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THE 
SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


| Volume X 
1916-1919 


i MAYO) Adi 


ic aa | TH/ 


THE SIERRA CLUB 
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 


191g 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


Author 
BapbtE, WILLIAM FREDERIC 
BARRELL, JOSEPH 
BRADLEY, CORNELIUS BEACH 


Bryce, JAMES 

Cotsy, Wo. E. 
Doran, JENNIE ELLIOTT 
GRINNELL, JOSEPH 


Hackett, C. NELSon 
Jepson, WILLIS LINN 
Jounson, RoperT UNDERWOOD 
Jorpan, A. L. 
JorpaNn, Davip STARR 
KEELER, CHARLES 


KELLOGG, CHARLOTTE HOFFMAN . 


Kettocc, Mary FRANCES 
Le ConTE, JOSEPH N. 


MarsSHALL, ROBERT B. 
MCALLISTER, ELLIOTT 
MeErrRIAM, C. Hart 


MItts, Enos 
Monroe, HARRIET 
Murr, JoHN 


Mutrorp, WALTER 
Ossorn, HENRY FAIRFIELD 
Parsons, Marion RANDALL 


PuHovutTRIDES, ARISTIDES E. 
Ricuarpson, D. R. 
SARGENT, CHARLES SPRAGUE 
Storer, Tracy I. 


SwarTH, Harry S. 


coe t een t® Feo eeeseee 


eoeeeecer ee ee eee eo eo 


eee reece ee 


eo ee eo eee eee ee 


eee e eet Fe eereere et © 


eeerecee oe eres ee eee 


eoeee 


esceee 


eee e eee ee oe 


CONTENTS 
> 
Title Page 
POA IS HEN! SVCTM ASN eiejele hie Mieke Wile eisceate amine a 38 
Grove Karl Gilbert: An Appreciation ......... 397 
...4 Reference List to John Muir’s Newspaper 
Fa aed CACHE Pais ERE SENET ASEH OTE RRL REALE AO 55 
The Junipers of hove PLAT AUER ACAES A ee REU ag al er 298 
A Message and Appreciation ...cscccvsccecaee I 
John Muir, President of the Sierra Club ...... 2 
A Bibliography of John Muir ...ccccecceecaee 41 
The Yosemite Cony—A Chapter in the Naneal 
History of the Yosemite National Park 159 
VAD Cer CHa certs ce Re le CN alo eur ieetel ate 179 
The White Mountains of California ......... 282 
ssJonn Muarias LT Kew Fie yo ecsiais wise so alee 9 
Knapsacking in the Kings-San Joaquin Region . 292 
HORM VEUAR STN Ru dallass ale als Saree leirelenlesie, oh elle he iovanele e ereita 8 
Recollections of John Muir ..... ccc c ee eee 16 
“De Burial of SOW VMI a ee ein laleisls Miesete ee 15 
Muir Lodge: An Appreciation ....ccceesecees 60 
Die Ster va Cla raperey ss aiatecn sie letyy Mem tMehae aneres eee 135 
Record of an Early Exploration of Tenaya 
COONS a ae Gite le Liat a fenetne Maat eta! JAM 276 
EDN HIN BC ACPA ATER AU GD PERU ea oR AAR 23 
Ten Volumes of Publications (1892 to 1917) 152 
To the Memory of John Muir ...ceeccccences 146 
Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite 
PRG ey RUA NY RNC AL Aneta GAN CDA aay nA 202 
Grove Karl Gilbert, the Man ...... eee ceeeees 391 
ToT Magar Nila cstavereies ees uatdie aC. ieia ote ieiede lelfade estas ole 25 
A ALP PTE CALTON olen e's sialie fol el 'eailty slats ssetel alienate al ave 26 
Studies in the Sierra: 
II. Mountain Sculpture, Origin of Yosemite 
TALC SN EE Wert UU URN DAN AL IM Seba 62 
ITI. Ancient Glaciers and Their Pathways 184 
IV... Glacial Denudattan: |||... s\0\s/s's o's is 10s wie\si «eho 304 
V. Post-Glacial Denudation .......0.50.5- 414 
The War-Zone Forest of the Kern .......0+-. 155 
TOV IS IVIAUT TN beens ota eRe, | a Ae Gs LW) SN 29 
John Muir and the Alaska Book” ...........42. 33 
A Week Around Mount Robson .......+-2005. 269 
INE OMA LAU CLEIRDETS Miia ela eiaid aha aie a fetelic/siialenaiay eels 286 
PP OROSSOT POCO N UN NUN NN hue AI (ad ot 400 
PARC) FA th ATTEN le SM By OL SIE SP NB LCE A 37 
The Yosemite Cony—A Chapter in the Natural 
History of the Yosemite National Park 159 
Some Sierran Chipmunks ..ccccccsccccscvves 401 


iV Sierra Club Bulletin 


Author Title Page 
ALLOMPSON, GEORGE Godse ine eck The Climb of Dunderberg via VirginiaCaiion .. 287 
(DIETPENS AOU NDGE leis ofcicle slehenats The Sacred Mountain of China ......ceeeeees 165 
TREAT, JESSIE MCGILVRAY ....--. The Kern River Outing of 1916 ... see ssccuee 170 
ORGANIZATION OF THE OTERRA|\ CLUB) Y.ciclvecincieciscreliereicine oeinieteeiions 78, 210, 319, 429 
EDI TORTAUS) (igeu cite ieveitayiove alent idictel a tencliscste le neti aati Daghe taf eS) mc tALa arcs era 79, 211, 322, 430 
REPORTS. 55) os caine Slower shal die. 8 sielale ye: Se SERA Oe OL ere okotleie aia ae 82, 215, 326, 435 
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENGE || 05) cciscas sere koi erochersin oteieheierens ehaleielote enter 86, 221, 332, 438 
INATIONAL PARKS (1 5 cusrecs. cic: es5,c0s lorscoachtunueseheyercnc, oveosirole ererevs ois auelerevevers ceaions 97, 241, 362, 476 
War SERVICE RECORD‘AND LETTERS). .'. 1. Gis 0 aysieveetele-ais oe cle caiers ious oles eres OG 320, 450 
SrERRA CLUB EIONOR ROEL.. sonecsccichs.i6 2, siiase okoia of ahsie rerelialsleiere. oe © enehe eiel ate verona) cheek naaa 447 
IORESTRY. NOTES © se jo/5 jose exe: io. eie ie tedster opers a Forene o touenerttueere cose! eeone ele Glia rere 115, 253, 373, 483 


IBOOK REVIEWS) © site 'aieisunielcnusistetstolioustescnheeceestskorane he tokecs ois, stei el skeleton toposes 121, 258, 379, 487 


PLATE 


CXXX. 
CXXXI. 
CXXXII. 
CXXXIII. 
CXXXIV. 
CXXXV. 


CXXXVI. 


CXXXVII. 
CXXXVITI. 
CXXXIX. 


CX, 
CXLI. 
CXLII. 


CXLIITI. 
CXLIV. 

CXLV. 
CXLVI. 


CXLVII. 
CXLVIII. 


CXLIX. 
CL. 


CLI. 


CLII. 
CLITI. 


CLIV. 


CLV. 
CLVI. 
CLVII. 
CLVIII. 


CLIX. 


