VOL. VIII. SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY, 1911 STAFORD CATHEDRAL PEAK AND THE TUOLUMNE BY JOHN MUIR. August 9, 1869.—I went ahead of the flock and crossed over the divide between the Merced and Tuolumne basins. ... From the top of the divide and also from the Big Tuolumne Meadows the wonderful mountain called Cathedral Peak is in sight. It is a majestic temple of one stone, hewn from the living rock, and adorned with spires and pinnacles in regular cathedral style. I hope some time to climb to it to say my prayers and hear the stone sermons. The Big Tuolumne Meadows are flowery lawns, lying along the South Fork of the Tuolumne River at a height of about 8500 to 9000 feet above the sea, partially separated by forests and bars of glaciated granite. Here the mountains seem to have been cleared away or set back so that wide open views may be had in every direction. The upper end of the series lies at the base of Mt. Lyell, the lower below the east end of the Hoffman Range, so the length must be about ten or twelve miles. They vary in width from a quarter of a mile to perhaps three quarters, and a good many branch meadows put out along the banks of the tributary streams. This is the most spacious and delightful high pleasure ground I have yet seen. The air is keen and bracing, yet warm during the day, and though lying high in the sky the surrounding mountains are so much higher one feels protected as if in a grand hall. Mts. Dana and Gibbs, massive red mountains perhaps 13,000 feet high or more, bound the view on the east, the Cathedral and Unicorn peaks with many nameless peaks on the south, the Hoffman Range on the *From Mr. Muir's journal, "My First Summer in the Sierra," to be published in the spring of 1911 by Houghton-Mifflin Company, Boston, with illustrations from original drawings by the author and photographs by Herbert W. Gleason. Portions of the journal will appear in the Atlantic Monthly, beginning with the January number. west, and a number of peaks unnamed, as far as I know, on the north. One of these is much like the Cathedral. The grass of the meadows is mostly fine and silky, with exceedingly slender leaves, making a close sod above which the panicles of minute purple flowers seem to float in airy, misty lightness, while the sod is enriched with at least three species of gentian and as many or more of orthocarpus, potentilla, ivesia, solidago, pentstemon, with their gay colors,-purple, blue, yellow and red-all of which I may know better ere long. ever. August 14th.-On the way back to our Tuolumne camp enjoyed the scenery if possible more than when it first came to view. Every feature already seems familiar as if I had lived here always. I never weary gazing at the wonderful Cathedral. It has more individual character than any other rock or mountain I ever saw, excepting perhaps the Yosemite South Dome. The forests, too, seem kindly familiar, and the lakes and meadows and glad singing streams. I should like to dwell with them forever. Here with bread and water I should be content. Even if not allowed to roam and climb, tethered to a stake or tree in some meadow or grove, I should be content forBathed in such beauty, watching the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and winds and birds, would be endless pleasure. And what glorious cloud-lands I would see, storms and calms, a new heaven and a new earth every day, aye, and new inhabitants! And how many visitors I would have! I feel sure I would not have one dull moment. And why should this appear extravagant? It is only common sense, a sign of health,—genuine, natural, all-awake health. One would be at an endless Godful play, and what speeches and music and acting and scenery and lights,-sun, moon, stars, auroras! Creation just beginning, the morning stars "still singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy!" LITTLE STUDIES IN THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. BY FRANCOIS E. MATTHES. II. THE STRIPED ROCK FLOOR OF THE LITTLE YOSEMITE VALLEY.* About a stone's throw from where the Clouds Rest Trail leaves the flat of the Little Yosemite Valley, there is a curious expanse of smooth, bare granite, an acre or more in extent. It is a part of the solid rock floor of the valley, which, buried under river gravel and glacial material elsewhere, is here exposed to view, cleared of all debris. Indeed, so scrupulously clean swept does it look, one might fancy some cyclopian broom had been at work on it-and a new one at that. Round about, in all directions lie glacial boulders, some singly, some in clusters, some in heaps mixed with fine debris. Sparse pines and cedars rise from what few cracks the stone floor affords as a root-hold, giving the place a singularly genial, parklike aspect. But the cleared tract itself has not a tree on it-its surface stretches unbroken and continuous, unmarred by a single fissure. As one approaches from the lower end and looks up the gentle slope-for the floor inclines appreciably— the eye is almost at once held by the peculiar "painted" appearance of the space. Irregular, blotchy white ribbons set off conspicuously against the prevailingly gray tint of the rock floor, sprawl over it here and there. Wholly unlike the dark water stains that stripe most of the Yosemite cliffs, they seem, even to one thoroughly familiar with the various markings common to the rock surfaces of the region, altogether novel and enigmatic. All trend downward with the slope, but beyond this there seems no discoverable * Published by permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. law in their arrangement, nor anything else immediately suggestive of their mode of origin. The majority occur in loosely connected groups, but some lie off by themselves, like pale islands in a dark ocean. As the view in Fig. I well shows, they generally commence abruptly and terminate abruptly, without definite relation to the unevennesses of the floor itself. Some divide, others merge downward; some gain in width, others taper down toward their lower ends. In dimensions they are equally varied. While they average between four and five feet in length and from two to three inches in breadth, there are individuals among them but a fraction of a foot long and others exceeding twelve or even fifteen feet; and some are less than an inch across, while others—like those in the immediate foreground of the view-span six inches and over. Nor is the breadth always proportionate to the length. Some of the longest are very narrow, some of the shortest very broad. On closer inspection they are seen to consist simply of narrow tracts from which the lichens that otherwise uniformly mottle the rock have been removed, and it becomes plain that it is merely the light color of the unweathered granite thus exposed that makes them prominent. These stripes, then, are not stains at all; rather, they owe their brilliancy to their very stainlessness to the absence of coloring matter of any sort. By what agent the lichens were cleared off, however, seems at first a mystery. That it was some substance that moved downhill under the influence of gravity is patent from the invariable downhill trend of all the stripes, but what the nature of that substance was, is not easily guessed. One feels tempted to believe it was some corrosive fluid that was poured out upon the rock and flowed down slowly, eating away the lichens as it went. There are places in the Yosemite Valley where such a thing has actually hap pened, so the theory is not so utterly absurd as at first blush it may seem. On the road to Mirror Lake, for instance, there is a great block of granite on the flat side of which some enterprising individual once painted him an advertisement in bold, glaring type. The true history of the affair may be better known to some of the readers of this journal than to the writer, but he gathers from a casual look that the "ad" was subsequently effaced by a zealous guardian. Whatever material the latter employed to remove the paint, removed the lichens too, running down in vertical, blotchy stripes remarkably similar to those on the Little Yosemite floor. Again, at the site of the "Old Blacksmith Shop," near the foot of the Coulterville Road, a space has been cleared on a huge rock by means of some caustic, and the same streaky effect has been produced. But the stripes in the Little Yosemite Valley clearly were not the work of marring man. Besides, the same sort of markings exist in many other places in the Yosemite region, in seldom frequented spots too, as a rule. It was on such a spot, in fact on the north slope of Liberty Cap-that the writer first found a clue to their mode of origin. A small rock fragment, derived from a disintegrating shell of the great rock hump, had evidently slid here several feet from its place of starting, and, extending from it, pointing up the slope, was a little white path cleared of lichens. Not far away were other fragments each likewise. leaving a flaming trail. The width of the stripe produced corresponded in each case to the dimensions of the fragment. A tiny bit of granite, no larger than a thimble, lay at the end of a delicate white ribbon, and an uptorn tree stump had made a dozen markings, one with each of its dragging root tips and a broad swath with its heavy broken end. Surely, here was the key to the enigma! Here were the stripes in process of being made. |