FOREST AND S T R E A M 
July, 1918 
396 
Early morning with the pack train 
get up early in the morning, but the meals 
are sure to be on time with Ty Sing at the 
head. Always he comes in at night smiling 
and singing, at the head of the pack train, 
leading his mule with the two cook stoves 
packed on its back, and Eugene leading or 
driving his certain other mule laden with 
cooking utensils; said mule being named 
Panginkey, an animal of much fame. 
For a time Ty Sing was sad during our 
justly famous expedition. The milk mule 
did not get into camp the first night out 
from Sequoia Park. That is to say, a per¬ 
fectly good mule laden with some 250 
pounds of condensed milk and cream, is at 
the present writing lost somewhere in the 
wilds of the Sierras. It has never been 
heard from since. If some bunch of 
prospectors runs across that mule, it will 
be better for them than any mineral strike 
they can make in that neck of the woods. 
W HAT made our party of brave ad¬ 
venturers leave the safety of home 
and journey into the terrors of the 
virgin wilderness which surrounds Mount 
Whitney—the same country where adven¬ 
turous Fremont was once cast away and 
obliged to live on mule straight? The 
answer to that question 
runs back to the be¬ 
ginning of the Ameri¬ 
can appreciation for 
great and interesting 
natural objects. The 
trail to Mount Whit¬ 
ney lies across Sequoia 
National Park, which 
is the father of the 
Sierra National Parks. 
As first laid out by its 
progenitors — Walker, 
Tuohy, Stewart and 
others — the Sequoia 
National Park ran 
from Visalia nearly to 
the Funeral Range, and 
included Mount Whit¬ 
ney, the Kern River 
country, the King’s 
River country, what is 
now Yosemite Park, 
and pretty much every¬ 
thing else on the map. 
Those were days, 
however, when some 
of our industrious lum¬ 
bermen were acquiring 
their timber holdings— 
days also when we had 
politics in Washington, 
so to speak. It became 
rumored that there was 
good timber and pos¬ 
sibly some mineral to 
be had over in fore- 
ninst; the authorities 
at Washington began 
to apply certain restric¬ 
tions to the vaulting 
ambition of these early 
conservationists. Years 
have passed since then. 
That beautiful and 
splendid mountain 
range between the 
great tree groves and 
the Owens River Val¬ 
ley far to the west 
has become more generally known. It 
has been discovered to be one of the most 
wonderful mountain ranges in all the 
world. There are few, if any, mines of 
any value in it now, and there are not 
very many cattle—and none too fat at that, 
as we may testify. 
Now, in any large national point of view 
there ought to be a highway across the 
Sierras at this point—an opening into the 
central valleys of California, which would 
mean far greater prosperity for these val¬ 
leys. These mountains are too good to be 
held back from the American public. They 
are of no use to anybody as they are, but 
they ought to be of use to everyone, not 
only to the citizens of our country, but to 
those of other countries. 
It seeming, therefore, that the early idea 
of the Big Tree Park was after all a good 
one, there is now a strong feeling that the 
limits of Sequoia Park ought to be ex¬ 
tended to include part of the Kern River 
Valley, Mount Whitney, and something of 
that magnificent, though practically un¬ 
known, mountain range which lies deep in 
the interior of the Sierra. A casual ref¬ 
erence to the personnel of our party will 
show that it was competent to investigate 
and to report on the virtues of this region. 
If you yourself need a personal reputation 
as a hardy mountaineer, there is no better 
prescription possible than to join such a 
party as ours—if you can. 
A S to what we saw in that wonderful 
region, you cannot convey much idea 
of it by pen or camera. In the novel 
“Westward Ho!” written by Canon Charles 
Kingsley—he could write a bit, too, al¬ 
though he had no dictaphone and no es¬ 
tablished rate per word as famous authors 
have today—I find the following passage: 
“Yes. The mind of man is not so 'in¬ 
finite,’ in the vulgar sense of that word, 
as people fancy; and however greedy the 
appetite for wonder may be, while it re¬ 
mains unsatisfied in everyday European 
life, it is as easily satiated as any other 
appetite, and then leaves the senses of its 
possessor as dull as those of a city gour¬ 
mand after a Lord Mayor’s feast. Only 
the highest minds—our Humboldts, and 
Bonplands, and Schomburgks (and they 
only when quickened to an almost un¬ 
healthy activity by civilization)—can go on 
long appreciating where Nature is insa¬ 
tiable, imperious, maddening, in her de¬ 
mands on our admiration. The very power 
of observing wears out under the rush of 
ever new objects; and the dizzy spectator 
is fain at last to shut the eyes of his soul, 
and take refuge (as West Indian Spaniards 
do) in tobacco and stupidity. The man, 
too, who has not only eyes but utterance— 
what shall he do where all words fail him? 
Superlatives are but inarticulate, after all, 
and give no pictures even of size any more 
than do numbers of feet and yards; and 
yet what else can we do, but heap super¬ 
lative on superlative, and cry, ‘Wonderful, 
wonderful! and after that wonderful, past 
all whooping?’ What Humboldt’s self can¬ 
not paint, we will not try to daub.” 
T HE Sierras are a wonderful country 
for perspective. No place in the world 
is equal to this region in the way of 
exact perspective. The average human being 
leaving the states of the east believes him¬ 
self to be about as tall as the Woolworth 
Building. After he has passed a day in 
the giant forest he shrinks to about the 
size of the Masonic Temple in Chicago. 
The third day out from the forest he is, 
even in his own estimation, not much taller 
than a bantam rooster, and he awakes every 
morning with the feeling that he has been 
sleeping under too many bed-clothes. The 
entire experience of a trip through these 
mountains is almost as much stupifying as 
amazing. 
Of course, from the giant forest east¬ 
ward all travel must be by pack train and 
saddle animal. The average daily progress 
in this fashion of locomotion is nominally 
20 miles, but the term, “mile,” should al¬ 
ways be used in quotation and question 
marks. The mountain mile has nothing 
whatever to do in the way of kinship wit! 
the mile which forms a unit of measure¬ 
ment in ordinary country. While the trail 
is laid out as much as possible on good 
contour lines, one is lucky to get through 
a day’s travel without climbing at least one 
summit which may be at least five or six 
thousand feet up on side, and as much or 
more down another. 
