to learn what I could about him, fearing he would not stay 
long. He made a fine picture, standing alert in the sunny garden walled in 
by the most beautiful firs in the world.

After examining him at leisure, noting the sharp muzzle thrust inquiringly 
forward, the long shaggy hair on his broad chest, the stiff ears nearly 
buried in hair, and the slow, heavy way in which he moved his head, I 
foolishly made a rush on him, throwing up my arms and shouting to frighten 
him, to see him run. He did not mind the demonstration much; only pushed 
his head farther forward, and looked at me sharply as if asking," What 
now? If you want to fight, I'm ready." Then I began to fear that on me 
would fall the work of running. But I was afraid to 

Page 177

run, lest he should be encouraged to pursue me; therefore I held my 
ground, staring him in the face within a dozen yards or so, putting on as 
bold a look as I could, and hoping the influence of the human eye would be 
as great as it is said to be. Under these strained relations the interview 
seemed to last a long time. Finally, the bear, seeing how still I was, 
calmly withdrew his huge paws from the log, gave me a piercing look, as if 
warning me not to follow him, turned, and walked slowly up the middle of 
the meadow into the forest; stopping every few steps and looking back to 
make sure that I was not trying to take him at a disadvantage in a rear 
attack. I was glad to part with him, and greatly enjoyed the vanishing 
view as he waded through the lilies and columbines.

Thenceforth I always tried to give bears respectful notice of my approach, 
and they usually kept well out of my way. Though they often came around my 
camp in the night, only once afterward, as far as I know, was I very near 
one of them in daylight. This time it was a grizzly I met; and as luck 
would have it, I was even nearer to him than I had been to the big 
cinnamon. Though not a large specimen, he seemed formidable enough at a 
distance of less than a dozen yards. His shaggy coat was well grizzled, 
his head almost white. When I first caught sight of him he was eating 
acorns 

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under a Kellogg oak, at a distance of perhaps seventy-five yards, and I 
tried to slip past without disturbing him. But he had either heard my 
steps on the gravel or caught my scent, for he came straight toward me, 
stopping every rod or so to look and listen: and as I was afraid to be 
seen running, I crawled on my hands and knees a little way to one side and 
hid behind a libocedrus, hoping he would pass me unnoticed. He soon came 
up opposite me, and stood looking ahead, while I looked at him, peering 
past the bulging trunk of the tree. At last, turning his head, he caught 
sight of mine, stared sharply a minute or two, and then, with fine 
dignity, disappeared in a manzanita-covered earthquake talus.

Considering how heavy and broad-footed bears are, it is wonderful how 
little harm they do in the wilderness. Even in the well-watered gardens of 
the middle region, where the flowers grow tallest, and where during warm 
weather the bears wallow and roll, no evidence of destruction is visible. 
On the contrary, under nature's direction, the massive beasts act as 
gardeners. On the forest floor, carpeted with needles and brush, and on 
the tough sod of glacier meadows, bears make no mark; but around the sandy 
margin of lakes their magnificent tracks form grand lines of embroidery. 
Their well-worn trails extend along the main cañons on either side, and 

Page 179

though dusty in some places make no scar on the landscape. They bite and 
break off the branches of some of the pines and oaks to get the nuts, but 
this pruning is so light that few mountaineers ever notice it; and though 
they interfere with the orderly lichen-veiled decay of fallen trees, 
tearing them to pieces to reach the colonies of ants that inhabit them, 
the scattered ruins are quickly pressed back into harmony by snow and rain 
and over-leaning vegetation.

The number of bears that make the Park their home may be guessed by the 
number that have been killed by the two best hunters, Duncan and old David 
Brown. Duncan began to be known as a bear-killer about the year 1865. He 
was then roaming the woods, hunting and prospecting on the south fork of 
the Merced. A friend told me that he killed his first bear near his cabin 
at Wawona; that after mustering courage to fire he fled, without waiting 
to learn the effect of his shot. Going back in a few hours he found poor 
Bruin dead, and gained courage to try again. Duncan confessed to me, when 
we made an excursion together in 1875, that he was at first mortally 
afraid of bears, but after killing a half dozen he began to keep count of 
his victims, and became ambitious to be known as a great bear-hunter. In 
nine years he had killed forty-nine, keeping count by notches cut on one 
of the timbers of his cabin on the shore of Crescent 

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Lake, near the south boundary of the Park. He said the more he knew about 
bears, the more he respected them and the less he feared them. But at the 
same time he grew more and more cautious, and never fired until he had 
every advantage, no matter how long he had to wait and how far he had to 
go before he got the bear just right as to the direction of the wind, the 
distance, and the way of escape in case of accident; making allowance also 
for the character of the animal, old or young, cinnamon or grizzly. For 
old grizzlies, he said, he had no use whatever, and he was mighty careful 
to avoid their acquaintance. He wanted to kill an even hundred; then he 
was going to confine himself to safer game. There was not much money in 
bears, anyhow, and a round hundred was enough for glory.

I have not seen or heard of him lately, and do not know how his bloody 
count stands. On my excursions, I occasionally passed his cabin. It was 
full of meat and skins hung in bundles from the rafters, and the ground 
about it was strewn with bones and hair,--infinitely less tidy than a 
bear's den. He went as hunter and guide with a geological survey party for 
a year or two, and was very proud of the scientific knowledge, he picked 
up. His admiring fellow mountaineers, he said, gave him credit for knowing 
not only the botanical names of all the trees and 

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bushes, but also the "botanical names of the bears."

