The Sierra Nevada. Chapter I, Part 1

Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in
sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and
massive is the topography of the State in general views, that the main
central portion displays only one valley, and two chains of mountains
which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height: the Coast Range
on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming
together in curves on the north and south inclose a magnificent basin,
with a level floor more than 400 miles long, and from 35 to 60 miles
wide. This is the grand Central Valley of California, the waters of
which have only one outlet to the sea through the Golden Gate. But with
this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of hidden
detail. The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against the
ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable
forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a
multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long,
forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the
Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and
concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate, soil,
and productions.

Making your way through the mazes of the Coast Range to the summit of
any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco, in the clear
springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes
is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great Central Valley
glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than
the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery, lake-like bed of fertile soil.
Along its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height,
reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so
gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with
light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
Along the top, and extending a good way down, you see a pale, pearl-gray
belt of snow; and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the
extension of the forests; and along the base of the range a broad belt
of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the minor's gold-fields and the
foot-hill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall
of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as
adamant.

When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the
summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or
plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the
luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to
me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the
Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing
and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the
sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the
trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand
dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it
still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely
beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.

The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to
nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on
it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or
the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent
forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its
wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of
well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures.
Even the summit-peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively
smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the
shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom
beneath them, and the whole range is furrowed with cañons to a depth of
from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in
which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers.

Though of such stupendous depth, these famous cañons are not raw,
gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough
passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the
mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy
fountains, as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and
light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting,
throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel and attractive
scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the
mountain-ranges of the world.

In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of
the range, the main cañons widen into spacious valleys or parks,
diversified like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming groves and
meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty, retiring
walls, infinitely varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns,
flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and evergreens, which find
anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches; while the whole is
enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing and
foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining river
that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them.

The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of
rocks mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow
gorges and side-cañons; and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly
built together on a level floor, that, comprehensively seen, the parks
they inclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from above.
Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose;
others, absolutely sheer, or nearly so, for thousands of feet, advance
their brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions, giving
welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet heedless of
everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types of
permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting
forms; their feet set in pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their
brows in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water,
while snow-clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and wreathe
about them as the years go by, as if into these mountain mansions Nature
had taken pains to gather her choicest treasures to draw her lovers into
close and confiding communion with her.

[Illustration: MOUNT TAMALPAIS--NORTH OF THE GOLDEN GATE.]

Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest
forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow
Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of
its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all
other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species
and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody
through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the
songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus and
manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows, and
damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color, compelling
the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley,
these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range,
only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at intervals of about
fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to
roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they
feed. Deer, also, dwell here, and find food and shelter in the ceanothus
tangles, with a multitude of smaller people. Above this region of
giants, the trees grow smaller until the utmost limit of the timber line
is reached on the stormy mountain-slopes at a height of from ten to
twelve thousand feet above the sea, where the Dwarf Pine is so lowly and
hard beset by storms and heavy snow, it is pressed into flat tangles,
over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt
the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing
and blasting alike.

The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all
the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from
every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to
seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they
have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been
desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and
shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and
only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent.
The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foot-hills,
roughened here and there with brush and trees, and outcropping masses of
slate, colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller masses of slate,
rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod in leaning slabs, look like
ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say
from February to April, the whole of this foot-hill belt is a paradise
of bees and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy
building their nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by
the end of May the soil, plants, and sky seem to have been baked in an
oven. Most of the plants crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the
ground is full of cracks; while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager
longing through the burning glare to the snowy summits looming like hazy
clouds in the distance.

The trees, mostly _Quercus Douglasii_ and _Pinus Sabiniana_,
thirty to forty feet high, with thin, pale-green foliage, stand far
apart and cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks
enjoying a constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing
numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the
increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food.
Crows, ravens, magpies--friends in distress--gather on the ground
beneath the best shade-trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide
open, scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails,
too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools in the
channels of the larger mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket to
thicket among the ceanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared hare
is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights are
calm and dewless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim the
abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine
on the plants and larger animals. The hylas make a delightfully pure and
tranquil music after sunset; and coyotes, the little, despised dogs of
the wilderness, brave, hardy fellows, looking like withered wisps of
hay, bark in chorus for hours. Mining-towns, most of them dead, and a
few living ones with bright bits of cultivation about them, occur at
long intervals along the belt, and cottages covered with climbing roses,
in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields
in fertile flats where water for irrigation may be had. But they are
mostly far apart, and make scarce any mark in general views.

Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in
glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened. Then
all the range looks like a vast beveled wall of purest marble. The rough
places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered
gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky. And though
silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking its place on
rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow finds a voice!
Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it booms and roars
like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps down the
mountain-side, arrayed in long, silken streamers and wreathing, swirling
films of crystal dust.

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