Robert Louis Stevenson - "St Ives"

Algernon Charles Swinburne - "Songs before Sunrise"

Dante Alighieri - "Inferno"

Col. S. L. Brengle - "When the Holy Ghost is Come"

The Yosemite

J >> John Muir >> The Yosemite




The kingfisher winters in the Valley, and the flicker and, of course,
the carpenter woodpecker, that lays up large stores of acorns in the
bark of trees; wrens also, with a few brown and gray linnets, and flocks
of the arctic bluebird, making lively pictures among the snow-laden
mistletoe bushes. Flocks of pigeons are often seen, and about six
species of ducks, as the river is never wholly frozen over. Among these
are the mallard and the beautiful woodduck, now less common on account
of being so often shot at. Flocks of wandering geese used to visit the
Valley in March and April, and perhaps do so still, driven down by
hunger or stress of weather while on their way across the Range. When
pursued by the hunters I have frequently seen them try to fly over the
walls of Lee Valley until tired out and compelled to re-alight. Yosemite
magnitudes seem to be as deceptive to geese as to men, for after
circling to a considerable height and forming regular harrow-shaped
ranks they would suddenly find themselves in danger of being dashed
against the face of the cliff, much nearer the bottom than the top. Then
turning in confusion with loud screams they would try again and again
until exhausted and compelled to descend. I have occasionally observed
large flocks on their travels crossing the summits of the Range at a
height of 12,000 to 13,000 feet above the level of the sea, and even in
so rare an atmosphere as this they seemed to be sustaining themselves
without extra effort. Strong, however, as they are of wind and wing,
they cannot fly over Yosemite walls, starting from the bottom.

A pair of golden eagles have lived in the Valley ever since I first
visited it, hunting all winter along the northern cliffs and down the
river canyon. Their nest is on a ledge of the cliff over which pours
the Nevada Fall. Perched on the top of a dead spar, they were always
interested observers of the geese when they were being shot at. I once
noticed one of the geese compelled to leave the flock on account of
being sorely wounded, although it still seemed to fly pretty well.
Immediately the eagles pursued it and no doubt struck it down, although
I did not see the result of the hunt. Anyhow, it flew past me up the
Valley, closely pursued.

One wild, stormy winter morning after five feet of snow had fallen on
the floor of the Valley and the flying flakes driven by a strong wind
still thickened the air, making darkness like the approach of night, I
sallied forth to see what I might learn and enjoy. It was impossible
to go very far without the aid of snow-shoes, but I found no great
difficulty in making my way to a part of the river where one of my
ouzels lived. I found him at home busy about his breakfast, apparently
unaware of anything uncomfortable in the weather. Presently he flew out
to a stone against which the icy current was beating, and turning his
back to the wind, sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime.

After spending an hour or two with my favorite, I made my way across the
Valley, boring and wallowing through the loose snow, to learn as much
as possible about the way the other birds were spending their time. In
winter one can always find them because they are then restricted to the
north side of the Valley, especially the Indian Canyon groves, which
from their peculiar exposure are the warmest.

I found most of the robins cowering on the lee side of the larger
branches of the trees, where the snow could not fall on them, while two
or three of the more venturesome were making desperate efforts to get at
the mistletoe berries by clinging to the underside of the snow-crowned
masses, back downward, something like woodpeckers. Every now and then
some of the loose snow was dislodged and sifted down on the hungry
birds, sending them screaming back to their companions in the grove,
shivering and muttering like cold, hungry children.

Some of the sparrows were busy scratching and pecking at the feet of
the larger trees where the snow had been shed off, gleaning seeds
and benumbed insects, joined now and then by a robin weary of his
unsuccessful efforts to get at the snow-covered mistletoe berries. The
brave woodpeckers were clinging to the snowless sides of the larger
boles and overarching branches of the camp trees, making short flights
from side to side of the grove, pecking now and then at the acorns they
had stored in the bark, and chattering aimlessly as if unable to keep
still, evidently putting in the time in a very dull way. The hardy
nuthatches were threading the open furrows of the barks in their usual
industrious manner and uttering their quaint notes, giving no evidence
of distress. The Steller's jays were, of course, making more noise and
stir than all the other birds combined; ever coming and going with
loud bluster, screaming as if each had a lump of melting sludge in his
throat, and taking good care to improve every opportunity afforded by
the darkness and confusion of the storm to steal from the acorn stores
of the woodpeckers. One of the golden eagles made an impressive picture
as he stood bolt upright on the top of a tall pine-stump, braving the
storm, with his back to the wind and a tuft of snow piled on his broad
shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every storm-bound bird
seemed more or less uncomfortable, if not in distress. The storm was
reflected in every gesture, and not one cheerful note, not to say song,
came from a single bill. Their cowering, joyless endurance offered
striking contrasts to the spontaneous, irrepressible gladness of the
ouzel, who could no more help giving out sweet song than a rose sweet
fragrance. He must sing, though the heavens fall.



