ON FOOT IN THE YOSEMITE 



agency or other, once having the pattern, seems 

 to have turned them out by the score. 



One day I looked down into the Fissures, so 

 called, giddy, suicide-provoking rents ; and more 

 than once, on the Wawona road, I skirted two of 

 those beautiful Sierra Nevada meadows, so feel- 

 ingly celebrated by Mr. Muir, and so surprising 

 and grateful to all new-comers in these parts. At 

 this moment one of them was starred with thou- 

 sands of greenish-white marsh marigolds — Cal- 

 tha leptosepala^ as I learned afterward to call them, 

 when good Mr. Clark produced, out of his treas- 

 ures new and old, for my enlightenment, a much- 

 desiderated copy of Brewer and Watson's " Bot- 

 any of California." 



After the two trails thus " negotiated," to speak 

 a little in the Western manner, there remained 

 one that by all accounts was steeper and harder 

 still, the trail to Yosemite Point, or, if the walker 

 should elect to travel its full length, to Eagle 

 Peak. As to the Peak, I doubted. The tale of 

 miles sounded long, and as the elevation was only 

 seventy-eight hundred feet, substantially the 

 same as that of Glacier Point, it appeared ques- 

 tionable whether the distance would pay for 

 itself. 



^' Oh, the trail is n't difficult," a neighborly- 

 minded, middle-aged tourist had assured me (he 

 i8s 



