The Days of a Man 1899 



soon brought us to the General Grant Forest, a 

 superb sequoia grove, fortunately a national re- 

 serve. At Horse Corral, a large damp, grassy glade 

 high above Kings River, we pitched camp for the 

 night. The next afternoon, from the brink of the 

 Canyon we got a magnificent view of the upper 

 reaches of the Middle and South forks but- 

 tressed by the giant crests of the High Sierra. In 

 all the mountain country there is nothing really 

 The North grander. In the center stands a broad peak, 14,282 

 Palisade f eet high, the culmination of a long ridge with several 

 teeth. Studying the map, I was surprised to find 

 that the salient mass bore the name of Mount 

 Jordan, given by Professor B. C. Brown of Stanford, 

 an ardent mountain-lover. At that time, however, 

 it had never been climbed, access to it along the 

 Middle Fork and Jordan Creek being beset by dense 

 brush and jagged rocks. In this case - - as in 

 several others - - the usual custom of not trying 

 to name a mountain until one had climbed it was 

 disregarded. In 1903 it was ascended by Professor 

 Joseph N. Le Conte of the University of California 

 and others. Lately (1920) it has been shown by 

 Francis P. Farquhar that the earliest and therefore 

 the proper name of the great summit is the North 

 Palisade, given by Whitney's survey in 1864. The 

 crest bears on its east slope a typical glacier, a mile 

 square, the largest in California of these vanishing 

 relics of the Ice Age. 



Entering the Canyon, we encamped at Kanawyer's. 

 in a noble pine forest on the bank of the river, across 

 which towers the Sentinel, a huge, commanding 

 granite cliff. There the green waters of the trout- 

 laden stream, the purest on earth, slip by with 



n 650 : 



