The Tuolumne Canon. 



2gi 



" The splendor falls on castle walls, 

 And snowy summits old in story." 



But these skies, always overladen with moisture, do not 

 furnish material for such gorgeous tapestries as the 

 sun weaves at dawn and sunset on the crests of the 

 Sierra Nevada. Nor have any ruins of the castled 

 Rhine, perched never so loftily, appealed to my mind 

 and imagination with the sublime grandeur of Tuolumne 

 Castle. Perhaps these comparisons are too subjective. 

 Let them serve merely to emphasize from another point 

 of view the stupendous height and massiveness of the 

 Tuolumne's rock fastnesses. Like those of the Grand 

 Caflon of the Colorado, their appeal to the imagination 

 is absolute without the legendary glory of dead robber 

 barons. It is to be hoped that our Government will some 

 time build a trail through this wonderland so that it may 

 be made accessible to those who cannot heed the call 

 of the wild when it leads through and over such obstacles 

 as we encountered on our further progress through the 

 cafion. These obstacles, while not formidable to a sea- 

 soned mountaineer, bar out every one who, besides ex- 

 perience in climbing, does not possess a large measure of 

 health and endurance. What the character of the diffi- 

 culties is has been sufficiently described by R. M. Price 

 in a previous number of the Sierra Club Bulletin.* 

 The writer, therefore, does not deem it necessary to 

 traverse this ground again. 



The second day we passed through what is probably 

 the wildest and deepest part of the canon. The river 

 now had gone stark mad. One who has not seen the 

 Tuolumne during this part of its course would hardly 



♦Vol. I., No. 6. 



