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twg_000000041300 | of them fellows to the back of that rock yonder, and expected to capture them all, for I thought I had a dead thing on them. I got behind them on a narrow bench that runs along the face of the wall near the top and comes to an end where they couldnt get away without falling and being killed; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041301 | but they jumped off, and landed all right, as if that were the regular thing with them. What! said I, jumped feet perpendicular! Did you see them do it? No, he replied, I didnt see them going down, for I was behind them; but I saw them go off over the brink, and then I went below and found their | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041302 | tracks where they struck on the loose rubbish at the bottom. They just _sailed right off_, and landed on their feet right side up. That is the kind of animal _they_ isbeats anything else that goes on four legs. [Illustration: WILD SHEEP JUMPING OVER A PRECIPICE.] On another occasion, a flock that was pursued by hunters retreated to another portion | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041303 | of this same cliff where it is still higher, and, on being followed, they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind another, by two men who happened to be chopping where they had a fair view of them and could watch their progress from top to bottom of the precipice. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041304 | without evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and controlling the velocity of their half falling, half leaping movements by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned, rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the bottom, when they sailed off into the free air and alighted on their feet, but with their bodies | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041305 | so nearly in a vertical position that they appeared to be diving. It appears, therefore, that the methods of this wild mountaineering become clearly comprehensible as soon as we make ourselves acquainted with the rocks, and the kind of feet and muscles brought to bear upon them. The Modoc and Pah Ute Indians are, or rather have been, the most | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041306 | successful hunters of the wild sheep in the regions that have come under my own observation. I have seen large numbers of heads and horns in the caves of Mount Shasta and the Modoc lava-beds, where the Indians had been feasting in stormy weather; also in the caons of the Sierra opposite Owens Valley; while the heavy obsidian arrow-heads found | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041307 | on some of the highest peaks show that this warfare has long been going on. In the more accessible ranges that stretch across the desert regions of western Utah and Nevada, considerable numbers of Indians used to hunt in company like packs of wolves, and being perfectly acquainted with the topography of their hunting-grounds, and with the habits and instincts | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041308 | of the game, they were pretty successful. On the tops of nearly every one of the Nevada mountains that I have visited, I found small, nest-like inclosures built of stones, in which, as I afterward learned, one or more Indians would lie in wait while their companions scoured the ridges below, knowing that the alarmed sheep would surely run to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041309 | the summit, and when they could be made to approach with the wind they were shot at short range. [Illustration: INDIANS HUNTING WILD SHEEP.] Still larger bands of Indians used to make extensive hunts upon some dominant mountain much frequented by the sheep, such as Mount Grant on the Wassuck Range to the west of Walker Lake. On some particular | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041310 | spot, favorably situated with reference to the well-known trails of the sheep, they built a high-walled corral, with long guiding wings diverging from the gateway; and into this inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster, counting in squaws, children, and all; they were | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041311 | compelled, therefore, to build rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live Indians moving about excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little distance from men, by any | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041312 | one not in the secret. The whole ridge-top then seemed to be alive with hunters. The only animal that may fairly be regarded as a companion or rival of the sheep is the so-called Rocky Mountain goat (_Aplocerus montana_, Rich.), which, as its name indicates, is more antelope than goat. He, too, is a brave and hardy climber, fearlessly crossing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041313 | the wildest summits, and braving the severest storms, but he is shaggy, short-legged, and much less dignified in demeanor than the sheep. His jet-black horns are only about five or six inches in length, and the long, white hair with which he is covered obscures the expression of his limbs. I have never yet seen a single specimen in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041314 | Sierra, though possibly a few flocks may have lived on Mount Shasta a comparatively short time ago. The ranges of these two mountaineers are pretty distinct, and they see but little of each other; the sheep being restricted mostly to the dry, inland mountains; the goat or chamois to the wet, snowy glacier-laden mountains of the northwest coast of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041315 | continent in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. Probably more than dwell on the icy, volcanic cone of Mount Rainier; and while I was exploring the glaciers of Alaska I saw flocks of these admirable mountaineers nearly every day, and often followed their trails through the mazes of bewildering crevasses, in which they are excellent guides. Three species of deer | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041316 | are found in California,the black-tailed, white-tailed, and mule deer. The first mentioned (_Cervus Columbianus_) is by far the most abundant, and occasionally meets the sheep during the summer on high glacier meadows, and along the edge of the timber line; but being a forest animal, seeking shelter and rearing its young in dense thickets, it seldom visits the wild sheep | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041317 | in its higher homes. The antelope, though not a mountaineer, is occasionally met in winter by the sheep while feeding along the edges of the sage-plains and bare volcanic hills to the east of the Sierra. So also is the mule deer, which is almost restricted in its range to this eastern region. The white-tailed species belongs to the coast | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041318 | ranges. Perhaps no wild animal in the world is without enemies, but highlanders, as a class, have fewer than lowlanders. The wily panther, slipping and crouching among long grass and bushes, pounces upon the antelope and deer, but seldom crosses the bald, craggy thresholds of the sheep. Neither can the bears be regarded as enemies; for, though they seek to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041319 | vary their every-day diet of nuts and berries by an occasional meal of mutton, they prefer to hunt tame and helpless flocks. Eagles and coyotes, no doubt, capture an unprotected lamb at times, or some unfortunate beset in deep, soft snow, but these cases are little more than accidents. So, also, a few perish in long-continued snow-storms, though, in all | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041320 | my mountaineering, I have not found more than five or six that seemed to have met their fate in this way. A little band of three were discovered snow-bound in Bloody Canon a few years ago, and were killed with an ax by mountaineers, who chanced to be crossing the range in winter. Man is the most dangerous enemy of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041321 | all, but even from him our brave mountain-dweller has little to fear in the remote solitudes of the High Sierra. The golden plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin were lately thronged with bands of elk and antelope, but, being fertile and accessible, they were required for human pastures. So, also, are many of the feeding-grounds of the deerhill, valley, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041322 | forest, and meadowbut it will be long before man will care to take the highland castles of the sheep. And when we consider here how rapidly entire species of noble animals, such as the elk, moose, and buffalo, are being pushed to the very verge of extinction, all lovers of wildness will rejoice with me in the rocky security of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041323 | _Ovis montana_, the bravest of all the Sierra mountaineers. [] Pacific Railroad Survey, Vol. VIII, page . [] Audubon and Bachmans Quadrupeds of North America. IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS Murphys camp is a curious old mining-town in Calaveras County, at an elevation of feet above the sea, situated like a nest in the center of a rough, gravelly region, rich | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041324 | in gold. Granites, slates, lavas, limestone, iron ores, quartz veins, auriferous gravels, remnants of dead fire-rivers and dead water-rivers are developed here side by side within a radius of a few miles, and placed invitingly open before the student like a book, while the people and the region beyond the camp furnish mines of study of never-failing interest and variety. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041325 | When I discovered this curious place, I was tracing the channels of the ancient pre-glacial rivers, instructive sections of which have been laid bare here and in the adjacent regions by the miners. Rivers, according to the poets, go on forever; but those of the Sierra are young as yet and have scarcely learned the way down to the sea; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041326 | while at least one generation of them have died and vanished together with most of the basins they drained. All that remains of them to tell their history is a series of interrupted fragments of channels, mostly choked with gravel, and buried beneath broad, thick sheets of lava. These are known as the Dead Rivers of California, and the gravel | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041327 | deposited in them is comprehensively called the Blue Lead. In some places the channels of the present rivers trend in the same direction, or nearly so, as those of the ancient rivers; but, in general, there is little correspondence between them, the entire drainage having been changed, or, rather, made new. Many of the hills of the ancient landscapes have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041328 | become hollows, and the old hollows have become hills. Therefore the fragmentary channels, with their loads of auriferous gravel, occur in all kinds of unthought-of places, trending obliquely, or even at right angles to the present drainage, across the tops of lofty ridges or far beneath them, presenting impressive illustrations of the magnitude of the changes accomplished since those ancient | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041329 | streams were annihilated. The last volcanic period preceding the regeneration of the Sierra landscapes seems to have come on over all the range almost simultaneously, like the glacial period, notwithstanding lavas of different age occur together in many places, indicating numerous periods of activity in the Sierra fire-fountains. The most important of the ancient river-channels in this region is a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041330 | section that extends from the south side of the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Caon of the Stanislaus; but on account of its depth below the general surface of the present valleys the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on a large scale. Their extraordinary richness may be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041331 | inferred from the fact that many claims were profitably worked in them by sinking shafts to a depth of feet or more, and hoisting the dirt by a windlass. Should the dip of this ancient channel be such as to make the Stanislaus Caon available as a dump, then the grand deposit might be worked by the hydraulic method, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041332 | although a long, expensive tunnel would be required, the scheme might still prove profitable, for there is millions in it. The importance of these ancient gravels as gold fountains is well known to miners. Even the superficial placers of the present streams have derived much of their gold from them. According to all accounts, the Murphy placers have been very | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041333 | richterrific rich, as they say here. The hills have been cut and scalped, and every gorge and gulch and valley torn to pieces and disemboweled, expressing a fierce and desperate energy hard to understand. Still, any kind of effort-making is better than inaction, and there is something sublime in seeing men working in dead earnest at anything, pursuing an object | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041334 | with glacier-like energy and persistence. Many a brave fellow has recorded a most eventful chapter of life on these Calaveras rocks. But most of the pioneer miners are sleeping now, their wild day done, while the few survivors linger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. We have no industry | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041335 | left _now_, they told me, and no men; everybody and everything hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummersout of the game, a thin scatterin of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used to be in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look around here and see our tracks. But although these lingering | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041336 | pioneers are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041337 | glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as yet. The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041338 | in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago, would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now play in the streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting after the exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form of dotage. I heard a group of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041339 | brawny pioneers in the street eagerly discussing the quantity of tail required for a boys kite; and one graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the information that he was a boy, always was a boy, and dn a man who was not a boy inside, however ancient outside! Mines, morals, politics, the immortality of the soul, etc., were | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041340 | discussed beneath shade-trees and in saloons, the time for each being governed apparently by the temperature. Contact with Nature, and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking, had made them all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to examine them. They were themselves the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041341 | oddest and most interesting specimens. One of them offered to show me around the old diggings, giving me fair warning before setting out that I might not like him, because, said he, people say Im eccentric. I notice everything, and gather beetles and snakes and anything thats queer; and so some dont like me, and call me eccentric. Im always | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041342 | trying to find out things. Now, theres a weed; the Indians eat it for greens. What do you call those long-bodied flies with big heads? Dragon-flies, I suggested. Well, their jaws work sidewise, instead of up and down, and grasshoppers jaws work the same way, and therefore I think they are the same species. I always notice everything like that, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041343 | and just because I do, they say Im eccentric, etc. Anxious that I should miss none of the wonders of their old gold-field, the good people had much to say about the marvelous beauty of Cave City Cave, and advised me to explore it. This I was very glad to do, and finding a guide who knew the way to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041344 | the mouth of it, I set out from Murphy the next morning. The most beautiful and extensive of the mountain caves of California occur in a belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River on the north to the Kaweah on the south, a distance of over miles, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041345 | at an elevation of from to feet above the sea. Besides this regular belt of caves, the California landscapes are diversified by long imposing ranks of sea-caves, rugged and variable in architecture, carved in the coast headlands and precipices by centuries of wave-dashing; and innumerable lava-caves, great and small, originating in the unequal flowing and hardening of the lava sheets | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041346 | in which they occur, fine illustrations of which are presented in the famous Modoc Lava Beds, and around the base of icy Shasta. In this comprehensive glance we may also notice the shallow wind-worn caves in stratified sandstones along the margins of the plains; and the cave-like recesses in the Sierra slates and granites, where bears and other mountaineers find | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041347 | shelter during the fall of sudden storms. In general, however, the grand massive uplift of the Sierra, as far as it has been laid-bare to observation, is about as solid and caveless as a boulder. Fresh beauty opens ones eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041348 | its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041349 | in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. Our way from Murphys to the cave lay across a series of picturesque, moory ridges in the chaparral region between the brown foot-hills and the forests, a flowery stretch of rolling hill-waves breaking here and there into a kind of rocky | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041350 | foam on the higher summits, and sinking into delightful bosky hollows embowered with vines. The day was a fine specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time by a single cloud. As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow in tremulous waves from every southern slope. The sea-breeze that usually comes up the foot-hills | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041351 | at this season, with cooling on its wings, was scarcely perceptible. The birds were assembled beneath leafy shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like a butterfly. Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041352 | no heat or cold may abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams. This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture, but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have almost wholly disappeared. Here, also, once roamed the mastodon and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041353 | elephant, whose bones are found entombed in the river gravels and beneath thick folds of lava. Toward noon, as we were riding slowly over bank and brae, basking in the unfeverish sun-heat, we witnessed the upheaval of a new mountain-range, a Sierra of clouds abounding in landscapes as truly sublime and beautifulif only we have a mind to think so | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041354 | and eyes to seeas the more ancient rocky Sierra beneath it, with its forests and waterfalls; reminding us that, as there is a lower world of caves, so, also, there is an upper world of clouds. Huge, bossy cumuli developed with astonishing rapidity from mere buds, swelling with visible motion into colossal mountains, and piling higher, higher, in long massive | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041355 | ranges, peak beyond peak, dome over dome, with many a picturesque valley and shadowy cave between; while the dark firs and pines of the upper benches of the Sierra were projected against their pearl bosses with exquisite clearness of outline. These cloud mountains vanished in the azure as quickly as they were developed, leaving no detritus; but they were not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041356 | a whit less real or