The most famous hunter of the region was David Brown, an old pioneer, who 
early in the gold period established his main camp in a little forest 
glade on the north fork of the Merced, which is still called "Brown's 
Flat." No finer solitude for a hunter and prospector could be found; the 
climate is delightful all the year, and the scenery of both earth and sky 
is a perpetual feast. Though he was not much of a "scenery fellow," his 
friends say that he knew a pretty place when he saw it as well as any one, 
and liked mightily to get on the top of a commanding ridge to "look off."

When out of provisions, he would take down his old-fashioned long-barreled 
rifle from its deer-horn rest over the fireplace and set out in search of 
game. Seldom did he have to go far for venison, because the deer liked the 
wooded slopes of Pilot Peak ridge, with its open spots where they could 
rest and look about them, and enjoy the breeze from the sea in warm 
weather, free from troublesome flies, while they found hiding-places and 
fine aromatic food in the deer-brush chaparral. A small, wise dog was his 
only companion, and well the little mountaineer understood the object of 
every hunt, whether deer or bears, or only grouse hidden in the fir-tops. 
In deer-hunting Sandy had little to do, trotting behind 

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his master as he walked noiselessly through the fragrant woods, careful 
not to step heavily on dry twigs, scanning open spots in the chaparral 
where the deer feed in the early morning and toward sunset, peering over 
ridges and swells as new outlooks were reached, and along alder and willow 
fringed flats and streams, until he found a young buck, killed it, tied 
its legs together, threw it on his shoulder, and so back to camp. But when 
bears were hunted, Sandy played an important part as leader, and several 
times saved his master's life; and it was as a bear-hunter that David 
Brown became famous. His method, as I had it from a friend who had passed 
many an evening in his cabin listening to his long stories of adventure, 
was simply to take a few pounds of flour and his rifle, and go slowly and 
silently over hill and valley in the loneliest part of the wilderness, 
until little Sandy came upon the fresh track of a bear, then follow it to 
the death, paying no heed to time. Wherever the bear went he went, however 
rough the ground, led by Sandy, who looked back from time to time to see 
how his master was coming on, and regulated his pace accordingly, never 
growing weary or allowing any other track to divert him. When high ground 
was reached a halt was made, to scan the openings in every direction, and 
perchance Bruin would be discovered sitting upright on his haunches, 
eating manzanita berries; pulling 

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down the fruit-laden branches with his paws and pressing them together, so 
as to get substantial mouthfuls, however mixed with leaves and twigs. The 
time of year enabled the hunter to determine approximately where the game 
would be found: in spring and early summer, in lush grass and clover 
meadows and in berry tangles along the banks of streams, or on pea-vine 
and lupine clad slopes; in late summer and autumn, beneath the pines, 
eating the cones cut off by the squirrels, and in oak groves at the bottom 
of cañons, munching acorns, manzanita berries, and cherries; and after 
snow had fallen, in alluvial bottoms, feeding on ants and yellow-jacket 
wasps. These food places were always cautiously approached, so as to avoid 
the chance of sudden encounters.

"Whenever," said the hunter, "I saw a bear before he saw me, I had no 
trouble in killing him. I just took lots of time to learn what he was up 
to and how long he would be likely to stay, and to study the direction of 
the wind and the lay of the land. Then I worked round to leeward of him, 
no matter how far I had to go; crawled and dodged to within a hundred 
yards, near the foot of a tree that I could climb, but which was too small 
for a bear to climb. There I looked well to the priming of my rifle, took 
off my boots so as to climb quickly if necessary, and, with my rifle in 
rest and Sandy behind me, 

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waited until my bear stood right, when I made a sure, or at least a good 
shot back of the fore leg. In case he showed fight, I got up the tree I 
had in mind, before he could reach me. But bears are slow and awkward with 
their eyes, and being to windward they could not scent me, and often I got 
in a second shot before they saw the smoke. Usually, however, they tried 
to get away when they were hurt, and I let them go a good safe while 
before I ventured into the brush after them. Then Sandy was pretty sure to 
find them dead; if not, he barked bold as a lion to draw attention, or 
rushed in and nipped them behind, enabling me to get to a safe distance 
and watch a chance for a finishing shot.

"Oh yes, bear-hunting is a mighty interesting business, and safe enough if 
followed just right, though, like every other business, especially the 
wild kind, it has its accidents, and Sandy and I have had close calls at 
times. Bears are nobody's fools, and they know enough to let men alone as 
a general thing, unless they are wounded, or cornered, or have cubs. In my 
opinion, a hungry old mother would catch and eat a man, if she could; 
which is only fair play, anyhow, for we eat them. But nobody, as far as I 
know, has been eaten up in these rich mountains. Why they never tackle a 
fellow when he is lying asleep I never could understand. They could gobble 
us mighty handy, but I suppose it's nature to respect a sleeping man."

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Sheep-owners and their shepherds have killed a great many bears, mostly by 
poison and traps of various sorts. Bears are fond of mutton, and levy 
heavy toll on every flock driven into the mountains. They usually come to 
the corral at night, climb in, kill a sheep with a stroke of the paw, 
carry it off a little distance, eat about half of it, and return the next 
night for the other half; and so on all summer, or until they are 
themselves killed. It is not, however, by direct killing, but by 
suffocation through crowding against the corral wall in fright, that the 
greatest losses are incurred. From ten to fifteen sheep are found dead, 
smothered in the corral, after every attack; or the walls are broken, and 
the flock is scattered far and wide. A flock may escape the attention of 
these marauders for a week or two in the spring; but after their first 
taste of the fine mountain-fed meat the visits are persistently kept up, 
in spite of all precautions. Once I spent a night with two Portuguese 
shepherds, who were greatly troubled with bears, from two to four or five 
visiting them almost every night. Their camp was near the middle of the 
Park, and the wicked bears, they said, were getting worse and worse. Not 
waiting now until dark, they came out of the brush in broad daylight, and 
boldly carried off as many sheep as they liked. One evening, before 
sundown, a bear, followed by two cubs, 

