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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



were rather more scattered, we resolved to make the best 

 of a bad business and go no farther that night. Our camp, 

 while somewhat lacking in the elements of ease, had one 

 distinctly novel feature — a glaciated kitchen. The rocks 

 in the open spaces where it was possible to build a fire 

 were all of smoothly polished granite, whereon our hob- 

 nailed feet performed strange antics. But it was a won- 

 derfully beautiful camp. We were on a bluff overlooking 

 a great stretch of canon; beside us the Upper California 

 Fall boomed and thundered, and farther down we could 

 see mist rising where the river took another wild plunge. 



The Tuolumne is one of the largest of our Sierra rivers, 

 much greater in volume than its quieter neighbor, the 

 Merced. Its falls, often of an imposing height, are none 

 of them sheer, none of them giving that impression of 

 pure joy of living with which the Merced waters leap into 

 the great Nevada abyss. For the Tuolumne's is a sterner, 

 stormier course, beset with giant rocks against which 

 even its splendid strength is impotently hurled, and its 

 joy is the joy of battles. But it is a strange thing, stand- 

 ing beside one of these giant cataracts where the ground 

 shakes with the impact and where every voice of wind or 

 living creature is silenced in the roar of the maddened 

 waters, to see under what a delicate fabric this Titan's 

 force is veiled — a billowing, gossamer texture, iris-tinted, 

 with jeweled spray flying high upon the wind. 



For two hours the next morning our course was a 

 continuation of the hard work of the previous evening, 

 with the added trial of slippery glaciated surfaces where 

 those of us who were not provided with rubber over- 

 shoes or tennis shoes had to work our way down by 

 means of cracks in the granite and little tufts of grasses 

 and brush growing in the larger crevices. Return Creek, 

 which we had expected to find some difficulty in crossing, 

 proved to be spanned by a convenient log, and beyond 

 this for a short time we had somewhat easier traveling. 

 We found that we generally made better progress by 

 keeping close to the river, as there the brush was less 



