Clarence King.
[In 1864 Professor Josiah Dwight Whitney, State Geologist of California, sent a band of five explorers for a summer's campaign in the high Sierras. Clarence King was assistant geologist of the party; he recounted their researches and adventures in “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada,” published in 1871 by J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston; three years later the same firm issued an enlarged edition with maps. “The Ascent of Mount Tyndall,” the third chapter of the book, is one of the most thrilling stories of adventure ever written. Clarence King suggested and organized the United States Geological Survey, and was its director 1878-81. He died in 1901.]
Morning dawned brightly upon our bivouac among a cluster of dark firs in the mountain corridor, opened by an ancient glacier of King's River in the heart of the Sierras. It dawned a trifle sooner than we could have wished, but Professor Brewer and Hoffman had breakfasted before sunrise, and were off with barometer and theodolite upon their shoulders, proposing to ascend our amphitheatre to its head and climb a great pyramidal peak which swelled up against the eastern sky, closing the view in that direction.
We, who remained in camp, spent the day in overhauling campaign materials and preparing for a grand assault upon the summits. For a couple of hours we could descry our friends through the field-glasses, their minute black forms moving slowly on among piles of giant débris; now and then lost, again coming into view, and at last disappearing altogether.
It was twilight of evening and almost eight o'clock when they came back to camp, Brewer leading the way, Hoffman following; and as they sat down by our fire without uttering a word we read upon their faces terrible fatigue.
So we hastened to give them supper of coffee and soup, bread and venison, which resulted, after a time, in our getting in return the story of the day.
For eight whole hours they had worked up over granite and snow, mounting ridge after ridge, till the summit was made about two o'clock.
These snowy crests bounding our view at the eastward we had all along taken to be the summits of the Sierra, and Brewer had supposed himself to be climbing a dominant peak, from which he might look eastward over Owen's Valley and out upon leagues of desert. Instead of this a vast wall of mountains, lifted still higher than his peak, rose beyond a tremendous cañon which lay like a trough between the two parallel ranks of peaks. Hoffman showed us on his sketch-book the profile of this new range, and I instantly recognized the peaks which I had seen from Mariposa, whose great white pile had led me to believe them the highest points of California.
For a couple of months my friends had made me the target of plenty of pleasant banter about my “highest land,” which they lost faith in as we climbed from Thomas's Mill,—I too becoming a trifle anxious about it; but now the truth had burst upon Brewer and Hoffman they could not find words to describe the terribleness and grandeur of the deep cañon, nor for picturing those huge crags towering in line at the east. Their peak, as indicated by the barometer, was in the region of 13,400 feet, and a level across to the farther range showed its crests to be at least 1,500 feet higher. They had spent hours upon the summit scanning the eastern horizon, and ranging downward into the labyrinth of gulfs below, and had come at last with reluctance to the belief that to cross this gorge and ascend the eastern wall of peaks was utterly impossible.
Brewer and Hoffman were old climbers, and their verdict of impossible opposed me as I lay awake thinking about it; but early next morning I had made up my mind, and, taking Cotter aside, I asked him in an easy manner whether he would like to penetrate the Unknown Land with me at the risk of our necks, provided Brewer should consent. In frank, courageous tone he answered after his usual mode, “Why not?” Stout of limb, stronger yet in heart, of iron endurance, and a quiet, unexcited temperament, and, better yet, deeply devoted to me, I felt that Cotter was the one comrade I would choose to face death with, for I believed there was in his manhood no room for fear or shirk.