CLX. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


> 
PaGE 

OITA NEUTER al ieN SAE Oe ioc: raisin siielartet eats wade la icalbie tah siaterula ole ialiase aa! ene I 
A Lesson on the Trail from John Muir ...............222 eee eee 4 
John Muir in the Big Arroyo Camp, Kern Cafion, 1908 .......... 5 
oka iat iy eee Create cP rca MI Tats) ote letehavariel aleveile lalallala tele realias) allie 8 
Molar Erare ere ee ie lata als ehainha ana: wha lalatfaadey S.lallealelley alle scieterete\ oipe! lle 9 
Charles Keeler, John Muir, William Keith, Francis Fisher Browne 

ANGNOh WH BuUTCOUhs Hie ole leis Myaticlehalleaielelie lotion epietellen els tellers sls doves 16 
Pencil Sketch of the Pacific Glacier, in Glacier Bay, from John 

Morris) Alaska INOtebooks) ils alee etee eiietore distaueler sieliese eleleiel elecovele s 17 
Forest.of Magninhicent Silver Bins) 5 eo. oles ails oleh s sbate, 6) 0:lae elle iotay'a/ 24 
Voune Votmuntain ELemlocks iyi ala. ccs talarelalianatalalianeyel Stem ellet ails lols leleite 25 
Pencil Sketch of the Alaska Fiords, from John Muir’s Alaska 

INO FED OOKS eA UC URL AU WOOT ST een Ss hy Sune 32 
John Mitr at Itome,: September) 1903) ) 5. e/0/4).'s'<.6 0) 0)s)sie'e s'ee) ejshelee « 33 
Nolme Wat Among, them Pinese 62) ei eyo cele ayalia’s) evelse)t Sie) ei s)e «afer sis! 6 ese 40 
Pencil Sketches of Totems from the Old Stickeen Village, from 

John Muir’s Alaska Notebooks .........2.0ccscccceccccone 41 
Pencil Sketch of Dease Lake, from John Muir’s Alaska Notebooks 48 
Pencil Sketch from John Muir’s Alaska Notebooks .............. 49 
METI IE OU eae Usa RNa y uence re cenide ead Nau CY Uva AUP bale val els chal euanebetiapeus 60 
Pencil Sketches of Totems from the New Stickeen Village, from 

Votn) Muir’ s'Ataska Notebooks) isi) sijelo! sece5s¢ elaiol's lols leeele cle ial 61 
The Parsons Memorial Lodge, Tuolumne Meadows ............. 80 
Interior of Parsons Memorial Lodge during Construction ........ 81 
Parsons Memorial Lodge, Closed for the Winter ............... 81 
Parsons Memorial Lodge during Construction ...............-- 88 


Building Suspension Bridge over Piute Creek near Pavilion Dome.. 89 
Construction Work on John Muir Trail—Trail near Seldon Pass, 


North of Blaney Micadows i cues oc), Sine e's) 0 ee «el ele elelsjele 89 
Changes in Crater of Mount Lassen: 
June 28, 1914. View across ancient crater from southern rim, 
showing new crater with escaping steam ........00.00ee0008 96 


May 27, 1915. From approximately same position, showing cha- 
otic mass of old lava uplifted and filling the former craters ... 96 


Destruction of Timber by Mud-Flow from Mt. Lassen .......... 97 
Along the Route of John Muir Trail: 
SevenGables from Bear Creek oo) cise) ehalaeee ces ase’ sels sid 00/0 0 aye 104 
VOOR Wace ee eer SUMe Rs he CAL UT cialletal ita folie Se aleiay is Sh Wala lal chia ta evans 104 
Along the Route of John Muir Trail: 
Mount Abbott from Mono Pass ........ csc e ccc er crv cceccsees 105 
Colby Mead OW ie ele ehaleralieta pis Kelle ator ale ola loletes el esi Sarsiets veils (eyeyole/e/sietala 105 
Head of Deer Creek Cafion, Looking toward Middle Fork ....... 135 
John Muir's First Letter about the Sierra Club) 20.0). sc. es. 138 
First Headquarters of the Sierra Club in Yosemite Valley (1898).. 142 
weiConte! Memorial WOdRE Wi sels eieveiele she lsllelet olele eierclclarel ele sles els 143 
Parsons) Wlemorial OGRE |) o).)2 i /shealelie tes ialeliel oie e) ole sy sine! sie/le/a leis eles, 0s\s 6 143 
Timber Line and Adjacent Forest (Foxtail Pine) between East 
Fork ofKern River:and Tyndall Creek (ii. fie eee es 158 
White-Bark Pine, near John Muir Trail, Shepard Creek Cafion 159 


PLATE 


CLXTI: 


CLXAII. 
CLXITI. 
CLXIV. 

CLXV. 
CLXVI. 
CLXVII. 
CLXVIII. 
CLXIX. 
CLXX. 

, CL XT. 
CLXXII. 
CLXXITI. 
CLXXIV. 
CLXXV. 
CLXXVI. 
CLXXVII. 


CLXXVIII. 
CLXXIX. 
CLXXX. 


CLXXXI. 
CLXXXII. 
CLXXXIII. 
CLXXXIV. 
CLXXXV. 
CLXXXVI. 
CLXXXVII. 
CLXXXVIII. 
CLXXXIX. 
CXC. 
CXCL 
CXCII. 
CXCIII. 
CXCIV. 
CXCV. 
CXCV EE. 
CXCVII. 
CXCVITI. 
CXCIX. 
CEC. 

CCI. 

CCIE. 
CCIII. 
CCIV. 

CeV, 

CeCyT: 
CCVII. 
CCVIII. 
CCIX. 


CCX, 
CCXI. 


Zion Cafion 


Sierra Club Bulletin 


Pace 
A Cony at the Margin of Its Rock-Slide Home .............000% 162 
A Typical Observation-Post of the Cony .......-..ceseesecccves 162 
Tai Shan, the Sacred Mountain of China ©... ©... cle e)elchstoleutertete 166 
A Giant Foxtail Pine on Slope of Red Spur ........%.«. suleennenes 167 
Little Kern Lake © 5. ci. y.deterss sj stessejere'eeie/she, oh ale)ic iskajey eels telat teen mean 170 
A Rest on the Descent of Sawtooth). .iccc 2 <i 00 + «6 om elise 171 
Moraine Lake: s x spsiaisicteve iis tevehoneQelel ales ste cohol sieysualtcelolenttoelet hae aeaeaamane 174 
The Crest of the Sierra, Looking South from Mt. Whitney ...... 175 
On the John Muir Trailiy) \s..00.s)6 5s /c\lsicrs © oo s aleieic « «010 oteistalele iene 178 
East Vidette, from the Face of Kearsarge Pinnacles ............ 179 
Nine-Lake Basin, at the Head of Big Arroyo ........e.seaccuees 182 
Head of Roaring River Canon 9 s.15%<.0). s s6 + 00+ cles so ol eleletersteleieneielts 183 
At the Foot of Kearsarge Pinnacles ............22cccecccecccce 189 
Pothole Lake and University Peak ........ccccccessecsecsvcccs I9QI 
Up Big Arroyo, from Rim above Moraine Lake ...............- 198 
On the John Muir Trail) aici oo .2e oers «ese iors: gue 0 sneie © Sheleberere eae 199 
Mottnt! Brewer, oi flicrane bus s.6 a1 ote ie cave ie: occuodore co,-evas a0) evs 6 0. Jo stalcia a eReetereene 206 
The Kings-Kern Divide and Kearsarge Pinnacles from Mount 
COU rie vicar rest oot sles ouenatin.g dd oo: arose @ Shoot, ueweke el ee ee 207 
On'the Jobin: Mite Drag cc oii. orsjee'e acereweie-e to nie 6 scse seat, 2 ee 214 
On'the Jobin Matic Wray ee ie bate abs ece aaah a ad Ss octane eel een 215 
Suspension Bridge across Middle Fork of Kings River at Simpson 
Meadows, * ic ficis Suerenctene alercrare avase wee wievele sce or 5, gi0) ogc eres engne ee eae 222 
The Palisade Group fromthe South «2.0.06. 6 00 s.e1s'sis.e = shots tele ee 223 
Mount Clarice mr eae esrcnste ei ctor op ood Givedeliol speisxe a) evoke (a Gish a yanenes nh ey alenenehe 230 
Mount McClure and Mount Lyell, from Summit of Florence ..... 231 
ake Ghelan! Ssccivccateless tele bielo's, opracde es allst) di sey erene: cle goede reek Ramee eRe 234 
Fotel Field:"Head of Lake Chelan... occ soe «tee ce sieve claret net 235 
Robson‘and Tumbling Glacter 26). 6... ai ee o.5oine be oe sel date eee 269 
Emperor Falls:and Slope of Robson «2.4... ... .. ss 003% aoe ee 272 
North Sidelof Mount Robson  ..5..5506.066 5 c0 ens ete beeen 273 
Southwest from Crest of Mount Pam)... cee eee eee ee cee eee 276 
Robson and Resplendent from Mount Pam ........... eee eee eee 277 
Caribou, Valley of Calumet Creek 6c... is chee 5 once pcre oe 280 
Looking across Bere Wake scsi ces cies wietss sic ow sie ere die ee oe 281 
Legends for Pigures!) Pig. 0 sees cdots ocece one wnsidveyd obele ere 284 
METIS, ca phelictidie: osuwiie: s muare sw ae: 4ctes cayenne 284 
Campiat (Vou, Wakes’ ck sues a whee 4 vie wie ee 0100's ene o esas Ghee a eee 285 
Camp in Virginia Cafion, below Shepherd Crest .............800 288 
Ragged '‘Peakiand Young Lake  ...6. 26 ccs dea sacs nee 289 
Conness Glacier from the Mountain Summit ..............00006 292 
Fourth Recess; fromthe Mono Trail . oo6.00 «6 s0 66+ sees 293 
Young Juniper, Glen. Alpine 2.2 620 6c ce oles wie ae ce scaler 300 
Old Juniper, over ten ‘feet at base ©... 0... «slow «oho sale eee 304 
Bigs DT win Juniper’ is ccere ois oce.s eee 0:0 oe sire eice.e 6 s!eis Ae 301 
Poreupine,'Piute:Creele oi... 6 sec cae oe oo dis dine ee Nei a 296 
Giant Juniper in Cathedral Cafion, Yosemite National Park ..... 305 
Peak near Lion ge, Lakes, .0:5:is/s,0vai6) «010 6.6105. be we'eieteres «a 'skenuete EE ee 297 
Unique Tamarack Pine Growth) «600.00. ss swsnose eee eee 328 
One of the Exquisite Lakes in Ten Lake Basin ............0000- 329 
Stummit of Mount'San Jacinto 632i. ss. ade siewn eee eee ee eee 332 
Grove of Palms at Mouth of Andreas Cafion, an Old Indian 
Camp- Ground oie ised alae husieceligs Searcy ae 332 
Spearhead!) wiiis sialsus tose) Aisle pilerailere aie ew keke! aise steaandle Steph ae ee 333 


