If one loves to gather the material for travellers’ stories, he may find here and there a hollow fallen trunk through whose heart he may ride for many feet without bowing the head. But if he love the tree for its own grand nature, he may lie in silence upon the soft forest floor, in shadow or sunny warmth, if he please, and spend many days in wonder, gazing upon majestic shafts, following their gold and purple flutings from broad, firmly planted base up and on through the few huge branches and among the pale clouds of filmy green traced in open network upon the deep blue of the sky.
Groups of this ancient race grow along the middle heights of the Sierra for almost two hundred miles, marking a line of groves through the forest of lesser trees, still retaining their power of reproduction, ripening cones with regularity, whose seed germinates, springs up, and grows with apparently as great vital power as the descendants of younger conifers. Nor are these their only remarkable characteristics. They possess hardly any roots at all. Several in each grove have been blown down, and lie slowly decomposing. They are found usually to have rested upon the ground with a few short, pedestal-like feet penetrating the earth for a little way.
Too soon for my pleasure, the time came when we must turn our backs upon these stately groves and push up toward the snow. Our route lay eastward, between the King’s and Kaweah rivers, rising as we marched; the vegetation, as well as the barometer, accurately measuring the change.
We reached our camp on the Big Meadow plateau on the 22nd of June, and that night the thermometer fell to 20° above zero. This cold was followed by a chilly, overcast morning, and about ten o’clock an old-fashioned snowstorm set in. Wind howled fiercely through the trees, coming down from the mountains in terribly powerful gusts. The green, flower-colored meadow was soon buried under snow; and we explorers, who had no tent, hid ourselves under piles of brush, and on the lee side of hospitable stones. Our scant supply of blankets was a poor defence against such inclemency; so we crawled out and made a huge camp-fire, around which we sat for the rest of the day. During the afternoon we were visited. A couple of hunters, with their rifles over their shoulders, seeing the smoke of our camp-fire, followed it through the woods and joined our circle. They were typical mountaineers,—outcasts from society, discontented with the world, comforting themselves in the solitude of nature by the occasional excitement of a bear-fight. One was a half-breed Cherokee, rather over six feet high, powerfully built, and picturesquely dressed in buckskin breeches and green jacket; a sort of Trovatore hat completed his costume, and gave him an animated appearance. The other was unmistakably a Pike-Countian, who had dangled into a pair of butternut jeans. His greasy flannel shirt was pinned together with thorns in lieu of buttons, and his hat fastened back in the same way, having lost its stiffness by continual wetting. The Cherokee had a long, manly stride, and the Pike a rickety sort of shuffle. His anatomy was bad, his physical condition worse, and I think he added to that a sort of pride in his own awkwardness. Seeming to have a principle of suspension somewhere about his shoulders, which maintained his head at about the right elevation above the ground, he kept up a good rate in walking without apparently making an effort. His body swayed with a peculiar, corkscrew motion, and his long Mississippi rifle waved to and fro through the air.
We all noticed the utter contrast between them as these two men approached our fire. The hunter’s taciturnity is a well-known rôle, but they had evidently lived so long an isolated life that they were too glad of any company to play it unfailingly; so it was they who opened the conversation. We found that they were now camped only a half-mile from us, were hunting for deer-skins, and had already accumulated a very large number. They offered us plenty of venison, and were greatly interested in our proposed journeys into the high mountains. From them we learned that they had themselves penetrated farther than any others, and had only given up the exploration after wandering fruitlessly among the cañons for a month. They told us that not even Indians had crossed the Sierras to the east, and that if we did succeed in reaching this summit we would certainly be the first. We learned from them, also, that a mile to the northward was a great herd of cattle in charge of a party of Mexicans. Fleeing before the continued drought of the plains, all the cattle-men of California drove the remains of their starved herds either to the coast or to the High Sierras, and grazed upon the summer pastures, descending in the autumn, and living upon the dry foot-hill grasses, until, under the influence of winter rains, the plains again clothe themselves with pasturage.
The following morning, having received a present of two deer from the hunters, we packed our animals and started eastward, passing, after a few minutes’ ride, the encampment of the Spaniards. About four thousand cattle roamed over the plateau, and were only looked after once or twice a week. The four Spaniards divided their time between drinking coffee and playing cards. They were engaged in the latter amusement when we passed them; and although we halted and tried to get some information, they only answered us in monosyllables, and continued their game.
To the eastward the plateau rose toward the high mountains in immense, granite steps. We rode pleasantly through the forest over these level tables, and climbed with difficulty the rugged, rock-strewn fronts, each successive step bringing us nearer the mountains, and giving us a far-reaching view. Here and there the granite rose through the forest in broad, smooth domes; and many times we were obliged to climb these rocky slopes at the peril of our animals’ lives. After several days of marching and countermarching, we gave up the attempt to push farther in a southeast direction, and turned north, toward the great cañon of King’s River, which we hoped might lead us up to the Snow Group.
Reaching the brink of this gorge, we observed, about half-way down the slope, and standing at equal levels on both flanks, singular embankments—shelves a thousand feet in width—built at a height of fifteen hundred feet above the valley bottom, their smooth, evenly graded summits rising higher and higher to the eastward on the cañon-wall until they joined the snow. They were evidently the lateral moraines of a vast, extinct glacier, and that opposite us seemed to offer an easy ride into the heart of the mountains. With great difficulty we descended the long slope, through chaparral and forest, reaching, at length, the level, smooth glacier bottom. Here, threading its way through alternate groves and meadows, was the King’s River—a stream not over thirty feet in width, but rushing with all the force of a torrent. Its icy temperature was very refreshing after our weary climb down the wall. By a series of long zigzags we succeeded in leading our animals up the flank to the top of the north moraine, and here we found ourselves upon a forest-covered causeway, almost as smooth as a railroad embankment. Its fluted crest enclosed three separate pathways, each a hundred feet wide, divided from one another by roughly laid trains of rocks, showing it evidently to be a compound moraine. As we ascended toward the mountains, the causeway was more and more isolated from the cliff, until the depression between them widened to half a mile, and to at least five hundred feet deep.
Throughout nearly a whole day we rode comfortably along at a gentle grade, reaching at evening the region of the snow, where, among innumerable huge granite blocks, we threaded our way in search of a camp-ground. The mountain amphitheatre which gave rise to the King’s River opened to the east, a broad valley, into which we at length climbed; and, among scattered groves of alpine pines, and on patches of meadow, rode eastward till twilight, watching the high pyramidal peak which lay directly at the head of the gorge. By sunset we had gone as far as we could take the animals, and, in full view of our goal, camped for the night.
The form of the mountain at the head of our ravine was purely Gothic. A thousand upspringing spires and pinnacles pierce the sky in every direction, the cliffs and mountain-ridges are everywhere ornamented with countless needle-like turrets. Crowning the wall to the south of our camp were series of these jagged forms standing out against the sky like a procession of colossal statues. Whichever way we turned we were met by some extraordinary fulness of detail. Every mass seemed to have the highest possible ornamental finish. Along the lower flanks of the walls, tall, straight pines, the last of the forest, were relieved against the cliffs, and the same slender forms, although carved in granite, surmounted every ridge and peak.