My First Summer 



the air, on long straddling trestles as if flow- 

 ing on stilts, or down and up across valleys 

 and hills, imprisoned in iron pipes to strike 

 and wash away hills and miles of the skin 

 of the mountain's face, riddling, stripping 

 every gold gully and flat. These are the 

 white man's marks made in a few feverish 

 years, to say nothing of mills, fields, villages, 

 scattered hundreds of miles along the flank 

 of the Range. Long will it be ere these 

 marks are effaced, though Nature is doing 

 what she can, replanting, gardening, sweep- 

 ing away old dams and flumes, leveling 

 gravel and boulder piles, patiently trying to 

 heal every raw scar. The main gold storm is 

 over. Calm enough are the gray old miners 

 scratching a bare living in waste diggings 

 here and there. Thundering underground 

 blasting is still going on to feed the pound- 

 ing quartz mills, but their influence on the 

 landscape is light as compared with that of 

 the pick-and-shovel storms waged a few 

 years ago. Fortunately for Sierra scenery the 



[ 74 ] 