Chapter 10

The South Dome


With the exception of a few spires and pinnacles, the South Dome is
the only rock about the Valley that is strictly inaccessible without
artificial means, and its inaccessibility is expressed in severe terms.
Nevertheless many a mountaineer, gazing admiringly, tried hard to
invent a way to the top of its noble crown--all in vain, until in the
year 1875, George Anderson, an indomitable Scotchman, undertook the
adventure. The side facing Tenaya Canyon is an absolutely vertical
precipice from the summit to a depth of about 1600 feet, and on the
opposite side it is nearly vertical for about as great a depth. The
southwest side presents a very steep and finely drawn curve from the top
down a thousand feet or more, while on the northeast, where it is united
with the Clouds' Rest Ridge, one may easily reach a point called the
Saddle, about seven hundred feet below the summit. From the Saddle the
Dome rises in a graceful curve a few degrees too steep for unaided
climbing, besides being defended by overleaning ends of the concentric
dome layers of the granite.

A year or two before Anderson gained the summit, John Conway, the master
trail-builder of the Valley, and his little sons, who climbed smooth
rocks like lizards, made a bold effort to reach the top by climbing
barefooted up the grand curve with a rope which they fastened at
irregular intervals by means of eye-bolts driven into joints of the
rock. But finding that the upper part would require laborious drilling,
they abandoned the attempt, glad to escape from the dangerous position
they had reached, some 300 feet above the Saddle. Anderson began with
Conway's old rope, which had been left in place, and resolutely drilled
his way to the top, inserting eye-bolts five to six feet apart, and
making his rope fast to each in succession, resting his feet on the
last bolt while he drilled a hole for the next above. Occasionally some
irregularity in the curve, or slight foothold, would enable him to climb
a few feet without a rope, which he would pass and begin drilling again,
and thus the whole work was accomplished in a few days. From this
slender beginning he proposed to construct a substantial stairway which
he hoped to complete in time for the next year's travel, but while busy
getting out timber for his stairway and dreaming of the wealth he hoped
to gain from tolls, he was taken sick and died all alone in his little
cabin.

On the 10th of November, after returning from a visit to Mount Shasta, a
month or two after Anderson had gained the summit, I made haste to the
Dome, not only for the pleasure of climbing, but to see what I might
learn. The first winter storm-clouds had blossomed and the mountains and
all the high points about the Valley were mantled in fresh snow. I was,
therefore, a little apprehensive of danger from the slipperiness of the
rope and the rock. Anderson himself tried to prevent me from making
the attempt, refusing to believe that any one could climb his rope in
the now-muffled condition in which it then was. Moreover, the sky was
overcast and solemn snow-clouds began to curl around the summit, and
my late experiences on icy Shasta came to mind. But reflecting that I
had matches in my pocket, and that a little firewood might be found, I
concluded that in case of a storm the night could be spent on the Dome
without suffering anything worth minding, no matter what the clouds
might bring forth. I therefore pushed on and gained the top.

It was one of those brooding, changeful days that come between Indian
summer and winter, when the leaf colors have grown dim and the clouds
come and go among the cliffs like living creatures looking for work: now
hovering aloft, now caressing rugged rock-brows with great gentleness,
or, wandering afar over the tops of the forests, touching the spires of
fir and pine with their soft silken fringes as if trying to tell the
glad news of the coming of snow.

