The Sierra, as we travelled southward, became bolder and bolder, strong granite spurs plunging steeply down into the desert; above, the mountain sculpture grew grander and grander, until forms wild and rugged as the Alps stretched on in dense ranks as far as the eye could reach. More and more the granite came out in all its strength. Less and less soil covered the slopes: groves of pine became rarer, and sharp, rugged buttresses advanced boldly to the plain. Here and there a cañon-gate between rough granite pyramids, and flanked by huge moraines, opened its savage gallery back among peaks. Even around the summits there was but little snow, and the streams which at short intervals flowed from the mountain foot, traversing the plains, were sunken far below their ordinary volume.
The mountain forms and mode of sculpture of the opposite ranges are altogether different. The White and Inyo chains, formed chiefly of uplifted sedimentary beds, are largely covered with soil, and wherever the solid rock is exposed its easily traced strata plains and soft, wooded surface combined in producing a general aspect of breadth and smoothness; while the Sierra, here more than anywhere else, holds up a front of solid stone, carved into most intricate and highly ornamental forms: vast aiguilles, trimmed from summit to base with line of slender minarets; huge, broad domes, deeply fluted and surmounted with tall obelisks, and everywhere the greatest profusion of bristling points.
From the base of each range a long, sloping talus descends gently to the river, and here and there, bursting up through Sierra foot-hills, rise the red and black forms of recent volcanoes as regular and barren as if cooled but yesterday.
I had reason for not regretting my departure from the Inyo House at Independence next morning before sunrise; and when a young woman in an elaborate brown calico, copied evidently from some imperial evening toilet, pertly demanded my place by the driver, adding that she was not one of the “inside kind,” I willingly yielded, and made myself contented on the back seat alone. Presently, however, a companion came to me in the person of a middle-aged Spanish doña, clad altogether in black, with a shawl worn over her head after the manner of a mantilla. When it began to rain violently and beat upon that brown calico, I made bold to offer the young woman my sheltered place, but she gayly declined, averring herself not made of sugar. So the doña and I shared my great coat across our laps and established relations of civility, though she spoke no English, and I only that little Spanish so much more embarrassing than none.
In her smile, in the large, soft eyes, and that tinge of Castilian blood which shone red-warm through olive cheek, I saw the signs of a race blessed with sturdier health than ours. With snowy hair growing low on a massive forehead, and just a glimpse now and then of large, gold beads, through a white handkerchief about her throat, she seemed to me a charming picture: though, perhaps, her fine looks gained something by contrasting with the sickly girl in front, whose pallor and cough could not have meant less than the pretubercular state.
Clouds covered the mountains on either hand, leaving me only ranches and people to observe. May I be forgiven if I am wrong in accounting for the late improvement of political tone in Tuolumne by the presence here of so large a share of her most degraded citizens; people whose faces and dress and life and manners are sadder than any possibilities held up to us by Darwin.
My long ride ended in a few hours at Lone Pine, where, from the hotel window, I watched a dark-blue mass of storm which covered and veiled the region where I knew my goal, the Whitney summit, must stand.
For two days storm-curtains hung low about the Sierra base, their vapor banks, dark with fringes of shower, at times drifting out over Lone Pine and quenching a thirsty earth. On the third afternoon blue sky shone through rifts overhead, and now and then a single peak, dashed with broken sunshine, rose for a moment over rolling clouds which swelled above it again like huge billows.
About an hour before sunset the storm began rapidly to sink into level fold, over which, in clear, yellow light, emerged “cloud-compelling” peaks. The liberated sun poured down shafts of light, piercing the mist which now in locks of gold and gray blew about the mountain heads in wonderful splendor.
How deep and solemn a blue filled the cañon depths! What passion of light glowed around the summits! With delight I watched them one after another fading till only the sharp, terrible crest of Whitney, still red with reflected light from the long-sunken sun, showed bright and glorious above the whole Sierra.