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came for an early supper, as the flock was being slowly driven toward the 
camp. Joe, the elder of the shepherds, warned by many exciting 
experiences, promptly climbed a tall tamarack pine, and left the 
freebooters to help themselves; while Antone, calling him a coward, and 
declaring that he was not going to let bears eat up his sheep before his 
face, set the dogs on them, and rushed toward them with a great noise and 
a stick. The frightened cubs ran up a tree, and the mother ran to meet the 
shepherd and dogs. Antone stood astonished for a moment, eying the 
oncoming bear; then fled faster than Joe had, closely pursued. He 
scrambled to the roof of their little cabin, the only refuge quickly 
available; and fortunately, the bear, anxious about her young, did not 
climb after him,--only held him in mortal terror a few minutes, glaring 
and threatening, then hastened back to her cubs, called them down, went to 
the frightened, huddled flock, killed a sheep, and feasted in peace. 
Antone piteously entreated cautious Joe to show him a good safe tree, up 
which he climbed like a sailor climbing a mast, and held on as long as he 
could with legs crossed, the slim pine recommended by Joe being nearly 
branchless. "So you, too, are a bear coward as well as Joe," I said, after 
hearing the story. "Oh, I tell you," he replied, with grand solemnity, 
"bear face close by look awful; she just as soon 

Page 187

eat me as not. She do so as eef all my sheeps b'long every one to her own 
self. I run to bear no more. I take tree every time."

After this the shepherds corraled the flock about an hour before sundown, 
chopped large quantities of dry wood and made a circle of fires around the 
corral every night, and one with a gun kept watch on a stage built in a 
pine by the side of the cabin, while the other slept. But after the first 
night or two this fire fence did no good, for the robbers seemed to regard 
the light as an advantage, after becoming used to it.

On the night I spent at their camp the show made by the wall of fire when 
it was blazing in its prime was magnificent,--the illumined trees around 
about relieved against solid darkness, and the two thousand sheep lying 
down in one gray mass, sprinkled with gloriously brilliant gems, the 
effect of the firelight in their eyes. It was nearly midnight when a pair 
of the freebooters arrived. They walked boldly through a gap in the fire 
circle, killed two sheep, carried them out, and vanished in the dark 
woods, leaving ten lead in a pile, trampled down and smothered against the 
corral fence; while the scared watcher in the tree did not fire a single 
shot, saying he was afraid he would hit some of the sheep, as the bears 
got among them before he could get a good sight.

In the morning I asked the shepherds why 

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they did not move the flock to a new pasture. "Oh, no use!" cried Antone. 
"Look my dead sheeps. We move three four time before, all the same bear 
come by the track. No use. To-morrow we go home below. Look my dead 
sheeps. Soon all dead."

Thus were they driven out of the mountains more than a month before the 
usual time. After Uncle Sam's soldiers, bears are the most effective 
forest police, but some of the shepherds are very successful in killing 
them. Altogether, by hunters, mountaineers, Indians, and sheepmen, 
probably five or six hundred have been killed within the bounds of the 
Park, during the last thirty years. But they are not in danger of 
extinction. Now that the Park is guarded by soldiers, not only has the 
vegetation in great part come back to the desolate ground, but all the 
wild animals are increasing in numbers. No guns are allowed in the Park 
except under certain restrictions, and after a permit has been obtained 
from the officer in charge. This has stopped the barbarous slaughter of 
bears, and especially of deer, by shepherds, hunters, and hunting 
tourists, who, it would seem, can find no pleasure without blood.

The Sierra deer--the blacktail--spend the winters in the brushy and 
exceedingly rough region just below the main timber-belt, and are less 
accessible to hunters there than when they 

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are passing through the comparatively open forests to and from their 
summer pastures near the summits of the range. They go up the mountains 
early in the spring as the snow melts, not waiting for it all to 
disappear; reaching the high Sierra about the first of June, and the 
coolest recesses at the base of the peaks a month or so later. I have 
tracked them for miles over compacted snow from three to ten feet deep.

Deer are capital mountaineers, making their way into the heart of the 
roughest mountains; seeking not only pasturage, but a cool climate, and 
safe hidden places in which to bring forth their young. They are not 
supreme as rock-climbing animals; they take second rank, yielding the 
first to the mountain sheep, which dwell above them on the highest crags 
and peaks. Still, the two meet frequently; for the deer climbs all the 
peaks save the lofty summits above the glaciers, crossing piles of angular 
boulders, roaring swollen streams, and sheer-walled cañons by fords and 
passes that would try the nerves of the hardiest mountaineers,--climbing 
with graceful ease and reserve of strength that cannot fail to arouse 
admiration. Everywhere some species of deer seems to be at home,--on rough 
or smooth ground, lowlands or highlands, in swamps and barrens and the 
densest woods, in varying climates, hot or cold, over all the continent; 
maintaining glorious health, never making 

Page 190

an awkward step. Standing, lying down, walking, feeding, running even for 
life, it is always invincibly graceful, and adds beauty and animation to 
every landscape,--a charming animal, and a great credit to nature.

