In the Sierra 



Along the main ridges and larger branches of 

 the river Indian trails may be traced, but they 

 are not nearly as distinct as one would expect 

 to find them. How many centuries Indians 

 have roamed these woods nobody knows, 

 probably a great many, extending far beyond 

 the time that Columbus touched our shores, 

 and it seems strange that heavier marks have 

 not been made. Indians walk softly and hurt 

 the landscape hardly more than the birds and 

 squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last 

 hardly longer than those of wood rats, while 

 their more enduring monuments, excepting 

 those wrought on the forests by the fires they 

 made to improve their hunting grounds, van- 

 ish in a few centuries. 



How different are most of those of the 

 white man, especially on the lower gold re- 

 gion, roads blasted in the solid rock, wild 

 streams dammed and tamed and turned out 

 of their channels and led along the sides of 

 canons and valleys to work in mines like 

 slaves. Crossing from ridge to ridge, high in 

 * [ 73 ] 



