Yosemite Valley in Flood

YOSEMITE VALLEY IN FLOOD. 347 clear about $40 per day. His machinery costs about $2,500; but, as he gets about sixty days\u27 work during the thrashing season, the machine nearly pays for itself in one year. It will be seen from these figures that the farmer can get his crops harvested at a small expense; and at the same time, if he has money to invest in machinery, he can obtain good interest on his outlay. The greater the number of farmers arriving, the better will it be for those already here. There is room for all; and the more populous the State, the more readily will railroads be built, and the more easily can farm produce be sent to market. Unfortunately, these remarks do not apply to the laborer and mechanic as well as to the farmer. They can not create work for themselves to such an extent as the farmers can, but they can do a good deal in that direction. As has been already shown, the farm laborer can, after one year, or at the most two years, become a cultivator on his own account; but, in order to do this he must be careful of his money, work for whatever wages he can get in dull times, and be always employed, even if he has to work for his board. Many mechanics, idle in the cities, would find employment in the country. Blacksmiths and shoemakers, especially, would find many places in the interior where they could open shops of their own. They should be married, and have a few acres of land, on which they could work when not engaged at their trade. They may not earn as much money as some of those working for daily wages at the same occuption; but, living cheaper, they can save more. YOSEMITE VALLEY IN FLOOD. MANY a joyful stream is born in the Sierras\u27, but not one can sing like the Merced. In childhood, high on the mountains, her silver thread is a moving melody; of sublime Yosem- ite she is the voice; the blooming chap- arral or the flowery plains owe to her fullness their plant-wealth of purple and gold, and to the loose dipping willows and broad green oaks she is bounteous in blessing.- I think she is the most absorbing and readable of rivers. I have lived with her for three years, sharing all her life and fortunes, dreaming that I appreciated her; but I never have so much as imagined the sublimity, the majesty of her music, until seeing and listening at every pore I stood in her temple to-day, . ! December brought to Yosemite, first of all, a cluster of ripe, golden days and silvery nights—a radiant company of the sweetest winter children of the sun. The blue sky had Sabbath and slept in its high dome, and down in its many mansions of canon and cave, crystals grew in the calm nights, and fringed the rocks like mosses. The November torrents were soothed, and settled tranquillity beamed from every feature of rock and sky. In the afternoon of December 16th, 1871, an immense crimson cloud grew up in solitary grandeur above Cathedral Rocks. It resembled a fungus, with a bulging base like a sequoia, a smooth, tapering stalk, and a round, bossy, down- curled head like a mushroom — stalk, head, and root, in equal, glowing, half- transparent crimson: one of the most gorgeous and symmetrical clouds I ever beheld. Next morning, I looked eagerly at the weather, but all seemed tranquil; and whatever was being done in the deep places of the sky, little stir was visible below. An ill-defined dimness YOSEMITE VALLEY IN FLOOD. [April, consumed the best of the sunbeams, and toward noon well-developed grayish clouds appeared, having a close, curly grain, like bird\u27s-eye maple. Late in the night some rain fell, which changed to snow, and, in the morning, about \u27ten inches remained unmelted on the meadows, and was still falling—a fine, cordial snow-storm; but the end was not yet. On the night of the i8th rain fell in torrents, but, as it had a temperature of 34° Fahrenheit, the snow-line was only a few feet above the meadows, and there was no promise of flood; yet sometime after eleven o\u27clock the temperature was suddenly raised by a south wind to *42°, carrying the snow-line to the top of the wall and far beyond — out on the upper basins, perhaps, to the very summit of the range—and morning saw Yosemite in the glory of flood. Torrents of warm rain were washing the valley walls, and melting the upper snows of the surrounding mountains; and the liberated waters held jubilee. On both sides the Sentinel foamed a splendid cascade, and across the valley by the Three Brothers, down through the pine grove, I could see fragments of an unaccountable outgiish of snowy cascades. I ran for the open meadow, that I might hear and see the whole glowing circumference au once, but the tinkling brook was an un- fordable torrent, bearing down snow and bowlders like a giant. Farther