I never see one of the common blacktail deer, the only species in the 
Park, without fresh admiration; and since I never carry a gun I see them 
well: lying beneath a juniper or dwarf pine, among the brown needles on 
the brink of some cliff or the end of a ridge commanding a wide outlook; 
feeding in sunny openings among chaparral, daintily selecting aromatic 
leaves and twigs; leading their fawns out of my way, or making them lie 
down and hide; bounding past through the forest, or curiously advancing 
and retreating again and again.

One morning when I was eating breakfast in a little garden spot on the 
Kaweah, hedged around with chaparral, I noticed a deer's head thrust 
through the bushes, the big beautiful eyes gazing at me. I kept still, and 
the deer ventured forward a step, then snorted and withdrew. In a few 
minutes she returned, and came into the open garden, stepping with 
infinite grace, followed by two others. After showing themselves for a 
moment, they bounded over the hedge with sharp, timid snorts and vanished. 
But curiosity brought them back with still another, and all four came into 
my 

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garden, and, satisfied that I meant them no ill, began to feed, actually 
eating breakfast with me, like tame, gentle sheep around a shepherd, --
rare company, and the most graceful in movements and attitudes. I eagerly 
watched them while they fed on ceanothus and wild cherry, daintily culling 
single leaves here and there from the side of the hedge, turning now and 
then to ship a few leaves of mint from the midst of the garden flowers. 
Grass they did not eat at all. No wonder the contents of the deer's 
stomach are eaten by the Indians.

While exploring the upper cañon of the north fork of the San Joaquin, one 
evening, the sky threatening rain, I searched for a dry bed, and made 
choice of a big juniper that had been pushed down by a snow avalanche, but 
was resting stubbornly on its knees high enough to let me lie under its 
broad trunk. Just below my shelter there was another juniper on the very 
drink of a precipice, and, examining it, I found a deer-bed beneath it, 
completely protected and concealed by drooping branches,--a fine refuge 
and lookout as well as resting-place. About an hour before dark I heard 
the clear, sharp snorting of a deer, and looking down on the brushy, rocky 
cañon bottom, discovered an anxious doe that no doubt had her fawns 
concealed near by. She bounded over the chaparral and up the farther slope 
of the wall, often stopping to look 

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back and listen,--a fine picture of vivid, eager alertness. I sat 
perfectly still, and as my shirt was colored like the juniper bark I was 
not easily seen. After a little she came cautiously toward me, sniffing 
the air and grazing, and her movements, as she descended the cañon side 
over boulder piles and brush and fallen timber, were admirably strong and 
beautiful; she never strained or made apparent efforts, although jumping 
high here and there. As she drew nigh she sniffed anxiously, trying the 
air in different directions until she caught my scent; then bounded off, 
and vanished behind a small grove of firs. Soon she came back with the 
same caution and insatiable curiosity,--coming and going five or six 
times. While I sat admiring her, a Douglas squirrel, evidently excited by 
her noisy alarms, climbed a boulder beneath me, and witnessed her 
performances as attentively as I did, while a risky chipmunk, too restless 
or hungry for such shows, busied himself about his supper in a thicket of 
shadbushes, the fruit of which was then ripe, glancing about on the 
slender twigs lightly as a sparrow.

Toward the end of the Indian summer, when the young are strong, the deer 
begin to gather in little bands of from six to fifteen or twenty, and on 
the approach of the first snowstorm they set out on their march down the 
mountains to their winter quarters; lingering usually on warm 

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hillsides and spurs eight or ten miles below the summits, as if loath to 
leave. About the end of November, a heavy, far-reaching storm drives them 
down in haste along the dividing ridges between the rivers, led by old 
experienced bucks whose knowledge of the topography is wonderful.

It is when the deer are coming down that the Indians set out on their 
grand fall hunt. Too lazy to go into the recesses of the mountains away 
from trails, they wait for the deer to come out, and then waylay them. 
This plan also has the advantage of finding them in bands. Great 
preparations are made. Old guns are mended, bullets moulded, and the 
hunters wash themselves and fast to some extent, to insure good luck, as 
they say. Men and women, old and young, set forth together. Central camps 
are made on the well-known highways of the deer, which are soon red with 
blood. Each hunter comes in laden, old crones as well as maidens smiling 
on the luckiest. All grow fat and merry. Boys, each armed with an antlered 
head, play at buck-fighting, and plague the industrious women, who are 
busily preparing the meat for transportation, by stealing up behind them 
and throwing fresh hides over them. But the Indians are passing away here 
as everywhere, and their red camps on the mountains are fewer every year.

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There are panthers, foxes, badgers, porcupines, and coyotes in the Park, 
but not in large numbers. I have seen coyotes well back in the range at 
the head of the Tuolumne Meadows as early as June 1st, before the snow was 
gone, feeding on marmots; but they are far more numerous on the inhabited 
lowlands around ranches, where they enjoy life on chickens, turkeys, quail 
eggs, ground squirrels, hares, etc., and all kinds of fruit. Few wild 
sheep, I fear, are left hereabouts; for, though safe on the high peaks, 
they are driven down the eastern slope of the mountains when the deer are 
driven down the western, to ridges and outlying spurs where the snow does 
not fall to a great depth, and there they are within reach of the 
cattlemen's rifles.

