92 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



weather, for this region is exempt from rain in summer. 

 The carrying of tents for such a crowd up into so high 

 and difficult a wilderness would be almost impossible. 



It was in the chill dawn of a Fourth-of-July morning 

 that we started to climb out of the Yosemite. As the 

 first day's work was to be severe, I proudly mounted, 

 for the first stage of the journey, a horse which a little 

 California artist and I had engaged together. Equestrians 

 were numerous that day, as there were plenty of horses 

 to be hired in the Valley stables, and many of us needed 

 a lift to the top of the mountain-wall. We rode on 

 through the rich green meadows and climbed a steep 

 zigzag through a gulch on the Eagle Peak trail, mount- 

 ing a thousand feet or so and paralleling the Lower 

 Yosemite Fall. At about nine o'clock I found the little 

 artist sitting on a rock at the foot of the Upper Yosemite 

 Fall, gave her the horse, and waited alone for friends 

 who would soon appear afoot. 



It was my farewell to the Valley and its waters — this 

 hour in front of the great Upper Yosemite — ^the mighty 

 cataract, a third of a mile high, which is perhaps the most 

 beautiful of all. It seemed like some young Greek god, 

 some athletic nude Achilles, standing there so slim and 

 straight and tall, with his head in the sun and his feet 

 on the clouds. Below me, patterned by the winding 

 stream, was the green floor of the Valley, velvet to the 

 very base of the gleaming lofty cliffs beyond ; above me 

 rose the vertical granite wall, shadowed and brown against 

 the bright blue zenith; and in front of me close against 

 it leaned this fine lithe spirit, springing from the moun- 

 tain, poised on the rock, alive with a thousand leaping 

 pulses, chanting a song of a thousand echoes. In that 

 long hour the splendid living thing became companionable 

 and divinely kind. My little human life grew to its 

 stature, throbbed with its force, sang with its music. 

 For an hour I shared in the triumph with a pagan joy, 

 sitting there in the sun on a ledge and watching the 

 eternal rush and rest. Those glorious waters washed the 