up on the debris I discovered a place where the stream was broken up into three or four strips among the bowlders, where I crossed easily, and ran for the meadows. But, on emerging from the bordering bushes, I found them filled with green lakes, edged and islanded with floating snow. I had to keep along the debris as far as Hutchings\u27, where I crossed the river, and reached a wadable meadow in the jnudst of trie most glorious congregation of vater - falls ever laid bare tJ\mortal eyes. Between Black\u27s and Hutchings\u27 there were ten snowy, majestic, loud-voiced cascades and falls; in the neighborhood of Glacier Point, six ; from Three Brothers to Yosemite Falls, nine; between Yosemite and Arch Falls, ten; between Washington Column and Mount Watkins, ten; on the slopes of South Dome, facing Mirror Lake, eight; on the shoulder of South Dome, facing the main valley, three. Fifty-six newborn falls occupying this upper end of the valley; besides a countless host of silvery-netted arteries gleaming everywhere ! I did not go down to the Ribbon or Pohono ; but in the whole valley there must have been upward of a hundred. As if inspired with some great water purpose, cascades and falls had come thronging, in Yosemite costume, from every grove and canon of the mountains; and be it remembered, that these falls and cascades were not small, dainty, momentary gushes, but broad, noBle - mannered water creations; sublime in all their attributes, and well worthy Yosemite rocks, shooting in arrowy foam from a height of near three thousand feet; the very smallest of which could be heard several miles away: a perfect storm of water-falls throbbing out their lives in one stupendous song. I have criticised Hill\u27s painting for having two large falls between the Sentinel and Cathedral rocks ; now I would not be unbelieving against fifty. From my first stand-point on the meadow toward La- mon\u27s only one fall is usually seen; now there are forty. A most glorious convention this of vocal waters—not remote and dim, as only half present, but with forms and voices wholly seen and felt, each throbbing out rays of beauty warm and palpable as those of the sun. All who have seen Yosemite in summer will remember the comet forms of upper Yosemite Falls, and the laces of Nevada. In these waters of the jubilee, the lace tissue predominates; but there is also a plentiful mingling of arrowy 1872.] YOSEMITE VALLEY IN FLOOD. 00 AII 349 comets. A cascade back of Black\u27s is composed of two white shafts set against the dark wall about thirty feet apart, and filled in with dhained and beaded gauze of splendid pattern, among the living meshes of which the dark, purple granite is dimly seen. A little above Glacier Point there is a half-woven, half-divided web of cascades, with warp and woof so similar in song and in gestures, that they appear as one existence: living and rejoicing by the pulsings of one heart. The row of cascades between Washington Column and the Arch Falls are so closely side by side that they form an almost continuous sheet; and those about Indian Canon and the Brothers are not a whit less noble. Tissiack is crowned with surpassing glory. Her sculptured walls and bosses and her great dome are nobly adorned with clouds and waters, and her thirteen cascades give her voice of song. The upper Yosemite is queen of all these mountain waters ; nevertheless, in the first half-day of jubilee, her voice was scarce heard. Ever since the coming of the first November storms,- Yosemite has flowed with a constant stream, although far from being equal to the high water in May and June. About three o\u27clock this afternoon I heard a sudden crash and booming, mixed with heavy gaspings and rocky, angular explosions, and I ran out, sure that a rock-avalanche had started near the top of the wall, and hoping to see some of the huge blocks journeying down; but I quickly discovered that these craggy, sharp-angled notes belonged to the flood-wave of the upper fall. The great wave, gathered from many a glacier -cation of the Hoffman spurs, had just arrived, sweeping logs and ice before it, and, plunging with the storm-notes of crowning grand- During the whole two days of storm no idle, unconscious water appeared, and the clouds, and winds, and rocks were inspired with corresponding activity and life. Clouds rose hastily, upon some errand, to the very summit of the walls, with a single effort, and as suddenly returned; or, sweeping horizontally, near the ground, draggled long-bent streamers through the pine-tops; while others traveled up and down Indian Canon, and overtopped the highest brows, then suddenly drooped and condensed, or, thinning to gauze, veiled half the valley, leaving here and there a summit looming alone. These clouds, and