The two squirrels of the Park, the Douglas and the California gray, keep 
all the woods lively. The former is far more abundant and more widely 
distributed, being found all the way up from the foothills to the dwarf 
pines on the Summit peaks. He is the most influential of the Sierra 
animals, though small, and the brightest of all the squirrels I know,--a 
squirrel of squirrels, quick mountain vigor and valor condensed, purely 
wild, and as free from disease as a sunbeam. One cannot think of such an 
animal ever being weary or sick. He claims all the woods, and is inclined 
to drive away even men as intruders. How he scolds, and what faces he 
makes! If 

Page 195

not so comically small he would be a dreadful fellow. The gray, Sciurus 
fossor, is the handsomest, I think, of all the large American squirrels. 
He is something like the Eastern gray, but is brighter and clearer in 
color, and more lithe and slender. He dwells in the oak and pine woods up 
to a height of about five thousand feet above the sea, is rather common in 
Yosemite Valley, Hetch-Hetchy, Kings River Cañon, and indeed in all the 
main cañons and Yosemites, but does not like the high fir-covered ridges. 
Compared with the Douglas, the gray is more than twice as large; 
nevertheless, he manages to make his way through the trees with less stir 
than his small, peppery neighbor, and is much less influential in every 
way. In the spring, before the pine-nuts and hazel-nuts are ripe, he 
examines last year's cones for the few seeds that may be left in them 
between the half-open scales, and gleans fallen nuts and seeds on the 
ground among the leaves, after making sure that no enemy is nigh. His fine 
tail floats, now behind, now above him, level or gracefully curled, light 
and radiant as dry thistledown. His body seems hardly more substantial 
than his tail. The Douglas is a firm, emphatic bolt of life, fiery, 
pungent, full of brag and show and fight, and his movements have none of 
the elegant deliberation of the gray. They are so quick and keen they 
almost sting the onlooker, 

Page 196

and the acrobatic harlequin gyrating show he makes of himself turns one 
giddy to see. The gray is shy and oftentimes stealthy, as if half 
expecting to find an enemy in every tree and bush and behind every log; he 
seems to wish to be let alone, and manifests no desire to be seen, or 
admired, or feared. He is hunted by the Indians, and this of itself is 
cause enough for caution. The Douglas is less attractive for game, and 
probably increasing in numbers in spite of every enemy. He goes his ways 
bold as a lion, up and down and across, round and round, the happiest, 
merriest of all the hairy tribe, and at the same time tremendously earnest 
and solemn, sunshine incarnate, making every tree tingle with his electric 
toes. If you prick him, you cannot think he will bleed. He seems above the 
chance and change that beset common mortals, though in busily gathering 
burs and nuts he shows that he has to work for a living, like the rest of 
us. I never found a dead Douglas. He gets into the world and out of it 
without being noticed; only in prime is he seen, like some little plants 
that are visible only when in bloom.

The little striped Tamias quadrivittatus is one of the most amiable and 
delightful of all the mountain tree-climbers. A brighter, cheerier 
chipmunk does not exist. He is smarter, more arboreal and squirrel-like, 
than the familiar Eastern species, and is distributed as widely on the 

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Sierra as the Douglas. Every forest, however dense or open, every hilltop 
and cañon, however brushy or bare, is cheered and enlivened by this happy 
little animal. You are likely to notice him first on the lower edge of the 
coniferous belt, where the Sabine and yellow pines meet; and thence 
upward, go where you may, you will find 2him every day, even in winter, 
unless the weather is stormy. He is an exceedingly interesting little 
fellow, full of odd, quaint ways, confiding, thinking no evil; and without 
being a squirrel--a true shadow-tail--he lives the life of a squirrel, and 
has almost all squirrelish accomplishments without aggressive 
quarrelsomeness.

I never weary of watching him as he frisks about the bushes, gathering 
seeds and berries; poising on slender twigs of wild cherry, shad, 
chinquapin, buckthorn, bramble; skimming along prostrate trunks or over 
the grassy, needle-strewn forest floor; darting from boulder to boulder on 
glacial pavements and the tops of the great domes. When the seeds of the 
conifers are ripe, he climbs the trees and cuts off the cones for a winter 
store, working diligently, though not with the tremendous lighting energy 
of the Douglas, who frequently drives him out of the best trees. Then he 
lies in wait, and picks up a share of the burs cut off by his domineering 
cousin, and stores them beneath logs and in hollows. Few of the Sierra 
animals are so well liked as this little airy, 

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fluffy half squirrel, half spermophile. So gentle, confiding, and busily 
cheery and happy, he takes one's heart and keeps his place among the best-
loved of the mountain darlings. A diligent collector of seeds, nuts, and 
berries, of course he is well fed, though never in the least dumpy with 
fat. On the contrary, he looks like a mere fluff of fur, weighing but 
little more than a field mouse, and of his frisky, birdlike liveliness 
without haste there is no end. Douglas can bark with his mouth closed, but 
little quad always opens his when he talks or sings. He has a considerable 
variety of notes which correspond with his movements, some of them sweet 
and liquid, like water dripping into a pool with tinkling sound. His eyes 
are black and animated, shining like dew. He seems dearly to like teasing 
a dog, venturing within a few feet of it, then frisking away with a lively 
chipping and low squirrelish churring; beating time to his music, such as 
it is, with his tail, which at each chip and churr describes a half 
circle. Not even Douglas is surer footed or takes greater risks. I have 
seen him running about on sheer Yosemite cliffs, holding on with as little 
effort as a fly and as little thought of danger, in places where, if he 
had made the least slip, he would have fallen thousands of feet. How fine 
it would be could mountaineers move about on precipices with the same sure 
grip!

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Before the pine-nuts are ripe, grass seeds and those of the many species 
of ceanothus, with strawberries, raspberries, and the soft red 
thimbleberries of Rubus nutkanus, form the bulk of his food, and a neater 
eater is not to be found in the mountains. Bees powdered with pollen, 
tooking their blunt noses into the bells of flowers, are comparatively 
clumsy and boorish. Frisking along some fallen pine or fir, when the grass 
seeds are ripe, he looks about him, considering which of the tufts he sees 
is likely to have the best, runs out to it, selects what he thinks is sure 
to be a good head, cuts it off, carries it to the top of the log, sits 
upright and nibbles out the grain without getting awns in his mouth, 
turning the head round, holding it and fingering it as if playing on a 
flute; then skips for another and another, bringing them to the same 
dining-log.