eo ene eos eeeeeneseoeeesret Fee eeeecec eee eee e ee eee eese 


PLATE 


CCXII. 
CCXIII. 
CCXIV. 
CCXV. 
CCXVI. 
CCXVII. 


CCXVIII. 
CCXIX. 
CCXX. 
CCXXI. 
CCXXII. 
CCX XIII. 
CCXXIV. 


CCXXV. 
CCXXVI. 
CCXXVII. 
CCXXVIII. 
CCXXIX. 
CCXXX. 
CCXXXI. 


CCXXXII. 
CCXXXITI. 
CCXXXIV. 

CCXXXV. 


CCXXXVI. 


CCXXXVII. 
CCXXXVIII. 
CCXXXIX. 
CCXL. 
CCXLI. 
CCXLII. 


List of Illustrations Vii 
PaGE 
Warton alk Crs ina'(oh ali AIA ANAEAL UMMA SLI Ae A NT SE See 337 
Zion Canon——The Three Patriarchs (ie i/eist cic cle ss eels /sleelelaisis ia os 340 
Zion Ganon——Courtios the Patriarch: 1.0/2) 5 Wale iiels cisle ie ctisalsls ies 341 
Looking ap South Porkiof San Joaquin River (5 .)oi)i2)e sis ea). ics ole 344 
Reovrd of Ue) S.' Coast and) Geodetic Survey: icici) sie: elaisls +e sehele! s/aie 345 
A Corner of the Wood Technology Laboratory, Division of 
Horestry, University of Califormiay eis yiie eb ok es ae Slee vieie ease 368 
Remains of the Coast and Geodetic Survey’s Observatory ....... 369 
Record of Ascent of Mount Conness ........ cece cece eee cccece 369 
Grovel Karli Gilbert ew Geen eo WEN I ET MUST MR Nea an ead ota fal units 391 
Mount Gilberts en a Eulese mu caielionr auc veimieuces natalie baler (una alah ale 394 
Le Conte Memorial Lodge, December, 1918 ............2200e0ee 395 
Alpine Chipmunk—naturalvsize! |) sieie)s och jes cis sicleie)> «+ ci 4 ce ole sale 402 
Sierra Golden-mantled Ground-squirrel Gathering Prune-Pits 403 
Tahoe Chipmunk on Trunk of Yellow Pine .................... 403 
Wong Mare dC tipi tle hej .e lene suede ra oid us yo) sr ante aol ay'olelana ot ale ete laude las 406 
Mount Brewer, Kearsarge Pinnacles and Lakes ................ 407 
Ten Isake basin. Yosemite National Park |) \ocieisie ¢5 s acieles eve ve ei eoe 414 
Ten! Lake) Basin, Yosemite National (Park: coos sc. sae a elec sis ele « 415 
Junction Pass, John Muir Trail (elevation 13,300 ft.) ........... 422 
Upper Kern Lake and Tower Rock, Kern River Cafion .......... 423 
President Roosevelt at the Base of the Grizzly Giant, Mariposa 
GOW eM eee te austell pista sistetaerslaysa tet etnies his tepedetazelsi ae) weve auale, Sy ened S 430 
Rae Lake, Headwaters of South Fork of Kings River ........... 431 
Mirstideutenant Robert So Gillett, (iii es oi siale'e, s-o1¢ a = tle! wll lela al 434 
AAMAS HES OVE CADITA ie ails eiellels el eveteveleralave bie alee a iatevols eialadlb pty adlute tae 435 
Mountaintion! Cubiten days Olay i )3.c/e siieeaie seis alc es, ola wilers, ahdlmisielate 442 
Mrs. Sovulewski with one of the mountain lion cubs she raised on 
aibottlean) VosemitenVialley isu ols aiscsusiouel arose clelevelions verelanals 442 
EP AUSE ABOVE ERE IWADIVE | lalate fo et sts aie cele leg eid ohstellale lailal c caselelavaiay et 443 
zy wo-F oot Cottonwood Cut by Beavers oi. ee elds ele oe cos 443 
Head of Lyell Fork, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park. 446 
Mount Ritter and Banner Peak from Shadow Lake ............. 447 
Caphedral)Peak and Wnnamed! Waker i) iisicicie ce lsieia ave: vs jee es ose ol ove als 470 
GermaniA rm ri Order iis Wa vievssedcalelevell ye suet cleucseie gia bIn aca aie lel oelelnte ate 471 
Male Mountain Lion two-thirds grown—eight months old ....... 486 
Memayaeak an Wace Ne maya aver slo sie ieicue sie sus ios cuelel aslo aie npsteia ry ote 487 


, Geek vast 


_ SAN FRANCISCO> ee 
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ATIONS OF THE SIERRA CLUB 
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SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


