John Muir On California Alps.

[no transcription for page 1] 116 GRAND AND SUBLIME SCENERY. reflecting only rocks, snow, and the sky. But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough to make any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of Alps. Speaking of the Palisades he says: The eye is first caught by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a height of about a thousand feet, from a series of short, residual glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. Beyond them you behold a most sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy summits crowded together in lavish abundance, peak beyond peak, swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward until the culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney. THE ALPENGLOW. Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky- edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarcely discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. Of the effect of a trip to the Sierras, Clarence King says: As often as one camps 12,000 feet in these mountain regions, the charm of crystal pure air, those cold, sparkling, glen-like lakes, tints of rock, and Alpine lake, the fiery bronze of foliage, the luminous though deep-toned sky combine to produce an intellectual and even a spiritual elevation. THIS SCENERY EASILY REACHED. A twenty-four hours\u27 trip from San Francisco enables one to reach a region where he can see nature in her most impressive and gigantic forms, become a companion of solitude in its most inexcessible retreats, and witness mountain sunrise, sunshine and sunset alpenglow in their most peaceful aspeets. It can be justly claimed that there is more change and rest to a dweller by the fog-laden air of the ocean in a three days\u27 stay in the high Sierra than in two weeks in the Coast Range. The climate there is the same, or nearly the same, as that of San Francisco; but in these Sierras the elevation is great and the air very light and dry. It is a perfect tonic in its bracing effects. The change is complete, and the more complete the change the more complete the benefit. The wojld of the high mountains seems an entirely different one. HOW TO GET THERE. You take the 9: 30 A. M., or 4 p. M. train at Market Street, and in the comfortable cars of the Central Pacific you pass along the edge of the bay and obtain glimpses of the many new manufactories just being started by the enterprising business men of Oakland. The cars keep near the shore and pass through tunnels and around sharp points where you obtain glimpses of the opposite shore; of Mare Island and the village of Vallejo; of Benicia, which in 1853 was the capital of the State; of the great ferry-boat which transports an entire train to the opposite shore where it speeds on its way overland. You pass Martinez, where tourists take private conveyance for View of a Sierra Nevada CaSon. Mount Diablo, 3,856 feet high, from whose peak can be seen the homes of at least two-thirds of the entire population of the State. Just before you reach Lathrop, the great San Joaquin River is crossed. In early days passenger traffic was exclusively by steamer, and as seen in the engraving. At Lathrop the trainhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1168/thumbnail.jp