the crooked cascades, raised the valley-rocks to double their usual height, for the eye, mounting from cloud to cloud, and from angle to angle upon the cascades, obtained a truer measure of their sublime stature. The warm wind still poured in from the south, melting the snows far out on the highest mountains. Thermometer, at noon, 45°. The smaller streams of the valley edge are waning, by the slackening of the rain; but the far-reaching streams, coming in by the Tenaya, Nevada, and Illilouette canons, are still increasing. The Merced, in some places, overflows its banks, having risen at once from a shallow, prattling, ill-proportioned stream, to a deep, majestic river. The upper Yosemite is in full, gushing, throbbing glory of prime; still louder spring its shafts of song; still deeper grows the intense whiteness of its mingled meteors; fearlessly blow the winds among its dark, shadowy chambers, now softly bearing away the outside sprays, now swaying and bending the whole massive column. So sings Yosemite, with her hundred fellow-falls, to the trembling bushes, and solemn-waving pines, and winds, and clouds, and living, pulsing rocks—one stupendous unit of mountain power—one harmonious storm of mountain love. On the third day the storm ceased. Frost killed the new falls; the clouds 35° JUANITA. [April, are withered and empty; a score of light is drawn across the sky, and our chapter of flood is finished. Visions like these do not remain with us as mere maps and pictures—flat shadows cast upon our minds, to brighten, at times, when touch ed by association or will, and fade again from our view, like landscapes in the* gloaming. They saturate every fibre of the body and.soul, dwelling in us and with us, like holy spirits, through all of our after-deaths and after-lives. JUANITA. a v VERY man in the settlement started out i&, but ho got away, and was never heard of again. I had listened quietly to the end, though my eyes had wandered impatiently from the face of the man to the region to which he pointed with his finger. There was nothing to be seen out there but the hot air vibrating over the torn, sandy plain, and the steep, ragged banks of the river, without any water in it—as is frequently the case at this season of the year. The man who -had spoken—formerly a soldier, but, after his discharge from the army, station-keeper at this point—had become so thoroughly Arizonified that he thought he was well housed in this structure, where the mud - walls rose some six feet from the ground, and an old tent was hung over a few crooked manzanita-branches for a roof. There was a wide aperture in the wall, answering the purpose of a door; and a few boards laid on trestles, and filled in with straw, which he called his bunk. He had raised it on these trestles, partly because the snakes couldn\u27t creep into the straw so handy and partly because the coyotes, breaking down the barricade in the door-way one night, hunting for his chickens, had brought their noses in unpleasant proximity with his face while lying on the ground. He had confided these facts to me early in the morning, shortly after my arrival, continuing his discourse by a half- apology for his naked feet, to which he pointed with the ingenuous confession that he\u27d run barefooted till his shoes wouldn\u27t go or. no more. He held, them up for my inspection, to show that he had them — the shoes, I mean, not the feet—a pair of No. 14\u27s, entirely new, army make. We had arrived just before daybreak, my escort and I, having made a dry march —which would have been too severe on Uncle Sam\u27s mules in the scorching sun of a June day—during the night. The morning, flashing up in the east with all the glorious colors that give token of the coming, overpowering heat, brought with it also the faint, balmy breath of wind in which to bathe one\u27s limbs before the sun burst forth in its burning majesty. Phil, the ambulance-driver, and my oracle, said I could wander off as far as I wanted, without feaTof Indians; so I had ascended the - steep hill back of the station, and, spying what looked like a grave-yard at the foot of it, on the other side, I had immediately clambered down in search of new discoveries. I knew that there had formerly been a military post here: it is just so far from the Mexican border that fugitives from the law of that country would instinctively fly this way for refuge; and just near enough the line where the friendly Indian ceases to be a pleasant delusion, to make the presence of a strong military force at all times necessary for the protection of White settlers. But there are none; and Uncle Sam, protecting his own property on the march through here ashttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1075/thumbnail.jp