FOUNDED 1892 


Edited for the Club by 
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 


January, 1916 


{ 
| 


‘ ; ‘ Wh P 
eh WA Caaes 
Vor. X CONTENTS Nowy 
A MESSAGE AND APPRECIATION James Bryce % ‘ 
JoHN Muir, PRESIDENT OF THE SIERRA CLUB Wiliam E.Colby 2 
Plates CXXXI, CXXXII. . ; 
Joun Muir David Starr Jordan 8 
Plates CXKXXIII, CXXXIV. ‘ 
JoHN Muir ASI KNEw Him Robert Underwood Johnson 9 
THE Buriat or JOHN Muir ~ Charlotte Hoffman Kellogg 15 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN Muir Charles Keeler 16 
Plates CKXXV, CXXXVI. \ 
JouHn Mur Robert B. Marshall 23 
Joun Mum Enos Mills 25. 
Plates CKX XVII, CX XXVIII. by 
AN APPRECIATION Harriet Monroe 26 
JoHn Muir Henry Fairfield Osborn 29 
JoHN Murr AND THE ALASKA Book Marion Randall Parsons 33 
, Plates CKXXIX, CXL. | 5 
Joun Mur Charles Sprague Sargent 37 
To HiGHER SIERRAS William Frederic Badé 38 
Plates CXLI, CXLII. ; 
' A BrsLioGRAPHY OF JOHN Muir Jenme Elliot Doran 41 
Plates CXLIII, CXLIV. | 
NcE List To JoHN IR’ : é 
A palin Ngee gett a) PTUs } Cornelius Beach Bradley 55 
Muir LopcE—AN APPRECIATION Mary Frances Kellogg 60 We 
Plates CKLV, CXLVI.._ Mr enh Sy 
STUDIES IN THE SIERRA: IT MouNTAIN Toki Meir Gan % 
SCULPTURE, ORIGIN OF YOSEMITE VALLEYS Os te aa 
ORGANIZATION OF THE SIERRA CLUB Poy |) Mi ‘i 
EDITORIALS 79 if an 
“Plates CXLVII, CXLVIII. Pa a aN 
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES AY 
Sih 


- Nores AND CorRESPONDENCE 
Plates CKLIX, CL, CLI, CLII. 


NATIONAL PARK NOTES 
Plates CLIII, CLIV. 


Forestry Notes 
Book REVIEWS 


_. Correspondence concerning the distribution and sale of the publications o 
with reference to advertising rates and space location, and concerning its bu 
erally, should be addressed to the Secretary of the Sierra Club, Room 402 M 


ing, San Francisco, California. 


Price, 50 Cents Per Cory 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN,VOL. X PLATE CX XX 


A_W. Elson & Co, Boston 


Jt on Caen 


WE. Dassonville. Photographer 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


NUMBER 
ONE 


VOLUME 
TEN 


SAN FRANCISCO 
JANUARY 
1916 


e 


cA Message and Appreciation 


from 
“fames Bryce 


Sf 
To My Frienps anp FELLow MeEmpBeERs OF THE SIERRA CLUB: 


MN. I venture to express to you the sorrow with 


which the news of the death of our friend, the venera- 
ble Fohn Muir, has filled me? He was the patriarch 
of American lovers of mountains, one who had not only — 
a passion for the splendours of Nature, but a wonderful 
power of interpreting her to men. The very air of the 
granite peaks, the very fragrance of the deep and sol- 
emn forest, seem to breathe round us and soothe our 
sense as we read the descriptions of his lonely wander- 
ings in the Sierras when their majesty was first re- 
vealed. California may well honour the service of one 
who did so much to make known her charms and to 
shield them from desecration. And you of the Club will 
cherish the memory of a singularly pure and simple 
character, who was in his life all that a worshipper 
of nature ought to be. 


February roth, 1915 
Hindleap, Forest Row 


Sussex 


JOHN MUIR—PRESIDENT OF THE SIERRA CLUB 
By WILLIAM E. CoLsy 


+ 


John Muir was the Sierra Club’s first President and held that 
office for twenty-two years—until his death. The Sierra Club 
was organized in 1892 largely as a result of the wide-spread 
interest in California’s wonderful mountain playgrounds, which 
had been aroused by his twenty years of preaching the necessity 
for their preservation before it should become too late. The 
Yosemite National Park had just been created as one result of 
his splendid work. While we could have this great leader of 
all true mountaineers and lovers of “pure wildness,” it was 
unthinkable that any one else should hold the office of President. 

It was my good fortune to be Secretary of the Club for the 
last fifteen years of this period and I came to know this wonder- 
ful man as I have known few others. It is a priceless privilege 
to be in close contact with a man whose mind was as pure and 
whose ideals were as high as were John Muir’s, and moreover, 
one who so thoroughly lived up to this ideal purity. 

John Muir will never be fully appreciated by those whose 
minds are filled with money getting and the sordid things of 
modern every-day life. To such Muir is an enigma—a fanatic 
—visionary and impractical. There is nothing in common to 
arouse sympathetic interest. That anyone should spend his 
whole life in ascertaining the fundamental truths of nature and 
glory in their discovery with a joy that would put to shame even 
the religious zealot is to many utterly incomprehensible. That 
a man should brave the storms and thread the pathless wilder- 
ness, exult in the earthquake’s violence, rejoice in the icy blasts 
of the northern glaciers, and that he should do all this alone and 
unarmed, year in and year out, is a marvel that but few can 
understand. These solitary explorations were quite in contrast 
with the usual heavily equipped expeditions which undertake 
such work. John Muir loved and gloried in this sort of life and 
approached it with an enthusiasm and power of will that made 
hardships and those things which most human beings consider 


John Muir—President of the Sierra Club ine 


essentials, mere trifles by comparison. He was willing to sub- 
ordinate everything in life to this work which he had set out to 
do supremely well, and it is little wonder that he attained his 
goal. 

His latter days were so full of the rich experiences of these 
earlier years of devotion to his chosen work and he looked with 
such calm and serenity out upon the feverish haste and turmoil 
of those about him, engaged in making everything within reach 
“dollarable,” that he seemed to be living in a world apart—a 
world created by his own wonderful spirit and efforts. 

To those who thought him impractical and visionary, it is 
only necessary to point out his early skill as an inventor, which, 
if continued, would have made him world famous, or to his suc- 
cess as an orchardist, making his friends, the trees, bear as they 
had never been known to bear before or since. But these activi- 
ties were chosen mainly because they seemed the duty of the 
hour and when finished were left for the nobler pursuits that lay 
nearest his heart. 

His true position as a geologist will never be adequately rec- 
ognized because his writings on his geological studies were so 
minimized by contrast with that greater field of beautiful litera- 
ture in which he excelled. But any one who has read his 
“Studies in the Sierra” (now being reprinted in the SIERRA 
CLus BULLETIN), and who realizes that his views on glaciation 
as bearing on the origin of Yosemite Valley were written at a 
time when geologists of great eminence were advancing other 
theories, and had no patience with any glacial theory, will ap- 
preciate that John Muir was no ordinary student of the physi- 
cal laws of nature. I ran across the following extract from a 
little pamphlet on the Yosemite, published in 1872: 

“There is and has been for two years past, living in the Valley, 
a gentleman of Scottish parentage, by name John Muir, who, 
Hugh Miller like, is studying the rocks in and around the Val- 
ley. He told me that he was trying to read the great book 
spread out before him. He is by himself pursuing a course of 
geological studies, and is making careful drawings of the dif- 
ferent parts of the gorge. No doubt he is more thoroughly ac- 
quainted with this valley than any one else. He has been far up 
the Sierras where glaciers are now in action, ploughing deep 


4 Sierra Club Bulletin 


depressions in the mountains. He has made a critical examina- 
tion of the superincumbent rocks, and already has much materi- 
al upon which to form a correct theory.” (The Yosemite, by 
John Erastus Lester.) (1873.) Prepared for and read before 
the Rhode Island Historical Society. 

When we bear in mind the fact that at that time Muir had 
been in the Valley only a little over two years, and that his gla- 
cial theory of the origin of the Valley is now quite generally 
accepted, this prophecy is all the more striking. 

John Muir himself can tell more fittingly than I am able to 
his relation to the Club and, therefore, the following extracts 
have been selected from some of his letters. From his home near 
Martinez he wrote under date of January 15, 1907: “I herewith 
return the draft of a Club report on Kings River region with 
my hearty approval, excepting the first two pages of the MS., 
in which the Yosemite and Kings River regions are compared. 
Every possible aid and encouragement should be given by the 
Club for the preservation, road and trail building, etc., for the 
development of the magnificent Kings River region, but unjust 
one-sided comparisons seeking to build up and glorify one re- 
gion at the expense of lowering the other is useless work and 
should be left to real estate agents, promoters, rival hotel and 
stage owners, etc. Certainly the Club has nothing to do with 
such stuff, tremendous advantages, wealth and variety of moun- 
tain sculpture depending on greater depths and heights, etc., 
suggest boys with eyes to depth and height of butter and honey, 
seeing tremendous advantages in one slice of bread over an- 
other cut from the same loaf. 

