98 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



civilization ! It was in a mood of tragedy that we chat- 

 tered gayly with the loggers, and mounted the rough 

 plank seats nailed for us on their open cars, to ride down- 

 grade in the burning sun to the little mining village of 

 Tuolumne. There the citizens turned out en masse to 

 laugh at our battered costumes as we trailed into the 

 pretty inn for supper, and took possession of the special 

 train that was to deposit us in San Francisco in the 

 morning. 



We had tramped two or three hundred miles and ex- 

 plored a small part of the nation's spectacular playground. 

 We had slept under a few of its great trees, beheld a few 

 of its thousand lakes, forded a few of its innumerable 

 streams, climbed a few of the chain of white granite 

 mountains which guard it by day and lock it in by night. 

 For a month we had possessed the earth in her grandeur, 

 beheld her in all her glory of snowy peaks and soft green 

 valleys and vaporous cataracts. She had been still for us, 

 she had whispered in pine-tops, she had thundered in fall- 

 ing waters. And we were glad that all the world and 

 all the ages would follow us to the wonderland, but glad 

 still more that we had possessed it before its ways are 

 made smooth for all the world. 



