46 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



as I found him coolly doing ten feet away at my fireless 

 fireplace. He departed with an air of injured dignity. I 

 woke up one night just in time to hear the sharp clicks 

 of a departing deer's dainty hoofs on the granite near 

 my flood sand-bed, sounding like a boy's wooden stilts 

 on the concrete sidewalk, though sharper and more trip- 

 pingly. Another night I was abruptly startled from 

 sleep, and listened in the starlight with great interest to 

 an unusual bird's call from the pine-tree immediately over 

 my head. It was my first experience with this note, and 

 the musical and plaintive, rather than mournful, slowly 

 voiced, soft, yearning "Oo-oo, t'wah-ee. Oo-oo, 06-00," 

 sounded novel and weird in the lonesome darkness, being 

 so near and loud and so distinct and earnest. It was 

 answered from a distance by the mate, and after three 

 eager calls from the unseen lover and three calm re- 

 sponses, a great owl swept from his perch above me and 

 rapidly and noiselessly vanished down the dim aisles of 

 the tree-tops. 



I saw tracks of bears, lions, coons, and rattlesnakes. I 

 watched the trout in the "emerald pools" in Lost Valley 

 and in Little Yosemite jump five or six feet upwards into 

 the white water of the "silver aprons" in their efforts to 

 climb to some fancied better abode, only to be swept back 

 after a few seconds of hopeless wriggling along on the 

 smooth granite. I listened to the booming of "heaven's 

 artillery" as it crashed and roared overhead in two crack- 

 ing though brief old-fashioned thunder-storms. 



I studied animated twigs moving along on the river 

 bottom, and saw chipmunks climb about on the vertical 

 faces of the decomposed granite cliffs Hke spiders. I 

 was excitedly inspected, as usual, by the ants at each new- 

 camp, criticised by the grosbeaks, scolded by the jays and 

 squirrels, and robbed by the yellow- jackets, who came as 

 unbidden guests to all my meals. These last-named 

 rustics invariably ordered trout, and, though contrary 

 to the rules in all well-regulated summer resorts that no 

 food may be taken from the table by the guests, these 