The woodchuck (Arctomys monax) dwells on high bleak ridges and boulder 
piles; and a very different sort of mountaineer is he,--bulky, fat, 
aldermanic, and fairly bloated at times by hearty indulgence in the lush 
pastures of his airy home. And yet he is by no means a dull animal. In the 
midst of what we regard as storm-beaten desolation, high in the frosty 
air, beside the glaciers he pipes and whistles right cheerily and lives to 
a good old age. If you are as early a riser as he is, you may oftentimes 
see him come blinking out of his burrow to meet the 

Page 200

first beams of the morning and take a sunbath on some favorite flat-topped 
boulder. Afterward, well warmed, he goes to breakfast in one of his garden 
hollows, eats heartily like a cow in clover until comfortably swollen, 
then goes a-visiting, and plays and loves and fights.

In the spring of 1875, when I was exploring the peaks and glaciers about 
the head of the middle fork of the San Joaquin, I had crossed the range 
from the head of Owen River, and one morning, passing around a frozen lake 
where the snow was perhaps ten feet deep, I was surprised to find the 
fresh track of a woodchuck plainly marked, the sun having softened the 
surface. What could the animal be thinking of, coming out so early while 
all the ground was snow-buried? The steady trend of his track showed he 
had a definite aim, and fortunately it was toward a mountain thirteen 
thousand feet high that I meant to climb. So I followed to see if I could 
find out what he was up to. From the base of the mountain the track 
pointed straight up, and I knew by the melting snow that I was not far 
behind him. I lost the track on a crumbling ridge, partly projecting 
through the snow, but soon discovered it again. Well toward the summit of 
the mountain, in an open spot on the south side, nearly inclosed by 
disintegrating pinnacles among which the sun heat reverberated, making an 
isolated patch of warm 

Page 201

climate, I found a nice garden, full of rock cress, ohlox, silence, draba, 
etc., and a few grasses; and in this garden I overtook the wanderer, 
enjoying a fine fresh meal, perhaps the first of the season. How did he 
know the way to this one garden spot, so high and far off, and what cold 
him that it was in bloom while yet the snow was ten feet deep over his 
den? For this it would seem he would need more botanical, topographical, 
and climatological knowledge than most mountaineers are possessed of.

The shy, curious mountain beaver, Haplodon, lives on the heights, not far 
from the woodchuck. He digs canals and controls the dow of small streams 
under the sod. And it is startling when one is camped on the edge of a 
sloping meadow near the homes of these industrious mountaineers, to be 
awakened in the still night by the sound of water rushing and gurging 
under one's head in a newly formed canal. Pouched gophers also have a way 
of awakening nervous campers that is quite as exciting as the Haplodon's 
paln; that is, by a series of firm upward pushes when they are driving 
tunnels and shoving up the dirt. One naturally cries out, "Who's there?" 
and then discovering the cause, "All right. Go on. Good-night." and goes 
to sleep again.

The haymaking pika, bob-tailed spermophile, and wood-rat are also among 
the most interesting 

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of the Sierra animals. The last Neotoma is scarcely at all like the common 
rat, is nearly twice as large, has a delicate, soft, brownish fur, white 
on the belly, large ears thin and translucent, eyes full and liquid and 
mild in expression, nose blunt and squirrelish, slender claws sharp as 
needles, and as his limbs are strong he can climb about as well as a 
squirrel; while no rat or squirrel has so innocent a look, is so easily 
approached, or in general expresses so much confidence in one's good 
intentions. He seems too fine for the thorny thickets he inhabits, and his 
big, rough hut is as unlike himself as possible. No other animal in these 
mountains makes nests so large and striking in appearance as his. They are 
built of all kinds of sticks (broken branches, and old rotten moss-grown 
chunks and green twigs, smooth or thorny, cut from the nearest bushes), 
mixed with miscellaneous rubbish and curious odds and ends,--bits of 
cloddy earth, stones, bones, bits of deer-horn, etc.: the whole simply 
piled in conical masses on the ground in chaparral thickets. Some of these 
cabins are five or six feet high, and occasionally a dozen or more are 
grouped together; less, perhaps, for society's sake than for advantages of 
food and shelter.

Coming through deep, stiff chaparral in the heart of the wilderness, 
heated and weary in forcing a way, the solitary explorer, happening 

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into one of these curious neotoma villages, is startled at the strange 
sight, and may imagine he is in an Indian village, and feel anxious as to 
the reception he will get in a place so wild. At first, perhaps, not a 
single inhabitant will be seen, or at most only two or three seated on the 
tops of their huts as at the doors, observing the stranger with the 
mildest of mild eyes. The nest in the centre of the cabin is made of grass 
and films of bark chewed to tow, and lined with feathers and the down of 
various seeds. The thick, rough walls seem to be built for defense against 
enemies--fox, coyote, etc.--as well as for shelter, and the delicate 
creatures in their big, rude homes, suggest tender flowers, like those of 
Salvia carduacea, defended by thorny involucres.