interesting on this account. The more enduring hills over which we rode were vanishing as surely as they, only not so fast, a difference which is great or small according to the standpoint from which it is contemplated. At the bottom of every dell we found little homesteads embosomed in wild brush and vines wherever | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041357 | the recession of the hills left patches of arable ground. These secluded flats are settled mostly by Italians and Germans, who plant a few vegetables and grape-vines at odd times, while their main business is mining and prospecting. In spite of all the natural beauty of these dell cabins, they can hardly be called homes. They are only a better | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041358 | kind of camp, gladly abandoned whenever the hoped-for gold harvest has been gathered. There is an air of profound unrest and melancholy about the best of them. Their beauty is thrust upon them by exuberant Nature, apart from which they are only a few logs and boards rudely jointed and without either ceiling or floor, a rough fireplace with corresponding | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041359 | cooking utensils, a shelf-bed, and stool. The ground about them is strewn with battered prospecting-pans, picks, sluice-boxes, and quartz specimens from many a ledge, indicating the trend of their owners hard lives. The ride from Murphys to the cave is scarcely two hours long, but we lingered among quartz-ledges and banks of dead river gravel until long after noon. At | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041360 | length emerging from a narrow-throated gorge, a small house came in sight set in a thicket of fig-trees at the base of a limestone hill. That, said my guide, pointing to the house, is Cave City, and the cave is in that gray hill. Arriving at the one house of this one-house city, we were boisterously welcomed by three drunken | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041361 | men who had come to town to hold a spree. The mistress of the house tried to keep order, and in reply to our inquiries told us that the cave guide was then in the cave with a party of ladies. And must we wait until he returns? we asked. No, that was unnecessary; we might take candles and go | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041362 | into the cave alone, provided we shouted from time to time so as to be found by the guide, and were careful not to fall over the rocks or into the dark pools. Accordingly taking a trail from the house, we were led around the base of the hill to the mouth of the cave, a small inconspicuous archway, mossy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041363 | around the edges and shaped like the door of a water-ouzels nest, with no appreciable hint or advertisement of the grandeur of the many crystal chambers within. Lighting our candles, which seemed to have no illuminating power in the thick darkness, we groped our way onward as best we could along narrow lanes and alleys, from chamber to chamber, around | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041364 | rustic columns and heaps of fallen rocks, stopping to rest now and then in particularly beautiful placesfairy alcoves furnished with admirable variety of shelves and tables, and round bossy stools covered with sparkling crystals. Some of the corridors were muddy, and in plodding along these we seemed to be in the streets of some prairie village in spring-time. Then we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041365 | would come to handsome marble stairways conducting right and left into upper chambers ranged above one another three or four stories high, floors, ceilings, and walls lavishly decorated with innumerable crystalline forms. After thus wandering exploringly, and alone for a mile or so, fairly enchanted, a murmur of voices and a gleam of light betrayed the approach of the guide | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041366 | and his party, from whom, when they came up, we received a most hearty and natural stare, as we stood half concealed in a side recess among stalagmites. I ventured to ask the dripping, crouching company how they had enjoyed their saunter, anxious to learn how the strange sunless scenery of the underworld had impressed them. Ah, its nice! Its | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041367 | splendid! they all replied and echoed. The Bridal Chamber back here is just glorious! This morning we came down from the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, and the trees are nothing to it. After making this curious comparison they hastened sunward, the guide promising to join us shortly on the bank of a deep pool, where we were to wait for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041368 | him. This is a charming little lakelet of unknown depth, never yet stirred by a breeze, and its eternal calm excites the imagination even more profoundly than the silvery lakes of the glaciers rimmed with meadows and snow and reflecting sublime mountains. Our guide, a jolly, rollicking Italian, led us into the heart of the hill, up and down, right | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041369 | and left, from chamber to chamber more and more magnificent, all a-glitter like a glacier cave with icicle-like stalactites and stalagmites combined in forms of indescribable beauty. We were shown one large room that was occasionally used as a dancing-hall; another that was used as a chapel, with natural pulpit and crosses and pews, sermons in every stone, where a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041370 | priest had said mass. Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower Cave above Coulterville; and nowhere have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041371 | I seen so much dancing as in Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the making of an easy way to the top of it. It was delightful to witness here the infinite deliberation of Nature, and the simplicity of her methods in the production of such mighty results, such perfect repose combined with restless enthusiastic | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041372 | energy. Though cold and bloodless as a landscape of polar ice, building was going on in the dark with incessant activity. The archways and ceilings were everywhere hung with down-growing crystals, like inverted groves of leafless saplings, some of them large, others delicately attenuated, each tipped with a single drop of water, like the terminal bud of a pine-tree. