June-September 1875, Owens Valley, Yosemite, Middle Fork San Joaquin Image 24

43 in curves often meeting at top just before begin to descend & form a series of interlacing arches. & When sun is right they are seen to be beautifully irised [scenery] like colored glass [beads]. Only some masses containing [air] do not [thus] [show] prismatic colors. A stream thus regarded is mightily exalted in beauty. No flr in the mtns seems so really to speak the heart [love] of [Nature] as the violet. The wallflrs [wallflowers] large yel & & frag [fragrant] is v ab [very abundant] at almost all alts [altitudes] The robin is an early riser & his home like [cold] is delightful to hear. The humming 44 bird is also up before sunrise among his gilias & [ ] Voices of the mtns are glorious & manifold but not easily described. Death in the mtns is very beautiful. There lies the bleached bones of a mtn sheep half [covered with] [buried] [beneath] the brown [crypitid] husks of the [flies] bred in the [carcase] &now the sheep is alive again in ten thousand flies with rainbow tints on their wings. It is hard to tell whether dead or living flies are most beaut We know not what to do with our dead, [box] & follow & carry with serious glum gestures stalking like cranes frogging in a marshhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2015/thumbnail.jp