Sometimes the home is built in the forks of an oak, twenty or thirty feet 
from the ground, and even in garrets. Among housekeepers who have these 
bushmen as neighbors or guests they are regarded as thieves, because they 
carry away and pile together everything transportable (knives, forks, tin 
cups, spoons, spectacles, combs, nails, kindling-wood, etc., as well as 
eatables of all sorts), to strengthen their fortifications or to shine 
among rivals. Once, far back in the high Sierra, they stole my snow-
goggles, the lid of my teapot, and my aneroid barometer; and one stormy 
night, when encamped under a prostrate cedar, I was awakened 

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by a gritting sound on the granite, and by the light of my fire I 
discovered a handsome neotoma beside me, dragging away my ice-hatchet, 
pulling with might and main by a buckskin string on the handle. I threw 
bits of bark at him and made a noise to frighten him, but he stood 
scolding and chattering back at me, his fine eyes shining with an air of 
injured innocence.

A great variety of lizards enliven the warm portions of the Park. Some of 
them are more than a foot in length, others but little larger than 
grasshoppers. A few are snaky and repulsive at first sight, but most of 
the species are handsome and attractive, and bear acquaintance well; we 
like them better the farther we see into their charming lives. Small 
fellow mortals, gentle and guileless, they are easily tamed, and have 
beautiful eyes, expressing the clearest innocence, so that, in spite of 
prejudices brought from cool, lizardless countries, one must soon learn to 
like them. Even the horned toad of the plains and foothills, called 
horrid, is mild and gentle, with charming eyes, and so are the snakelike 
species found in the underbrush of the lower forests. These glide in 
curves with all the ease and grace of snakes, while their small, 
undeveloped limbs drag for the most part as useless appendages. One 
specimen that I measured was fourteen inches long, and as far as I saw it 
made no use whatever of its diminutive limbs.

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Most of them glint and dart on the sunny rocks and across open spaces from 
bush to bush, swift as dragonflies and humming-birds, and about as 
brilliantly colored. They never make a long-sustained run, whatever their 
object, but dart direct as arrows for a distance of ten or twenty feet, 
then suddenly stop, and as suddenly start again. These stops are necessary 
as rests, for they are short-winded, and when pursued steadily are soon 
run out of breath, pant pitifully, and may easily be caught where no 
retreat in bush or rock is quickly available.

If you stay with them a week or two and behave well, these gentle 
saurians, descendants of an ancient race of giants, will soon know and 
trust you, come to your feet, play, and watch your every motion with 
cunning curiosity. You will surely learn to like them, not only the bright 
one, gorgeous as the rainbow, but the little ones, gray as lichened 
granite, and scarcely bigger than grasshoppers; and they will teach you 
that scales may cover as fine a nature as hair or feathers or anything 
tailored.

There are many snakes in the cañons and lower forests, but they are mostly 
handsome and armless. Of all the tourists and travelers who have visited 
Yosemite and the adjacent mountains, not one has been bitten by a snake of 
any sort, while thousands have been charmed by them. Some of them vie with 
the lizards in 

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beauty of color and dress patterns. Only the rattlesnake is venomous, and 
he carefully keeps his venom to himself as far as man is concerned, unless 
his life is threatened.

Before I learned to respect rattlesnakes I killed two, the first on the 
San Joaquin plain. He was coiled comfortably around a tuft of bunch-grass, 
and I discovered him when he was between my feet as I was stepping over 
him. He held his head down and did not attempt to strike, although in 
danger of being trampled. At that time, thirty years ago, I imagined that 
rattlesnakes should be killed wherever found. I had no weapon of any sort, 
and on the smooth plain there was not a stick or a stone within miles; so 
I crushed him by jumping on him, as the deer are said to do. Looking me in 
the face he saw I meant mischief, and quickly cast himself into a coil, 
ready to strike in defense. I knew he could not strike when traveling, 
therefore I threw handfuls of dirt and grass sods at him, to tease him out 
of coil. He held his ground a few minutes, threatening and striking, and 
then started off to get rid of me. I ran forward and jumped on him; but he 
drew back his head so quickly my heel missed, and he also missed his 
stroke at me. Persecuted, tormented, again and again he tried to get away, 
bravely striking out to protect himself; but at last my heel came squarely 
down, sorely wounding 

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him, and a few more brutal stampings crushed him. I felt degraded by the 
killing business, farther from heaven, and I made up my mind to try to be 
at least as fair and charitable as the snakes themselves, and to kill no 
more save in self-defense.

The second killing might also, I think, have been avoided, and I have 
always felt somewhat sore and guilty about it. I had built a little cabin 
in Yosemite, and for convenience in getting water, and for the sake of 
music and society, I led a small stream from Yosemite Creek into it. 
Running along the side of the wall it was not in the way, and it had just 
fall enough to ripple and sing in low, sweet tones, making delightful 
company, especially at night when I was lying awake. Then a few frogs came 
in and made merry with the stream,--and one snake, I suppose to catch the 
frogs.

Returning from my long walks, I usually brought home a large handful of 
plants, partly for study, partly for ornament, and set them in a corner of 
the cabin, with their stems in the stream to keep them fresh. One day, 
when I picked up a handful that had begun to fade, I uncovered a large 
coiled rattler that had been hiding behind the flowers. Thus suddenly 
brought to light face to face with the rightful owner of the place, the 
poor reptile was desperately embarrassed, evidently realizing that he 

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had no right in the cabin. It was not only fear that he showed, but a good 
deal of downright bashfulness and embarrassment, like that of a more than 
half honest person caught under suspicious circumstances behind a door. 
Instead of striking or threatening to strike, though coiled and ready, he 
slowly drew his head down as far as he could, with awkward, confused kinks 
in his neck and a shamefaced expression, as if wishing the ground would 
open and hide him. I have looked into the eyes of so many wild animals 
that I feel sure I did not mistake the feelings of this unfortunate snake. 
I did not want to kill him, but I had many visitors, some of them 
children, and I oftentimes came in late at night; so I judged he must die.