“Have you seen the President’s Proclamation of Dec. 8, 1906, 
creating the ‘Petrified Forest National Monument’ under the Act 
of Congress of June 8, 1906? Contains 60,776.02 acres, and in- 
cludes the Blue Jasper Forest Helen and I found. The large 
new forest to the north of Adamana is to be added to the above. 
Come up some Saturday night or Sunday and talk over mat- 
ters.” 

Martinez, Jan. 13, 1908: “Of course I heartily approve of the 
proposed vote of thanks to Mr. Kent, and suggest a slight 
change in the form of the resolution, as follows: 

““Resolved: That the Sierra Club extend a hearty vote of 


SUIY, “Y “O95) Aq OJOU 
YINW NHOf WOU TIVYL AHL NO NOSSAT V 


“IXXXO ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANID VUUTIS 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CXXXII. 


r 


At ts 

eon ae . : 
Ne aa 

seal Py vane se 


JOHN MUIR IN THE BIG ARROYO CAMP, KERN CANON, 1908 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 


John Muw—President of the Sierra Club 5 


thanks to Mr. William Kent in testimony of its appreciation of 
his noble gift to the Federal Government of the Redwood Cafi- 
on on Mount Tamalpais, with its magnificent primeval groves 
of Sequoia sempervirens, to be devoted as a public park and 
pleasure-ground to the people forever.’” 

Los Angeles, Cal., Jan. 16, 1911: “Thanks for your kind let- 
ter and the book which you forwarded. 

“IT am now at work on the Kings River yosemites, and I 
would like to have the part of the Kings River region which 
ought to be added to the General Grant and Sequoia National 
parks definitely described, because I wish to recommend the 
preservation of the region in the Yosemite Guide-book. . . . ” 

New York City, May 26, 1911: “I have just received a copy 
of ‘My First Summer in the Sierra.’ It is dedicated “To The Si- 
erra Club, Faithful Defender of the People’s Playgrounds.’ Am 
stopping with the Harrimans. The above will be my address un- 
til the first of July. ; 

“The American Alpine Club is arranging to give me a din- 
ner, at which you may be sure there will be a lot of Hetch Het- 
en work, i... 

“We may lose this particular fight, but truth and right must 
prevail at last. Anyhow we must be true to ourselves and the 
Lord.” 

Castle Rock, Garrisons on Hudson, N. Y., June 27, 1911: 
“T’ve just written to Mr. McFarland assuring him of my help 
in the Niagara fight and my eagerness to meet him. I had not 
in the least forgotten him or his magnificent work, but since 
coming here I’ve had so much Hetch Hetchy and book work to 
do, besides planning for S. America, and have also been tousled 
and tumbled hither thither, dinnered, honored, etc., almost out 
of my wits, I could never set a day to see him. The society 
weather is now growing calm as the thermometer rises, and I 
hope to get a quiet week or two to see friends and finish my Yo- 
semite book. ...... 

“The American Alpine Club gave me a fine dinner, so did the 
Appalachian, and a great time at the Yale Commencement, get- 
ting honor for helping to save Hetch Hetchy. Glad you like the 
Sierra Club summer book. I’ll get the publishers to send some. 
Remember me to Mrs. Colby and Parsons and your brave pair 


6 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of young mountaineers. Good luck for your outing. Greet them 
all at your camp-fire with my warmest good wishes.” 

Para, Brazil, Sept. 19, 1911: “I hope you all had a good time 
this summer, the usual Sierra Club luck. When I left New York 
August 12th, the Hetch Hetchy looked comparatively safe as 
far as I could see, but the wicked, whether down or up, are 
never to be trusted, so we must keep on watching, praying, 
fighting, overcoming evil with good as we are able. 

“T’ve had a glorious time up the Amazon. In about a week 
from above date, I hope to be on my way to Rio de Janeiro. 
Thence I intend going to Buenos Aires, sail up the Uruguay 
and La Plata, cross the Andes to Valparaiso and southward 
along the araucarian forests, etc. Then perhaps to South Afri- 
ca to see its wonderful flora, etc.; may be home in the spring. 

“My kindest regards to Mrs. Colby and the great pair of 
boys and to the Parsons, and all the Club you see.” 

On the Steamer “Windkirk,” near Zanzibar, Feb. 4, 1912: 
“T’ve had a great time in South America and South Africa. In- 
deed it now seems that on this pair of wild, hot continents I’ve 
enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life. Some happy Califor- 
nia day I’ll try to tell you about it. ’m now on my way from 
Beira to Mombasa after a grand trip to the Zambesi Baobab 
forests, Victoria Falls, and the magnificent glacial rock scenery 
of Southern Rhodesia. From Mombasa I intend to make a short 
trip into the Nyanza lake region, then home via Suez, Naples 
and New York, hoping to find you and all the Sierra Club and 
its friends and affairs hale and happy and prosperous.” 

Martinez, May 1, 1912: “I'll be down Friday and stop over 
for the Saturday meeting. If a few of the Club members wish 
very much to give me an informal dinner I’ll not object, but my 
dress suit is in Los Angeles; have nothing but old clothes here, 
therefore the thing must be an informal sort of camp affair.” 

Hollywood, Cal., June 24, 1912: “I thank you very much for 
your kind wishes to give me a pleasant Kern River trip, and am 
very sorry that work has been so unmercifully piled upon me 
that I find it impossible to escape from it, so I must just stay 
and work. 

“T heartily congratulate you and all your merry mountain- 
eers in the magnificent trip that lies before you. As you know, 


a ar 


John Muir—President of the Sierra Club 7, 


I have seen something of nearly all the mountain chains in the 
world, and have experienced their varied climates and attrac- 
tions of forests and rivers, lakes and meadows, etc. In fact, I 
have seen a little of all the high places and low places of the 
continents, but no mountain range seems to me so kind, so 
beautiful, or so fine in its sculpture as the Sierra Nevada. If 
you were as free as the winds are, and the light, to choose a 
camp ground in any part of the globe, I could not direct you to 
a single place for your outing that, all things considered, is so 
attractive, so exhilarating and uplifting in every way as just 
the trip that you are now making. You are far happier than you 
know. Good luck to you all, and I shall hope to see you all on. 
your return, boys and girls, with the sparkle and exhilaration 
of the mountains still in your eyes. With love and countless 
fondly cherished memories, Ever faithfully yours, 
Joun Murr.” 

“Of course in all your camp-fire preaching and praying you 

will never forget Hetch Hetchy.” 


JOHN MUIR - MASTER OF ARTS - HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


> JOHANNEM MVIR - 

LOCORVM INCOGNITORVM 
EXPLORATOREM INSIGNEM - FLVMINVM 
QVI SVNT IN ALASKA 
SERRATISQVE MONTIBVS CONGLACIATORVM 
STVDIOSVM - DILIGENTEM SILVARVM 
ET RERAM AGRESTIVM 
FERARAMOVE INDAGATORVM 
ARTIVM MAGISTRVM 


CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT 
JUNE 24-A-D- 1896 PRESIDENT 


JOHN MUIR 


By Davip STARR JORDAN 


> 


— It is not easy to write of my good friend, John Muir. The im- 
pression of his personality was so strong on those who knew 
him that all words seem cheap beside it. Those who never knew 
him can never, through any word of ours, be brought to realize 
what they have missed. 

John Muir first came to my notice in Indianapolis, forty years 
ago, but he was gone before I came there. He was a printer, I 
believe, in those days, and he made friends, for he was rich in 
wisdom and in love of nature. Five years later, in San Francis- 
co, I met him frequently. He was lately back from the Yosemi- 
te, where, in rollicking enthusiasm, he had written the finest 
bird biography in existence, the story of the Water Ouzel in the 
“Ouzel Basin” of the Brewer range. 

