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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



hard-tack were our fare. And each tramper's fifty 

 pounds of baggage was cut down to twenty, two persons 

 sharing one dunnage-bag, while the rest were packed off 

 to await us at the village of Tuolumne. We followed the 

 crippled old adventurous Tioga Road back for a two- 

 days' tramp and then struck into stern, steep, and half- 

 obliterated trails. Even Chinese taciturnity was broken 

 by these impossible little trails, which were always the 

 longest distance between two points, and of an inexhaus- 

 tible variety of roughness. One day Charley Tuck's 

 horse — for the chief cook always rode — almost broke his 

 leg on some precipitous rocks, and the impassive Oriental 

 murmured, "Heap dam bad tlail — killem lady !" 



But difficulties became a stimulus in that mountain air, 

 under those lofty pines. The weak grew strong, and 

 the strong became invincible. Men and women made 

 knapsack trips, young girls tramped over a hundred 

 miles in a week, and in all the company never a creature, 

 even to the horses, was ill. So we pushed on easily about 

 fifteen miles a day toward that lesser Yosemite, now 

 threatened with destruction, the Hetch-Hetchy Valley; 

 one day getting lost and straying around through the 

 pines a weary twenty-five miles before emerging for a 

 late supper at Hog Ranch, a private domain now just 

 outside the park boundary. Near noon on the 23d of 

 July we walked to the edge of a large rock and saw a 

 lovely Vale of Cashmere sparkling below us in the sun, 

 its bright river patterning the green meadows with most 

 intricate windings. Gray mountains on all sides walled 

 it in, except at one narrow end where the river slipped 

 through, and between their crevices tall slim waterfalls 

 sprang to the grassy floor. Down into this secret valley 

 we marched, and wound three level miles through flowing 

 green grasses shoulder-high — the only human things 

 between those granite walls, where never a hut nor a 

 spade marred the locked inviolate wilderness. 



Our camp here beside the lower Tuolumne River, now 

 broad and deep as well as swift, was the most beautiful 



