The ascent by the arroyo.
Growth of the stream.
If you ascend by the bed of the arroyo it is not long before you begin to note the presence of underground water. It is apparent in the green of the vegetation. The grasses are seen growing first in bunches and then in sods, little blue flowers are blooming beside the grasses; alders, willows, and young sycamores are growing along the banks, and live-oaks are in the stream-bed among the bowlders. As you move up and into the mountain the bed becomes more of a rocky floor, the earth-deposits grow thinner, and presently little water-pockets begin to show themselves. At first you see them in pot-holes and worn basins in the rock, then water begins to show in small pools under cut banks, and then perhaps there is a little glassy slip of light over a flat rock in a narrow section of the bed. Gradually the slip grows in length and joins the pools, until at last you see the stream come to life, as it were, out of the ground.
Rising banks.
Waterfalls.
The banks begin to rise. As you advance they lift higher and higher, they grow into abrupt walls of rock; the strata of granite crop out in ragged ledges. The trees and grasses disappear, and in their place come cold pale flowers growing out of beds of moss, or clinging in rock-niches where all around the gray and orange lichens are weaving tapestries upon the walls. The bed of the stream seems to have sunken down, but in reality it is rising by steps and falls ever increasing in size. The stream itself has grown much larger, swifter, more noisy. You move slowly up and around the falls, each one harder to surmount than the last, until finally you are in the canyon.
In the gorge.
The walls are high, the air is damp, the light is dim. The glare and heat of the desert have vanished and in their place is the shadow of the cave. You toil on far up the chasm, creeping along ledges and rising by niches, until a great pool, a basin hewn from the rock, is before you; and the hewer is seen waving and flashing in the air a hundred feet as it falls into the pool. Around you and ahead of you is a sheer pitch of rock curved like a horseshoe. It is insurmountable; there is no thoroughfare. You will not gain the peak by way of the canyon. The water-ousel on the basin edge—sole tenant of the gorge—seems to laugh at your ignorance of that fact. Let us turn back and try the ridges.
The ascent by the ridges.
The chaparral.