In those days every meeting with him was a fresh joy. He 
was possessed with love and the enthusiasm for a fresh great 
mountain range, almost new to literature in those days, but fit 
to dominate it when the Alps and the Apennines have vanished, 
swallowed up in the sea of blood. He had, moreover, a quaint, 
crisp way of talking, his literary style in fact, and none of the 
nature lovers, the men who know how to feel in the presence of 
great things and beautiful, have expressed their craft better 
than he. 

There is another Scotsman of the cosmopolitan order to 
whom, in many ways, John Muir bore a strong resemblance. 
John Muir cared little for world-politics, and James Bryce 
knew little of the songs of birds, but these two great men looked 
on life and the universe in much the same way, both frank- 
spoken and absolutely democratic; both open-eyed to all phe- 
nomena of the world, whatever and wheresoever they be; both 
wandering wide from their homes; both large-brained, cosmo- 
politan citizens of the world, the world God made and which 
lies open to us all the time. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CXXXIII. 


JOHN MUIR 
Photo by W. E. Dassonville 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


JOHN MUIR 
Photo by W. E. Dassonville 


PLATE CXXXIV. 


JOHN MUTROAS: T KNEW THIM* 
By RoserT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON 


> 


Sometime, in the evolution of America, we shall throw off 
the two shackles that retard our progress as an artistic nation— 
philistinism and commercialism—and advance with freedom to- 
ward the love of beauty as a principle. Then it will not be 
enough that one shall love merely one kind of beauty, each 
worker his own art, or that art shall be separated from life as 
something too precious for use; men will search for beauty as 
scientists search for truth, knowing that while truth can make 
one free, it is beauty of some sort, as addressed to the eye, the 
ear, the mind, or the moral sense, that alone can give perma- 
nent happiness. When that apocalyptic day shall come, the 
world will look back to the time we live in and remember the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness and bless the name of 
John Muir. To some, beauty seems but an accident of creation: 
to Muir it was the very smile of God. He sung the glory of na- 
ture like another Psalmist, and, as a true artist, was unashamed 
of his emotions. 

An instance of this is told of him as he stood with an ac- 
quaintance at one of the great view-points of the Yosemite Val- 
ley, and, filled with wonder and devotion, wept. His companion, 
more stolid than most, could not understand his feeling, and 
was so thoughtless as to say so. “Mon,” said Muir, with the 
Scotch dialect into which he often lapsed, “Can ye see unmoved 
the glory of the Almighty?” “Oh, it’s very fine,” was the reply, 
“but I do not wear my heart upon my sleeve.” “Ah, my dear 
mon,” said Muir, “in the face of such a scene as this, it’s no 
time to be thinkin’ o’ where you wear your heart.” 

No astronomer was ever more devout. The love of nature 
was his religion, but it was not without a personal God, whom 
he thought as great in the decoration of a flower as in the 
launching of a glacier. The old Scotch training persisted 


_ .* Read, in part, at the meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 
in New York, January 6, 1916. 


10 Sierra Club Bulletin 


through all his studies of causation, and the keynote of his phil- 
osophy was intelligent and benevolent design. His wonder grew 
with his wisdom. Writing for the first time to a young friend, 
he expressed the hope that she would “find that going to the 
mountains is going home, and that Christ’s Sermon on the 
Mount is on every mount.” 

It was late in May, 1880, that I first met him. I had gone to 
San Francisco to organize the series of papers afterward pub- 
lished in the Century Magazine under the title of “The Gold- 
hunters of California,’ and promptly upon my arrival he came 
to see me. It was at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. I was 
dressing for dinner and was obliged to ask him to come up to 
my room. He was a long time in doing so and I feared he had 
lost his way. I can remember, as if it were yesterday, hearing 
him call down the corridor, “Johnson, Johnson! where are you? 
I can’t get the hang of these artificial cafions,” and before he 
had made any of the conventional greetings or inquiries, he ad- 
ded: “Up in the Sierra, all along the gorges, the glaciers have 
put up natural sign-posts, and you can’t miss your way, but 
here—there’s nothing to tell you where to go.” 

With all his Scotch wit and his democratic feeling, Muir bore 
himself with dignity in every company. He readily adjusted 
himself to any environment. In the High Sierra he was indeed 
a voice crying in the wilderness: moreover, he looked like John 
the Baptist as portrayed in bronze by Donatello and others of 
the Renaissance sculptors—spare of frame, hardy, keen of eye 
and visage, and on the march eager of movement. It was diff- 
cult for an untrained walker to keep up with him as he leaped 
from rock to rock as surely as a mountain goat, or skimmed the 
surface of the ground, a trick of easy locomotion learned from 
the Indians. If he ever became tired nobody knew it, and yet, 
though he delighted in badinage at the expense of the “tender- 
foot,” he was as sympathetic as a mother. J remember a scram- 
ble we had in the upper Tuolumne Cafion which afforded him 
great fun at my expense. The detritus of the wall of the gorge 
lay in a confused mass of rocks, varying in size from a market 
basket to a dwelling house, the interstices overgrown with a 
most deceptive shrub, the soft leaves of which concealed its iron 
trunk and branches. Across such a Dantean formation Muir 


John MuirasI Knew Him II 


went with certainty and alertness, while I fell and floundered 
like a bad swimmer, so that he had to give me many a helpful 
hand and cheering word, and when at last I was obliged to rest, 
Muir, before going on for an hour’s exploration, sought out for 
me one of the most beautiful spots I had ever seen, where the 
rushing river, striking pot-holes in its granite bed, was thrown 
up into water wheels twenty feet high. When he returned to 
camp he showered me with little attentions and tucked me into 
my blankets with the tenderness that he gave to children and 
animals. 

Another Scotch trait was his surface antipathies. He did not 
hate anything—not even his antagonists, the tree vandals—but 
spoke of those “misguided worldlings” in terms of pity; yet he 
had a wholesome contempt for the contemptible. His growl—he 
never had a bark—was worse than his bite. His pity was often 
expressed for the blindness of those who through tinenlightened 
selfishness chose the lower utility of nature in place of the 
higher. 

Many have praised the pleasures of solitude—few have known 
them as Muir knew them, roaming the High Sierra week after 
week with only bread and tea and sometimes berries for his sus- 
tenance, which he would have said were a satisfactory substi- 
tute for the “locusts and wild honey” of his prototype. His trips 
to Alaska were even more solitary and we should say forbidding 
—but not he, for no weather, no condition of wildness, no ab- 
sence of animal life could make him lonely. He was a pioneer 
of nature, but also a pioneer of truth, and he needed no com- 
rade. Many will recall his thrilling adventure on the Muir gla- 
cier, told in his story entitled Stickeen, named for his compan- 
ion, the missionary’s dog. I heard him tell it a dozen times—how 
the explorer and the little mongrel were caught on a peninsula 
of the glacier—and how they escaped. It is one of the finest 
studies of dogliness in all literature, and told in Muir’s whimsi- 
cal way, betrayed unconsciously the tenderness of his heart. 
Though never lonely, he was not at all a professional recluse: 
he loved companions and craved good talk, and was glad to 
have others with him on his tramps, but it was rare to find con- 
genial friends who cared for the adventures in which he rev- 
eled. He was hungry for sympathy and found it in the visitors 


12 Sierra Club Bulletin 


whom he piloted about and above the Yosemite Valley—Emer- 
son, Sir Joseph Hooker, Torrey, and many others of an older 
day or of late years, including presidents Roosevelt and Taft. 

Muir was clever at story-telling, and put into it both wit and 
sympathy, never failing to give, as a background, more delight- 
ful information about the mountains than a professor of ge- 
ology would put into a chapter. With his one good eye—for the 
sight of the other had been impaired in his college days in Wis- 
consin by the stroke of a needle—he saw every scene, in detail 
and in mass. This his conversation visualized until his imagina- 
tion kindled the imagination of his hearer. 