The first view was perfectly glorious. A massive cloud of pure pearl
luster, apparently as fixed and calm as the meadows and groves in the
shadow beneath it, was arched across the Valley from wall to wall, one
end resting on the grand abutment of El Capitan, the other on Cathedral
Rock. A little later, as I stood on the tremendous verge overlooking
Mirror Lake, a flock of smaller clouds, white as snow, came from the
north, trailing their downy skirts over the dark forests, and entered
the Valley with solemn god-like gestures through Indian Canyon and over
the North Dome and Royal Arches, moving swiftly, yet with majestic
deliberation. On they came, nearer and nearer, gathering and massing
beneath my feet and filling the Tenaya Canyon. Then the sun shone free,
lighting the pearly gray surface of the cloud-like sea and making it
glow. Gazing, admiring, I was startled to see for the first time the
rare optical phenomenon of the "Specter of the Brocken." My shadow,
clearly outlined, about half a mile long, lay upon this glorious white
surface with startling effect. I walked back and forth, waved my arms
and struck all sorts of attitudes, to see every slightest movement
enormously exaggerated. Considering that I have looked down so many
times from mountain tops on seas of all sorts of clouds, it seems
strange that I should have seen the "Brocken Specter" only this once.
A grander surface and a grander stand-point, however, could hardly
have been found in all the Sierra.

After this grand show the cloud-sea rose higher, wreathing the Dome, and
for a short time submerging it, making darkness like night, and I began
to think of looking for a camp ground in a cluster of dwarf pines. But
soon the sun shone free again, the clouds, sinking lower and lower,
gradually vanished, leaving the Valley with its Indian-summer colors
apparently refreshed, while to the eastward the summit-peaks, clad in
new snow, towered along the horizon in glorious array.

Though apparently it is perfectly bald, there are four clumps of pines
growing on the summit, representing three species, Pinus albicaulis,
P. contorta and P. ponderosa, var. Jeffreyi--all three, of course,
repressed and storm-beaten. The alpine spiraea grows here also and
blossoms profusely with potentilla, erigeron, eriogonum, pentstemon,
solidago, and an interesting species of onion, and four or five species
of grasses and sedges. None of these differs in any respect from those
of other summits of the same height, excepting the curious little
narrow-leaved, waxen-bulbed onion, which I had not seen elsewhere.

Notwithstanding the enthusiastic eagerness of tourists to reach the
crown of the Dome the views of the Valley from this lofty standpoint are
less striking than from many other points comparatively low, chiefly on
account of the foreshortening effect produced by looking down from so
great a height. The North Dome is dwarfed almost beyond recognition,
the grand sculpture of the Royal Arches is scarcely noticeable, and the
whole range of walls on both sides seem comparatively low, especially
when the Valley is flooded with noon sunshine; while the Dome itself,
the most sublime feature of all the Yosemite views, is out of sight
beneath one's feet. The view of Little Yosemite Valley is very fine,
though inferior to one obtained from the base of the Starr King Cone,
but the summit landscapes towards Mounts Ritter, Lyell, Dana, Conness,
and the Merced Group, are very effective and complete.

No one has attempted to carry out Anderson's plan of making the Dome
accessible. For my part I should prefer leaving it in pure wildness,
though, after all, no great damage could be done by tramping over it.
The surface would be strewn with tin cans and bottles, but the winter
gales would blow the rubbish away. Avalanches might strip off any sort
of stairway or ladder that might be built. Blue jays and Clark's crows
have trodden the Dome for many a day, and so have beetles and chipmunks,
and Tissiack would hardly be more "conquered" or spoiled should man be
added to her list of visitors. His louder scream and heavier scrambling
would not stir a line of her countenance.

When the sublime ice-floods of the glacial period poured down the flank
of the Range over what is now Yosemite Valley, they were compelled to
break through a dam of domes extending across from Mount Starr King to
North Dome; and as the period began to draw near a close the shallowing
ice-currents were divided and the South Dome was, perhaps, the first to
emerge, burnished and shining like a mirror above the surface of the icy
sea; and though it has sustained the wear and tear of the elements tens
of thousands of years, it yet remains a telling monument of the action
of the great glaciers that brought it to light. Its entire surface is
still covered with glacial hieroglyphics whose interpretation is the
reward of all who devoutly study them.



