272 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



the cliffs and canon walls. Then down comes a 

 cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the 

 pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite pave 

 ments, and pour down the sides of ridges and 

 domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a 

 few minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of dim 

 filaments and disappears, leaving the sky perfectly 

 clear and bright, every dust-particle wiped and 

 washed out of it. Everything is refreshed and in 

 vigorated, a steam of fragrance rises, and the 

 storm is finished one cloud, one lightning-stroke, 

 and one dash of rain. This is the Sierra mid 

 summer thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms. 

 But some of them attain much larger proportions, 

 and assume a grandeur and energy of expression 

 hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of 

 winter, producing those sudden floods called 

 "cloud-bursts," which are local, and to a consider 

 able extent periodical, for they appear nearly every 

 day about the same time for weeks, usually about 

 eleven o'clock, and lasting from five minutes to an 

 hour or two. One soon becomes so accustomed to 

 see them that the noon sky seems empty and aban 

 doned without them, as if Nature were forgetting 

 something. When the glorious pearl and alabaster 

 clouds of these noonday storms are being built I 

 never give attention to anything else. No moun 

 tain or mountain-range, however divinely clothed 

 with light, has a more enduring charm than 

 those fleeting mountains of the sky floating foun 

 tains bearing water for every well, the angels of the 

 streams and lakes ; brooding in the deep azure, or 

 sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and 