Adventures are to the adventurous. Muir, never reckless, was 
fortunate in seeing nature in many a wonderful mood and as- 
pect. Who that has read them can forget his wonderful de- 
scriptions of the windstorm in the Yuba which he outrode in a 
treetop, or of the avalanche in the Yosemite, or of the spring 
floods pouring in hundreds of streams over the rim of the Val- 
ley? And what unrecorded adventures he must have had as pi- 
oneer of peak and glacier in his study of the animal and vegeta- 
ble life of the Sierra. Did any observer ever come nearer than 
he to recording the soul of Nature? If “good-will makes intelli- 
gence,’ as Emerson avers, Muir’s love of his mountains amount- 
ed to divination. What others learned laboriously, he seemed to 
reach by instinct, and yet he was painstaking in the extreme and 
jealous of the correctness of both his facts and his conclusions, 
defending them as a beast defends her young. In the Arctic, in 
the great forests of Asia, on the Amazon and in Africa at 
seventy-three, wherever he was, he incurred peril, not for “the 
game,” but for some great emprise of science. 

But Muir’s public services were not merely scientific and liter- 
ary. His countrymen owe him gratitude as the pioneer of our 
system of national parks. Before 1889 we had but one of any 
importance—the Yellowstone. Out of the fight which he led for 
the better care of the Yosemite by the State of California grew 
the demand for the extension of the system. To this many per- . 
sons and organizations contributed, but Muir’s writings and en- 
thusiasm were the chief forces that inspired the movement. All 
the other torches were lighted from his. His disinterestedness 
was too obvious not to be recognized even by opponents. To a 


John Muir as I Knew Him 12 


friend who in 1906 made an inquiry about a mine in California 
he wrote: “I don’t know anything about the X mine or any 
other. Nor do I know any mine owners. All this $ geology is out 
of my line.” It was in his name that the appeal was made for 
the creation of the Yosemite National Park in 1890, and for six 
years he was the leader of the movement for the retrocession by 
California of the Valley reservation, to be merged in the sur- 
rounding park, a result which, by the timely aid of Edward H. 
Harriman, was accomplished in 1905. 

In 1896-7, when the Forestry Commission of the National 
Academy of Sciences, under the chairmanship of Professor 
Charles S. Sargent, of Harvard, was making investigations to 
determine what further reservations ought to be made in the 
form of national parks, Muir accompanied it over much of its 
route through the far west and the northwest, and gave it his 
assistance and counsel. March 27, 1899, he wrote: “I’ve spent 
most of the winter on forest protection—at least I’ve done little 
beside writing about it.”’ From its inception to its lamentable 
success in December, 1913, he fought every step of the scheme 
to grant to San Francisco for a water reservoir the famous 
Hetch Hetchy Valley, part of the Yosemite National Park, 
which, as I have said, had been created largely through his in- 
strumentality. In the last stages of the campaign his time was 
almost exclusively occupied with this contest. He opposed the 
project as unnecessary, as objectionable intrinsically, and as a 
dangerous precedent, and he was greatly cast down when it be- 
came a law. But he was also relieved. Writing to a friend, he 
said: “I’m glad the fight for the Tuolumne Yosemite is finished. 
It has lasted twelve years. Some compensating good must sure- 
ly come from so great a loss. With the New Year comes new 
work. I am now writing on Alaska. A fine change from faithless 
politics to crystal ice and snow.” It is also to his credit that he 
first made known to the world the wonder and glory of the Big 
Trees ; those that have been rescued from the saw of the sordid 
lumbermen owe their salvation primarily to his voice. 

Muir’s death,on Christmas Eve of 1914,though it occurred 
at the ripe age of seventy-six and though it closed a life of dis- 
tinguished achievement, was yet untimely, for his work was by 
no means finished. For years I had been imploring him to 


14 Sierra Club Bulletin 


devote himself to the completion of his record. The material 
for many contemplated volumes exists in his numerous note- 
books, and though, I believe, these notes were to a great de- 
gree written im extenso rather than scrappily, and thus con- 
tain much available literary treasure, yet where is the one 
that could give them the roundness of presentation and the 
charm of style which are found in Muir’s best literary work? 
One almost hesitates to use the word “great” of one who has 
just passed away, but I believe that history will give a very 
high place to the indomitable explorer who discovered the 
great glacier named for him, and whose life for eleven years 
in the High Sierra resulted in a body of writing of marked 
excellence, combining accurate and carefully co-ordinated 
scientific observation with poetic sensibility and expression. 
His chief books, The Mountains of California, Our National 
Parks and The Yosemite, are both delightful and convincing, 
and should be made supplemental reading for schools. When he 
rhapsodizes it is because his subject calls for rhapsody, and not 
to cover up thinness of texture in his material. He is likely to 
remain the one historian of the Sierra; he imported into his 
view the imagination of the poet and the reverence of the wor- 
shiper. 

Muir was not without wide and affectionate regard in his 
own state, but California was too near to him to appreciate 
fully his greatness as a prophet, or the service he did in try- 
ing to recall her to the gospel of beauty. She has, however, 
done him and herself honor in providing for a path in the 
High Sierra, from the Yosemite to Mount Whitney, to be 
called the John Muir trail. William Kent, during Muir’s life, 
paid him a rare tribute in giving to the nation a park of red- 
woods with the understanding that it should be named Muir 
Woods. But the nation owes him more. His work was not 
sectional but for the whole people, for he was the real father 
of the forest reservations of America. The National Gov- 
ernment should create from the great wild Sierra forest re- 
serve a national park, to include the Kings River Cafion, to 
be called by his name. This recognition would be, so to 
speak, an overt act, the naming of the Muir Glacier being 
automatic by his very discovery of it. It is most appropriate 


John Muir as I Knew Him 15 


and fitting that a wild Sierra region should be named for 
him. There has been but one John Muir. 

The best monument to him, however, would be a successful 
movement, even at this late day, to save the Hetch Hetchy Val- 
ley from appropriation for commercial purposes. His death 
was hastened by his grief at this unbelievable calamity and I 
should be recreant to his memory if I did not call special atten- 
tion to his crowning public service in endeavoring to prevent 
the disaster. The Government owes him penance at his tomb. 

In conclusion, John Muir was not a “dreamer”, but a prac- 
tical man, a faithful citizen, a scientific observer, a writer of 
enduring power, with vision, poetry, courage in a contest, a 
heart of gold, and a spirit pure and fine. 


THE BURIAL OF JOHN MUIR 
By CHARLOTTE HOFFMAN KELLOGG 


With thee, man-heart, where dawns on glaciers play 
We went; by thy child-heart with joy were fed; 
And by thy poet-heart to prayer were led. 

Still following, we cross thy fields today, 

Beside the stream, beneath the yew and bay ; 

Lower thy body to its chosen bed. 
Quail call—tree-shadows creep toward thy dear head 

As in green boughs we wrap thee for alway. 


Now holy memories still our questioning— 

Thou know’st not their despair whose reason would 
Leap with the spirit the blind brink of Time; 

Here thus to seal eternal brotherhood 
With sun and lily, where the foam-bells ring, 

For thee is immortality sublime. 


RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN MURS 
By CHARLES KEELER 
- 


My earliest recollections of John Muir date back some twen- 
ty-odd years, to those golden days in William Keith’s rather 
dingy but glorious studio on Montgomery Street, when Muir 
would drop in from his Martinez retreat for a chat with his old 
painter friend. The two Scotchmen, who had camped together 
in Sierra wilds in summer outings, and cracked jokes at one 
another’s expense in the studio or at one of the little French 
restaurants where they lunched during winter visits, were big 
elemental natures, both of them. The child-heart each had trea- 
sured in his own peculiar way. They were We and Johnnie 
in their bantering sallies. 

Both were deeply religious natures, but emancipated from 
formalism and tradition. Both were students and lovers of na- 
ture, but where Keith saw color and atmosphere, poetry and 
romance, in mountain and vale, tree and sky, Muir’s eyes were 
fixed on the ever-changing processes of immutable law. 

