CALIFORNIA by John Muir: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated Edition). John Muir

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СКАЧАТЬ appears, but this eagerness is speedily hushed in divine repose, and their tranquil progress to the base of the cliff is like that of downy feathers in a still room. The various tissues into which her waters are woven, now that they are illumined by the streaming sunshine, are brought out with marvelous distinctness. They sift and float down the face of that grand grey rock in so leisurely and unconfused a manner, and with such exquisite gentleness, that you may examine their texture and patterns as you would a piece of embroidery held in the hand. Near the bottom the width of the fall has increased from 25 to about 100 feet. Here it is composed of yet finer tissue, more air than water, yet still without a trace of disorder. Air, water, and sunlight are woven into a cloth that spirits might wear.

      On the same side of the valley thunders the great Hetch Hetchy Fall, called Wapama by the Indians. It is about 1,800 feet high, and is so near Tuccoolala, that both are in fall view from one standpoint. Seen immediately in front it appears nearly vertical, but viewed in profile from farther up the valley it is seen to be considerably inclined. Its location is similar to that of the Yosemite Fall, but its volume of water is much greater.

      No two falls could be more unlike to make one perfect whole, like rock and cloud, sea and shore. Tuccoolala speaks low, like a summer breeze in the pines; Wapama, in downright thunder, descending with the weight and energy of an avalanche in its deep rocky gorge. Tuccoolala whispers, he dwells in peace; Wapama is the thunder of his chariot wheels in power.

      This noble pair are the principal falls of the valley. A few other small streams come over the walls with bird-like song, leaping from crag to crag too small to be much noticed in company so imposing, though essential to the grand, general harmony. That portion of the north wall immediately above Wapama corresponds both in outline and details of sculpture with the same relative portion of the Yosemite wall. In Yosemite the steep face of the cliff is terraced with two conspicuous benches fringed with live-oak. Two benches, similarly situated, and fringed in the same way, occur on the same relative portion of the Hetch Hetchy wall, and on no other.

      The floor of the valley is about three miles long, and from a fourth to half a mile wide. The lower portion is mostly level meadow, with the trees confined to the sides, and separated partially from the sandy, park-like upper portion by a low bar of glacier-polished granite, across which the river breaks in swift-gliding rapids. The principal tree of the valley is the great yellow-pine, attaining here a height of 200 feet. They occupy the dry sandy levels, growing well apart in small groves or singly, thus allowing each tree to be seen in all its beauty. The common pteris grows beneath them in rough green sheets, tufted here and there by ceanothus and manzanita, and brightened with mariposa tulips and golden-rods. Near the walls, on the earthquake taluses that occur in many places, the pines give place to the mountain live oak, which forms the shadiest and most extensive groves of the valley. Their glossy foliage, densely crowded at the top, forms a beautiful ceiling, containing a few irregular openings for the admission of sunbeams, while the bare grey bunks and branches, gnarled and twisted, are exceedingly picturesque. This sturdy oak, so well calculated for a mountaineer, not only covers the angular boulder slopes, but climbs along fissures, and up steep side-canyons, to the top of the walls and far beyond, dwarfing as it goes from a tree 30 to 40 feet high and 4 to 6 feet in diameter near the ground to a small shrub no thicker than one's finger.

      The sugar-pine, sabine-pine, and two-leafed pine, also the Douglas spruce, incense-cedar, and the two silver-firs, grow here and there in the cool side-canyons and scattered among the yellow pines, while on the warmest spots fine groves of the black-oak occur, whose acorns form so important a part of the food of Indians and bears. Bees and hummingbirds find rich pasturage flowers--mints, clover, honeysuckle, lilies, orchids, etc.

      On a stream that comes in from the northeast at the head of the valley there is a series of charming cascades that give glad animation to the glorious wilderness, broad plumes like that between the Vernal and Nevada of Yosemite, half sliding, half leaping down smooth open folds of the granite covered with crisp, clashing spray, into which the sunbeams pour with glorious effect. Others shoot edgewise through a deep narrow gorge chafing and laving beneath rainbow mists in endless variety of form and tone.