Since then I have seen perhaps a hundred or more in these mountains, but I 
have never intentionally disturbed them, nor have they disturbed me to any 
great extent, even by accident, though in danger of being stepped on. 
Once, while I was on my knees kindling a fire, one glided under the arch 
made by my arm. He was only going away from the ground I had selected for 
a camp, and there was not the slightest danger, because I kept still and 
allowed him to go in peace. The only time I felt myself in serious danger 
was when I was coming out of the Tuolumne Canñon by a steep side cañon 
toward the head of Yosemite Creek. On an 

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earthquake talus, a boulder in my way presented a front so high that I 
could just reach the upper edge of it while standing on the next below it. 
Drawing myself up, as soon as my head was above the flat top of it I 
caught sight of a coiled rattler. My hands had alarmed him, and he was 
ready for me; but even with this provocation, and when my head came in 
sight within a foot of him, he did not strike. The last time I sauntered 
through the big cañon I saw about two a day. One was not coiled, but 
neatly folded in a narrow space between two cobble-stones on the side of 
the river, his head below the level of them, ready to shoot up like a Jack-
in-the-box for frogs or birds. My foot spanned the space above within an 
inch or two of his head, but he only held it lower. In making my way 
through a particularly tedious tangle of buckthorn, I parted the branches 
on the side of an open spot and threw my bundle of bread into it; and 
when, with my arms free, I was pushing through after it, I was a small 
rattlesnake dragging his tail from beneath my bundle. When he caught sight 
of me he eyed me angrily, and with an air of righteous indignation seemed 
to be asking why I had thrown that stuff on him. He was so small that I 
was inclined to slight him, but he struck out so angrily that I drew back, 
and approached the opening from the other side. But he had been listening, 
and 

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when I looked through the brush I found him confronting me, still with a 
come-in-if-you-dare expression. In vain I tried to explain that I only 
wanted my bread; he stoutly held the ground in front of it; so I went back 
a dozen rods and kept still for half an hour, and when I returned he had 
gone.

One evening, near sundown, in a very rough, boulder-choked portion of the 
cañon, I searched long for a level spot for a bed, and at last was glad to 
find a patch of flood-sand on the river-bank, and a lot of driftwood close 
by for a campfire. But when I threw down my bundle, I found two snakes in 
possession of the ground. I might have passed the night even in this snake 
den without danger, for I never knew a single instance of their coming 
into camp in the night; but fearing that, in so small a space, some late 
comers, not aware of my presence, might get stepped on when I was 
replenishing the fire, to avoid possible crowding I encamped on one of the 
earthquake boulders.

There are two species of Crotalus in the Park, and when I was exploring 
the basin of Yosemite Creek I thought I had discovered a new one. I saw a 
snake with curious divided appendages on its head. Going nearer, I found 
that the strange headgear was only the feet of a frog. Cutting a switch, I 
struck the snake lightly until he disgorged the poor frog, or rather 
allowed it to 

[image caption: ONE OF THE KINGS RIVER FOUNTAINS]

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back out. On its return to the light from one of the very darkest of death 
valleys, it blinked a moment with a sort of dazed look, then plunged into 
a stream, apparently happy and well.

Frogs abound in all the bogs, marshes, pools, and lakes, however cold and 
high and isolated. How did they manage to get up these high mountains? 
Surely not by jumping. Long and dry excursions through weary miles of 
boulders and brush would be trying to frogs. Most likely their stringy 
spawn is carried on the feet of ducks, cranes, and other waterbirds. 
Anyhow, they are most thoroughly distributed, and flourish famously. What 
a cheery, hearty set they are, and how bravely their krink and tronk 
concerts enliven the rocky wilderness!

None of the high-lying mountain lakes or branches of the rivers above 
sheer falls had fish of any sort until stocked by the agency of man. In 
the high Sierra, the only river in which trout exist naturally is the 
middle fork of Kings River. There are no sheer falls on this stream; some 
of the rapids, however, are so swift and rough, even at the lowest stage 
of water, that it is surprising any fish can climb them. I found trout in 
abundance in this fork up to seventy-five hundred feet. They also run 
quite high on the Kern. On the Merced they get no higher than Yosemite 
Valley, four thousand feet, all the forks of the river being barred there 
by sheer falls, and on 

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the main Tuolumne they are stopped by a fall below Hetch-Hetchy, still 
lower than Yosemite. Though these upper waters are inaccessible to the 
fish, one would suppose their eggs might have been planted there by some 
means. Nature has so many ways of doing such things. In this case she 
waited for the agency of man, and now many of these hitherto fishless 
lakes and streams are full of fine trout, stocked by individual 
enterprise, Walton clubs etc., in great part under the auspices of the 
United States Fish Commission. A few trout carried into Hetch-Hetchy in a 
common water-bucket have multiplied wonderfully fast. Lake Tenaya, at an 
elevation of over eight thousand feet, was stocked eight years ago by Mr. 
Murphy, who carried a few trout from Yosemite. Many of the small streams 
of the eastern slope have also been stocked with trout transported over 
the passes in tin cans on the backs of mules. Soon, it would seem, all the 
streams of the range will be enriched by these lively fish, and will 
become the means of drawing thousands of visitors into the mountains. 
Catching trout with a bit of bent wire is a rather trivial business, but 
fortunately people fish better than they know. In most cases it is the man 
who is caught. Trout-fishing regarded as bait for catching men, for the 
saving of both body and soul, is important, and deserves all the expense 
and care bestowed on it.