STEEP TRAILS 



only a chaos of agricultural possibilities calling 

 for grubbing-hoes and manures. 



Sometimes I venture to approach him with 

 a plea for wildness, when he good-naturedly 

 shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterat- 

 ing his favorite aphorism, "Culture is an 

 orchard apple; Nature is a crab." Not all cul- 

 ture, however, is equally destructive and inap- 

 preciative. Azure skies and crystal waters find 

 loving recognition, and few there be who would 

 welcome the axe among mountain pines, or 

 would care to apply any correction to the tones 

 and costumes of mountain waterfalls. Never- 

 theless, the barbarous notion is almost univer- 

 sally entertained by civilized man, that there 

 is in all the manufactures of Nature some- 

 thing essentially coarse which can and must be 

 eradicated by human culture. I was, therefore, 

 dehghted in finding that the wild wool growing 

 upon mountain sheep in the neighborhood of 

 Mount Shasta was much finer than the aver- 

 age grades of cultivated wool. This fine dis- 

 covery was made some three months ago,^ while 

 hunting among the Shasta sheep between 

 Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three 

 fleeces were obtained — one that belonged to 

 a large ram about four years old, another to a 

 ewe about the same age, and another to a 



^ This essay was written early in 1875. [Editor.] 

 4 



