For years our chief, Professor Whitney, has made brave campaigns into the unknown realm of Nature. Against low prejudice and dull indifference he has led the survey of California onward to success. There stand for him two monuments—one a great report made by his own hand; another, the loftiest peak in the Union, begun for him in the planet’s youth and sculptured of enduring granite by the slow hand of Time.
1873
The preceding pages were written immediately after my return from Mount Whitney, and without a shadow of suspicion that among the sea of peaks half seen, half storm-hidden, I could have missed the true summit.
Professor Whitney alone possessed sufficiently studied data to apply the annual corrections for barometric oscillation in the high Sierra, and to his office I at once forwarded my observations noted upon the Mount Whitney summit, together with the record of simultaneous readings at Lone Pine, the station upon which I relied for a base. As I was about mailing the chapter to our printer, from my camp in the Rocky Mountains, I received from Professor Pettee, who had kindly made a computation, the puzzling despatch that Mount Whitney only reached fourteen thousand six hundred and ten feet in altitude. Realizing at once that this must be an error, I attributed it to some great abnormal oscillation of pressure due to storm, and decided not to publish the measurement.
Then for a moment a sense of doubt came over me lest I had been mistaken; but on carefully studying the map it was reassuring to establish beyond doubt the identity of the peak designated on the map of the Geological Survey of California as Mount Whitney with the one I had climbed. The reader will perhaps appreciate, then, my surprise and disappointment when, travelling in the overland car to California in September, 1873, I read and re-read a communication by Mr. W. A. Goodyear, former Assistant of the Geological Survey, made to the California Academy of Sciences, in which he points out with great clearness that I had missed the real peak.
To explain most simply why Mr. Goodyear saw the true Mount Whitney when he reached the summit of my peak of 1871, it is only necessary to state that he had a clear day, and the evident fact stared him in the face. If the reader kindly refers to the preceding part of the chapter, descriptive of my 1871 climb, he will note that my visit was, unfortunately, during a great storm, through whose billows of cloud and eddying mists the landscape disclosed itself in fragmentary glimpses: to repeat the expression of my notebook, “as through windows in the storm.”
My little granite island was incessantly beaten by breakers of vague, impenetrable cloud, and never once did the true Mount Whitney unveil its crest to my eager eyes. Only one glimpse, and I should have bent my steps northward, restless till the peak was climbed. But, then, that would have left nothing for Goodyear, whose paper shows such evident relish in my mistake that I accept my ’71 ill-luck as providential. One has in this dark world so few chances of conferring innocent, pure delight.
It must always remain a bond between Goodyear and myself that in the only paper he has written on the high Sierras it was his happy thought to point both pleasantry and argument with that most grotesque and sober of beasts, the mule; and, while my regard for all mules rises wellnigh into the realm of sentiment, I cherish no less a feeling than profound indebtedness toward the particular one who succeeded—with how great effort only a fellow-climber can know—in getting Mr. Goodyear on the now nameless peak, whence, like Moses from Pisgah, he beheld the Promised Land.
My gratitude is not all directed to the mule, either; from that just channel a stream is directed toward the clear, good judgment of my friend, who resolutely turned his back on the alluring summit, and promptly quitted the head of mule navigation to descend and hold me up in my proper light. Pleasantry aside, and method being largely a matter of taste, Mr. Goodyear deserves credit for having so clearly pointed out my mistake—credit which I desire to bear honest tribute to, since his discovery has already led several of us to climb the true peak, a labor requiring little effort and rewarded by the most striking view in the Sierra Nevada.
Of course I lost no time in directing my steps toward Mount Whitney, animated with a lively delight which was quite unclouded by the fact that two parties, who had three thousand miles the start of me, were already en route, and certain to reach the goal before me.