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041373 | only appreciable sounds were the dripping and tinkling of water failing into pools or faintly plashing on the crystal floors. In some places the crystal decorations are arranged in graceful flowing folds deeply plicated like stiff silken drapery. In others straight lines of the ordinary stalactite forms are combined with reference to size and tone in a regularly graduated system | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041374 | like the strings of a harp with musical tones corresponding thereto; and on these stone harps we played by striking the crystal strings with a stick. The delicious liquid tones they gave forth seemed perfectly divine as they sweetly whispered and wavered through the majestic halls and died away in faintest cadence,the music of fairy-land. Here we lingered and reveled, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041375 | rejoicing to find so much music in stony silence, so much splendor in darkness, so many mansions in the depths of the mountains, buildings ever in process of construction, yet ever finished, developing from perfection to perfection, profusion without overabundance; every particle visible or invisible in glorious motion, marching to the music of the spheres in a region regarded as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041376 | the abode of eternal stillness and death. The outer chambers of mountain caves are frequently selected as homes by wild beasts. In the Sierra, however, they seem to prefer homes and hiding-places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more remarkable because notwithstanding the darkness and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041377 | oozing water there is nothing uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them. When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked brighter, and we felt our faith in Natures beauty strengthened, and saw more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath, on land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness. THE | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041378 | BEE-PASTURES When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the ocean. Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wildernessthrough the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041379 | and plain, park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the mountainsthroughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in lengthzones | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041380 | of polleny forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere all the year round. But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041381 | flowery acres like a fire, and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041382 | dells, and small, square orchards and orange-groves for broad mountain-belts of chaparral. The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than miles, your foot would press about a hundred | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041383 | flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honeyful corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed in the living light like a sunset skyone sheet of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041384 | purple and gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections fringed with trees. Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath the general level, and wider toward the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041385 | foot-hills, where magnificent oaks, from three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And close along the waters edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of wild-rose and bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing vines, wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and alders, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041386 | swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons. Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the blackberries were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to feastmen, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the farmers of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041387 | the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant, shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain, they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041388 | as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains. When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along the foot-hills at my feet. Descending the eastern slopes of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041389 | the Coast Range through beds of gilias and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland, I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered, not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041390 | madaria, burrielia, chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close social congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and oenothera, whose delicate petals were drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling glow. [Illustration: A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.] Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season, most of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041391 | the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of _Salvia carduacea_, the king of the mints. Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed against my feet at every step, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041392 | closed over them as if I were wading in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower air with their monotonous hummonotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet as every-day sunshine. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041393 | Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track, nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041394 | The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious botanical beds I had! Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041395 | studies would begin before rising. About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin River between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I had reached the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to seed and become as dry as hay. All the seasons of the great plain are warm or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041396 | temperate, and bee-flowers are never wholly wanting; but the grand springtimethe annual resurrectionis governed by the rains, which usually set in about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041397 | The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which lasts until May. The rainy season is by no means a gloomy, soggy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041398 | period of constant cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the winter and spring of -, every day of which I spent out of doors, on that section of the plain lying between the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000041399 | Tuolumne and Merced rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th. January had only six rainy daysthat is, days on which rain fell; February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or | 60 | gutenberg |
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