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Sierra Club Bulletin 



nal play, entitled ''The Heiress of Soda Springs." One of 

 the finest bits of realistic effect ever secured on the stage 

 was when the solicitous Knight revived the fainting heiress 

 by pouring into her face a five-gallon pail of water freshly 

 dipped from the icy river. Her gasps were apparently gen- 

 uine, really life-like. 



Conness Creek was our next abiding place, and from 

 here a large party, in six separate groups under leaders, 

 departed on a four day's knapsack trip down Tuolumne 

 Gorge to meet us later at Pleasant Valley Camp. They 

 were attended the first day by a large number of followers, 

 who went down over cliff and through brush far enough to 

 get a taste of that particular sort of travel in which we 

 keep "hitting our packs and shoving the trail along," and 

 to behold the magnificent great water wheels of the Tuol- 

 umne. The main party, with numbers thus reduced, pro- 

 ceeded to Matterliorn Cafion. The day was made memor- 

 able by wonderful trees, the beautiful first view of Matter- 

 horn Peak and Saw Tooth Range, banking the horizon 

 like the world's outermost ramparts, and by the twilight 

 descent through a virgin forest of indescribably solemn and 

 magnificent hemlocks, to where, beyond the swirling river, 

 the campfire smoked up through a ghostly forest of 

 bleached, gray, dead trees. 



In this camp the quarters of the married people were 

 high up on a rocky shelf which rose, stage-like, just above 

 the quarters of their more fortunate — I use the word ad- 

 visedly in regard to locality only — fellows. The camp-fires 

 were our footlights ; shelter there was absolutely none, 

 save that afforded by altitude or by the politeness of those 

 below; and I heard my neighbor humming as she strew^ed 

 out her bed : 



"The night has a thousand eyes, 

 And the day but one." 



In the morning, we climbed up over Benson Pass with its 

 wide view of dark lakes set in distant snow and a peak- 

 encircled-horizon, and rounding the gaunt gray prow of 

 Volunteer Peak, finally came to the shores of Rodgers Lake. 