Chapter 11

The Ancient Yosemite Glaciers:
How the Valley Was Formed


All California has been glaciated, the low plains and valleys as well
as the mountains. Traces of an ice-sheet, thousands of feet in thickness,
beneath whose heavy folds the present landscapes have been molded, may
be found everywhere, though glaciers now exist only among the peaks of
the High Sierra. No other mountain chain on this or any other of the
continents that I have seen is so rich as the Sierra in bold, striking,
well-preserved glacial monuments. Indeed, every feature is more or
less tellingly glacial. Not a peak, ridge, dome, canyon, yosemite,
lake-basin, stream or forest will you see that does not in some way
explain the past existence and modes of action of flowing, grinding,
sculpturing, soil-making, scenery-making ice. For, notwithstanding the
post-glacial agents--the air, rain, snow, frost, river, avalanche,
etc.--have been at work upon the greater portion of the Range for tens
of thousands of stormy years, each engraving its own characters more
and more deeply over those of the ice, the latter are so enduring and
so heavily emphasized, they still rise in sublime relief, clear and
legible, through every after-inscription. The landscapes of North
Greenland, Antarctica, and some of those of our own Alaska, are still
being fashioned beneath a slow-crawling mantle of ice, from a quarter
of a mile to probably more than a mile in thickness, presenting noble
illustrations of the ancient condition of California, when its sublime
scenery lay hidden in process of formation. On the Himalaya, the
mountains of Norway and Switzerland, the Caucasus, and on most of those
of Alaska, their ice-mantle has been melted down into separate glaciers
that flow river-like through the valleys, illustrating a similar past
condition in the Sierra, when every canyon and valley was the channel
of an ice-stream, all of which may be easily traced back to their
fountains, where some sixty-five or seventy of their topmost residual
branches still linger beneath protecting mountain shadows.

The change from one to another of those glacial conditions was slow as
we count time. When the great cycle of snow years, called the Glacial
Period, was nearly complete in California, the ice-mantle, wasting from
season to season faster than it was renewed, began to withdraw from the
lowlands and gradually became shallower everywhere. Then the highest
of the Sierra domes and dividing ridges, containing distinct glaciers
between them, began to appear above the icy sea. These first river-like
glaciers remained united in one continuous sheet toward the summit of
the Range for many centuries. But as the snow-fall diminished, and the
climate became milder, this upper part of the ice-sheet was also in
turn separated into smaller distinct glaciers, and these again into
still smaller ones, while at the same time all were growing shorter and
shallower, though fluctuations of the climate now and then occurred
that brought their receding ends to a standstill, or even enabled them
to advance for a few tens or hundreds of years.

Meanwhile, hardy, home-seeking plants and animals, after long waiting,
flocked to their appointed places, pushing bravely on higher and higher,
along every sun-warmed slope, closely following the retreating ice,
which, like shreds of summer clouds, at length vanished from the
new-born mountains, leaving them in all their main, telling features
nearly as we find them now.

Tracing the ways of glaciers, learning how Nature sculptures
mountain-waves in making scenery-beauty that so mysteriously influences
every human being, is glorious work.

The most striking and attractive of the glacial phenomena in the upper
Yosemite region are the polished glacier pavements, because they are so
beautiful, and their beauty is of so rare a kind, so unlike any portion
of the loose, deeply weathered lowlands where people make homes and earn
their bread. They are simply flat or gently undulating areas of hard
resisting granite, which present the unchanged surface upon which with
enormous pressure the ancient glaciers flowed. They are found in most
perfect condition in the subalpine region, at an elevation of from eight
thousand to nine thousand feet. Some are miles in extent, only slightly
interrupted by spots that have given way to the weather, while the best
preserved portions reflect the sunbeams like calm water or glass, and
shine as if polished afresh every day, notwithstanding they have been
exposed to corroding rains, dew, frost, and snow measureless thousands
of years.

The attention of wandering hunters and prospectors, who see so many
mountain wonders, is seldom commanded by other glacial phenomena,
moraines however regular and artificial-looking, canyons however deep
or strangely modeled, rocks however high; but when they come to these
shining pavements they stop and stare in wondering admiration, kneel
again and again to examine the brightest spots, and try hard to account
for their mysterious shining smoothness. They may have seen the winter
avalanches of snow descending in awful majesty through the woods,
scouring the rocks and sweeping away like weeds the trees that stood
in their way, but conclude that this cannot be the work of avalanches,
because the scratches and fine polished strife show that the agent,
whatever it was, moved along the sides of high rocks and ridges and up
over the tops of them as well as down their slopes. Neither can they see
how water may possibly have been the agent, for they find the same
strange polish upon ridges and domes thousands of feet above the reach
of any conceivable flood. Of all the agents of whose work they know
anything, only the wind seems capable of moving across the face of the
country in the directions indicated by the scratches and grooves. The
Indian name of Lake Tenaya is "Pyweak"--the lake of shining rocks. One
of the Yosemite tribe, Indian Tom, came to me and asked if I could tell
him what had made the Tenaya rocks so smooth. Even dogs and horses, when
first led up the mountains, study geology to this extent that they gaze
wonderingly at the strange brightness of the ground and smell it, and
place their feet cautiously upon it as if afraid of falling or sinking.