      Following the river from the head of the valley, you enter the great Tuolumne Canyon. It is 20 miles long, 2,000-4,000 feet deep, and may be regarded as a Yosemite Valley from end to end, abounding in glorious cascades, falls, and rocks of sublime architecture. To the lover of pure wildness, a saunter up this mountain street is a grand indulgence, however rough the sidewalks and pavements which extend along the cool, rushing river.

      The new Kings River Yosemite is larger, and in some respects more interesting, than either the Hetch Hetchy or the Yosemite of the Merced. It Is situated on the south fork of Kings River, about 80 miles from Yosemite in a straight line, and 40 miles from Visalia, the nearest point on the Southern Pacific railroad. It is about nine miles long, half a mile wide at the bottom, and 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. The walls are quite as precipitous as those of Yosemite, 3,000 to 4,000 feet high, and sculptured in the same grand style so characteristic of all the valleys of this kind in the Sierra. As to water-falls, those of the new Yosemite are less striking in form and in the songs they sing, although the whole quantity of water pouring into the valley is greater, and comes from higher sources. The descent of the Kings Valley waters is made mostly in long, dashing cascades, and falls of moderate height, that are far less showy in general views than those of Yosemite.

      My last visit to this magnificent valley was made with a small party in July, 1875, when the beauty of its wildness was still complete. We set out from Yosemite, pushing our way through the wilderness, past Clark's Station, through the Mariposa grove of big trees, and the luxuriant forests of upper Fresno, down to the dappled plain of the San Joaquin. Thence, skirting the margin of the foot hills, we crossed the stately current of Kings River near Centerville, and facing eastward, climbed again into the sugar-pine woods, and on through the grand Sequoia forests of the Kaweah. Here we heard the sound of axes, and soon came upon a group of men busily engaged in preparing a section of one of the big trees they had felled for the Centennial Exhibition. This tree was 25 feet in diameter at the base, and so fine was the taper of the trunk it still measured 10 feet in diameter at a height of 200 feet from the ground. According to the testimony of the annual wood-rings, it was upwards of 2,000 years of age.

      Out of this solemn ancient forest we climbed yet higher into the cool realms of the Alpine pines, until at length we caught a long sweeping view of the glorious Yosemite we were so eagerly seeking. The trail by which we descended to the bottom of the valley enters at the lower or west end, zigzagging in a wild, independent fashion over the south lip of the valley, and corresponding both in position and direction with the old Mariposa trail of Yosemite, and like it, affording a series of grand views up the valley, over the groves and meadows between the massive granite walls. So fully were these views Yosemitic in all their leading features it was hard to realize that we were not entering the old Yosemite by Inspiration Point.

      In about two hours after beginning the descent we found ourselves among the sugar-pine groves at the lower end of the valley; and never did pines seem more noble and religious in gesture and tone.

      The sun, pouring down mellow gold, seemed to be shining only for them, and the wind gave them voice; but the gestures of their outstretched arms appeared wholly independent of the wind, and impressed one with a solemn awe that overbore all our knowledge of causes, and brought us into the condition of being newly arrived from some other world. The ground was strewn with leaves and cones, making a fine surface for shadows; many a wide even bar from tapering trunk and column, and rich mosaic from leaf and branch; while ever and anon we came to small forest openings wholly filled with sunshine like lakes of light.

      We made our first camp on the river bank, a mile or two up the valley, on the margin of a small circular meadow that was one of the most perfect flower gardens I have ever discovered in the Sierra. The trampling mules, whom I would gladly have kept out, fairly disappeared beneath the broad over-arching ferns that encircled it. The meadow was filled with lilies and orchids, larkspurs and columbines, СКАЧАТЬ