Part 19

Would that I knew what good prayers I could say or good deeds I could do, so that ravens would bring me bread and venison for the next two years! Then would I get some tough gray clothes the color of granite, so no one could see or find me [words missing] would I reproduce the ancient ice-rivers and [words missing] and dwell with them. I go again to my lessons to-morrow morning. Some snow fell, and bye-and-bye I must tell you about it.

If poor good Melancholia Cowper had been here yesterday morning, here is just what he would have sung:--

The rocks have been washed, just washed in a shower Which winds in their faces conveyed. The plentiful cloudlets bemuffled their brows Or lay on their beautiful heads.

But cold sighed the winds in the fir trees above And down on the pine trees below, For the rain that came laving and washing in love Was followed, alas, by a snow.

Which, being unmetaphored and prosed into sense, means that yesterday morning a strong southeast wind, cooled among the highest snows of the Sierra, drove back the warm northwest winds from the hot San Joaquin plains and burning foothill woods, and piled up a jagged cloud addition to our valley walls. Soon those white clouds began to darken and to reach out long filmy edges which, uniting over the valley, made a close, dark ceiling. Then came rain, unsteady at first, now a heavy gush, then a sprinkling halt, as if the clouds so long out of practice had forgotten something, but after half an hour of experimental pouring and sprinkling there came an earnest, steady, well-controlled rain.

On the mountain the rain soon turned to snow and some half-melted flakes reached the bottom of the valley. This morning Starr King and Tissiack and all the upper valley are white.

I had a grand ramble in the deep snow outside the valley and discovered one beautiful truth concerning snow-structure and three concerning the forms of forest trees.

These earthquakes have made me immensely rich. I had long been aware of the life and gentle tenderness of the rocks, and, instead of walking upon them as unfeeling surfaces, began to regard them as a transparent sky. Now they have spoken with audible voice and pulsed with common motion. This very instant, just as my pen reached “and” on the third line above, my cabin creaked with a sharp shock and the oil waved in my lamp.

We had several shocks last night. I would like to go somewhere on the west South American coast to study earthquakes. I think I could invent some experimental apparatus whereby their complicated phenomena could be separated and read, but I have some years of ice on hand. ’Tis most ennobling to find and feel that we are constructed with reference to these noble storms, so as to draw unspeakable enjoyment from them. Are we not rich when our six-foot column of substance sponges up heaven above and earth beneath into its pores? Aye, we have chambers in us the right shape for earthquakes. Churches and the schools lisp limpingly, painfully, of man’s capabilities, possibilities, and fussy developing nostrums of duties, but if the human flock, together with their Rev.’s and double L-D shepherds, would go wild themselves, they would discover without Euclid that the solid contents of a human soul is the whole world.

Our streams are fast obtaining their highest power; warm nights and days are making the high mountain snow into snow avalanches and snow-falls; violets, blue, white, and yellow, abound; butterflies through the meadows; and mirror shadows reveal new heavens and new earths everywhere.

Remember me to the Doctor and all the boys and to McChesney and the brotherhood.

Cordially, J. MUIR.

Independence, October 16th, 1873.

All of my season’s mountain work is done. I have just come down from Mt. Whitney and the newly discovered mountain five miles northwest of Whitney, and now our journey is a simple saunter along the base of the range to Tahoe, where we will arrive about the end of the month or a few days earlier.

I have seen a good deal more of the high mountain region about the head of Kings and Kern rivers than I expected to do in so short and so late a time.

Two weeks ago I left the Doctor and Billie in the Kings River Yosemite, and set out for Mt. Tyndall and adjacent mountains and cañons. I ascended Tyndall and ran down into the Kern River Cañon and climbed some nameless mountains between Tyndall and Whitney, and thus gained a pretty good general idea of the region. After crossing the range by the Kearsarge Pass, I again left the Doctor and Bill and pushed southward along the range and northward and up Cottonwood Creek to Mt. Whitney, then over to the Kern Cañons again and up to the new “highest” peak, which I did not ascend, as there was no one to attend to my horse. Thus you see I have rambled this highest portion of the Sierra pretty thoroughly, though hastily. I spent a night without fire or food in a very icy wind-storm on one of the spires of the new highest peak by some called Fisherman’s Peak. That I am already quite recovered from the tremendous exposure proves that I cannot be killed in any such manner. On the day previous I climbed two mountains, making over 10,000 feet of altitude.

I saw no mountains in all this grand region that appeared at all inaccessible to a mountaineer. Give me a summer and a bunch of matches and a sack of meal, and I will climb every mountain in the region.

I have passed through the Lone Pine and noted the Yosemite and local subsidences accomplished by the earthquakes. The bunchy bush Compositæ of Owen’s Valley are intensely glorious.

I got back from Whitney this P.M. How I shall sleep! My life rose wavelike with those lofty granite waves; now it may wearily float for a time along the smooth, flowery plain.

It seems that this new Fisherman’s Peak is causing some stir in the newspapers. If I feel writeful, I will send you a sketch of the region for the “Overland.”

Love to all my friends.

Ever cordially yours, JOHN MUIR.

After Clark’s departure a week ago we climbed the divide between the south fork of the San Joaquin and Kings River. I scanned the vast landscape on which the ice had written wondrous things. After a short scientific feast I decided to attempt entering the valley of the west branch of the north fork, which we did, following the bottom of the valley for about 10 miles. Then we were compelled to ascend the west side of the cañon into the forest. About 6 miles farther down we made out to reënter the cañon, where there is a Yosemite valley, and by hard efforts succeeded in getting out on the opposite side and reaching the divide between the east fork and the middle fork. We then followed the top of the divide nearly to the confluence of the east fork with the trunk and crossed the main river yesterday, and are now in the pines again, over all the wildest and most impracticable portions of our journey. In descending the divide of the main Kings River we made a descent of near 7000 feet down, clear down with a vengeance, to the hot pineless foot-hills. We rose again, and it was a most grateful resurrection. Last night I watched the writing of the spirey pines on the sky gray with stars, and if you had been here I would have said, Look, etc.

Last night, when the Doctor and I were bed-building, discussing as usual the goodnesses and badnesses of boughy mountain beds, we were astounded by the appearance of two prospectors coming through the mountain rye. By them I send this note.

To-day we will reach some of the sequoias near Thomas’ Mill (vide map of Geological Survey), and in two or three more days will be in the cañon of the south fork of Kings River. If the weather appears tranquil when we reach the summit of the range, I may set out among the glaciers for a few days, but if otherwise I shall push hastily for the Owen’s River plains and thence up to Tahoe, etc. I am working hard and shall not feel easy until I am on the other side beyond the reach of early snowstorms. Not that I fear snowstorms for myself, but the poor animals would die or suffer.

The Doctor’s duster and fly-net are safe, and therefore he. Billy is in good spirits, apt to teach drawing in and out of season.

Remember me to the Doctor and the boys and Morris and Keith, etc.

Ever yours truly, JOHN MUIR.