In the production of this admirable hard finish, the glaciers in many
places flowed with a pressure of more than a thousand tons to the square
yard, planing down granite, slate, and quartz alike, and bringing out
the veins and crystals of the rocks with beautiful distinctness. Over
large areas below the sources of the Tuolumne and Merced the granite is
porphyritic; feldspar crystals in inch or two in length in many places
form the greater part of the rock, and these, when planed off level with
the general surface, give rise to a beautiful mosaic on which the happy
sunbeams plash and glow in passionate enthusiasm. Here lie the brightest
of all the Sierra landscapes. The Range both to the north and south of
this region was, perhaps, glaciated about as heavily, but because the
rocks are less resisting, their polished surfaces have mostly given way
to the weather, leaving only small imperfect patches. The lower remnants
of the old glacial surface occur at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000
feet above the sea level, and twenty to thirty miles below the axis of
the Range. The short, steeply inclined canyons of the eastern flank also
contain enduring, brilliantly striated and polished rocks, but these are
less magnificent than those of the broad western flank.

One of the best general views of the brightest and best of the Yosemite
park landscapes that every Yosemite tourist should see, is to be had
from the top of Fairview Dome, a lofty conoidal rock near Cathedral Peak
that long ago I named the Tuolumne Glacier Monument, one of the most
striking and best preserved of the domes. Its burnished crown is about
1500 feet above the Tuolumne Meadows and 10,000 above the sea. At first
sight it seems inaccessible, though a good climber will find it may
be scaled on the south side. About half-way up you will find it so
steep that there is danger of slipping, but feldspar crystals, two or
three inches long, of which the rock is full, having offered greater
resistance to atmospheric erosion than the mass of the rock in which
they are imbedded, have been brought into slight relief in some places,
roughening the surface here and there, and affording helping footholds.

The summit is burnished and scored like the sides and base, the
scratches and strife indicating that the mighty Tuolumne Glacier swept
over it as if it were only a mere boulder in the bottom of its channel.
The pressure it withstood must have been enormous. Had it been less
solidly built it would have been carried away, ground into moraine
fragments, like the adjacent rock in which it lay imbedded; for, great
as it is, it is only a hard residual knot like the Yosemite domes,
brought into relief by the removal of less resisting rock about it;
an illustration of the survival of the strongest and most favorably
situated.

Hardly less wonderful is the resistance it has offered to the trying
mountain weather since first its crown rose above the icy sea. The whole
quantity of post-glacial wear and tear it has suffered has not degraded
it a hundredth of an inch, as may readily be shown by the polished
portions of the surface. A few erratic boulders, nicely poised on its
crown, tell an interesting story. They came from the summit-peaks twelve
miles away, drifting like chips on the frozen sea, and were stranded
here when the top of the monument merged from the ice, while their
companions, whose positions chanced to be above the slopes of the sides
where they could not find rest, were carried farther on by falling back
on the shallowing ice current.

The general view from the summit consists of a sublime assemblage of
ice-born rocks and mountains, long wavering ridges, meadows, lakes, and
forest-covered moraines, hundreds of square miles of them. The lofty
summit-peaks rise grandly along the sky to the east, the gray pillared
slopes of the Hoffman Range toward the west, and a billowy sea of
shining rocks like the Monument, some of them almost as high and which
from their peculiar sculpture seem to be rolling westward in the middle
ground, something like breaking waves. Immediately beneath you are the
Big Tuolumne Meadows, smooth lawns with large breadths of woods on
either side, and watered by the young Tuolumne River, rushing cool and
clear from its many snow- and ice-fountains. Nearly all the upper part
of the basin of the Tuolumne Glacier is in sight, one of the greatest
and most influential of all the Sierra ice-rivers. Lavishly flooded by
many a noble affluent from the ice-laden flanks of Mounts Dana, Lyell,
McClure, Gibbs, Conness, it poured its majestic outflowing current full
against the end of the Hoffman Range, which divided and deflected it to
right and left, just as a river of water is divided against an island
in the middle of its channel. Two distinct glaciers were thus formed,
one of which flowed through the great Tuolumne Canyon and Hetch Hetchy
Valley, while the other swept upward in a deep current two miles wide
across the divide, five hundred feet high between the basins of the
Tuolumne and Merced, into the Tenaya Basin, and thence down through the
Tenaya Canyon and Yosemite.

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