Those who knew Keith’s work best realized that it fell into 
two groups—a comparatively hard, literal portrayal of the facts 
of landscape, and a free, impassioned outburst of impression- 
istic depicting of nature’s moods. In his own heart he scorned 
the former and frankly gloried in the latter. His naturalistic 
sketches in color were either studies of underlying fact or pot- 
boilers for the uninitiated who were not up to his dream rhap- 
sodies. 

Muir was at heart a seer. But for him the wonder and glory 
of nature lay not in its romance of atmosphere and its appeal 
to human emotions. He saw in it rather the embodiment of di- 
vine law, and in a picture looked for a naturalistic portrayal 
rather than an impressionistic interpretation. So it was that he 
failed to appreciate his artist friend’s finest work. With his dry 
Scotch humor he loved to twit him in good-natured raillery. 
Both in the old Montgomery Street studio, and later in the 
larger Pine Street rooms, I have spent many a happy hour with 


SHONONING NHOL GNV 
ANMOUD YWAHSIA SIONVUA ‘HLIAM WVITTIIM ‘NIOW NHOfL ‘UATAaAM SATAVHOD 


“AXXXO ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANTD VANAIS 


“IAXXXO ALVId 


ES) an yap 


NHOL WOUd ‘AVA NAIOVID NI ‘MAIOVTID OIdIOVd AHL AO HOLAMS TIONAd 


°X “IOA ‘NILATIING ANTO VaUTIS 


Recollections of John Mur 7 


these two great souls, looking at the pictures and listening to 
Muir’s talk. 

As his keen gray eye ranged over the pictures stacked in piles 
all over the place, he would fall upon a big careful objective 
study of a Sierra landscape. 

“Now there’s a real picture, Willie,” he would exclaim. “Why 
don’t you paint more like that?” 

With a look of defiance the big shaggy-haired painter would 
draw from the stack a mystical dream of live-oaks, with a green 
and gold sunset sky, and stand it up on an easel with an impa- 
tient wave of his hand. 

“What are you trying to make of that? You’ve stood it up- 
side down, haven’t you?” Muir would sally with a mischievous 
twinkle. 

And Keith would finally give it up with: 

“There’s no use trying to show you pictures, Johnnie.” 

But in spite of these little pleasantries, which revealed a 
fundamentally different approach to nature, the two men had a 
life-long admiration and friendship for one another. 

Never have I met another man of such singleness of mind in 
his devotion to nature as Muir. He lived and moved and had 
his being as a devotee. He was naturally a recluse, but if he 
could get a listener, whether of high or low degree, he would 
talk by the hour of his beloved mistress. It was the passion of 
his life, the awakening of the dull and circumscribed soul of the 
average man or woman to the ineffable splendor of the great 
out-of-doors. 

During the memorable two months of the Harriman Expedi- 
tion to Alaska, Muir and I were room-mates. He had the ten- 
der kindliness of a father. Of himself he took little heed, but no 
zealous missionary ever went abroad to spread the gospel with 
his fervor in communicating a love of nature. And with him a 
love of nature meant an understanding of her laws. He has 
told me that he found it necessary, in getting people to listen, 
to tell them stories such as his immortal tale of Stickeen, but 
the real hope in his heart was to awaken their interest so they 
would want to go to nature themselves and to delve into the 
mysteries of her ways. 

Our stateroom was filled with “brush’—pine and spruce 


18 Sierra Club Bulletin 


’ 


boughs, with cones or blossoms, and other trophies gathered on 
shore rambles. “Look at that little muggins of a fir cone,” he 
would say to me, lovingly stroking the latest accession with 
which he littered the room, to the despair of the steward who 
tried to keep it in order. 

That other great child-soul of nature, John Burroughs, was 
with us in Alaska, and the coming together of these two men 
was an event in American life. Burroughs is naively human, 
Muir intensely aloof. But Muir’s aloofness was never cold or 
hard. It was the result of his almost fanatical absorption in the 
thrilling play of nature. 

We dubbed him “Ice Chief” in Alaska, because of his enthu- 
siasm for the great ice sculptor of the Glacial Age who had 
carved out the mountains in their present form. In those far 
northern wilds he was in his element, for with glaciers thun- 
dering their bergs into the inlets and sweeping majestically 
down through rugged mountain defiles, it was easy for him to 
show how all the carving of the mountains of the West was the 
work of their Titan graving tools. He would not hear of earth- 
quake faults as a factor even in the shaping of the Yosemite. 
It was all the work of the ice, although he had himself wit- 
nessed a great avalanche there as the result of an earthquake, 
and loved to tell about rushing up on the great mass of granite 
when the blocks were still hot from crashing down the moun- 
tain. 

To have explored with Muir the great glacier which bears 
his name, to have wandered with him in the Yosemite and 
Kings River Cafion, is to have come, through his enthusiasm 
and vision, a little nearer the hidden mysteries of nature. Every 
tree and flower, every bird and stone was to him the outward 
token of an invisible world in process of making. He sauntered 
over the mountains in his blue jeans overalls, claiming kinship 
with the rocks and growing things and gathering them all to 
his heart. 

Nor can I forget the simple kindly welcome at his Martinez 
home, the strolls about his broad acres of fruit and vine, and 
the evening talks, prolonged far into the night, in his study, lit- 
tered with the trophies of a life-time of communion with the 
great out-doors in many lands. In the autumn, boxes of grapes 


Recollections of John Mur 19 


would come to prove that Muir was not so absorbed in his stud- 
ies as to forget his friends, and on his visits to Berkeley, shin- 
ing gold pieces would be slipped almost shyly into the children’s 
hands. 

Here was a real man, one who would get lost on the city 
streets, but could find his way through any unmapped wilder- 
ness; one who had the outward bearing of an unsophisticated 
farmer but was at home with the most polished man of the 
world. Devoid of all shams and affectations, sincere to the very 
roots of his being, his deadly earnestness was saved by that 
touch of Scotch humor and that deep tenderness and sympathy 
which shone through his being despite the habitual absorption 
in impersonal matters. And that Muir was able to fight, those 
who know with what zeal and single-minded devotion to a cause 
he carried on his campaign to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley, 
can testify. Recluse and devotee of nature though he was, he 
could come out among men and with unflinching courage, un- 
tiring energy and rare practical sense, work to save his beloved 
trees and mountains from being despoiled. 

Others may praise him for his keen eye, his grasp of nature’s 
laws, his enthusiasm as an explorer, his grace and charm of liter- 
ary style, but for me he was a personality that defies analysis— 
a great soul, a genuine friend, and I am grateful to share, with 
all who touched his life closely, in the consciousness that we are 
better and closer to the great primal things because we knew 
and loved him. 


MUIR OF THE MOUNTAINS 
By ALEXANDER McCADIE 


> 


A scientific friend* recently sent me some measurements of 
the displacement of earth particles at Ottawa caused by a moun- 
tain slide in the Pamir. Seismographs in the Dominion Observ- 
atory (and elsewhere) had faithfully recorded the train of 
earth waves started by the trembling range ten thousand miles 
away. Moreover it was possible to determine the mass, momen- 
tum and energy involved in this fall of a mountain. John Muir 
would have been interested in these measurements made at a 
distance, but undoubtedly would have been far more interested 
in a description of the fall itself, and would have cheerfully 
started at a moment’s notice for Afghanistan or the uttermost 
part of the earth if assured that another gigantic slide were im- 
minent. Entirely regardless of comfort or personal security he 
would have watched the mountain fall, exulting in the rare 
privilege of thus viewing at close range the making and unmak- 
ing of the “eternal” hills. We would have had a description, 
both accurate and eloquent, for he would have written into it 
not only what the eye beheld, but much that other men must 
have failed to note, because they failed to feel. His nature was 
keenly sensitive to the significance of motion in inanimate 
things. One recalls his story of the earthquake in the Yosemite. 
“A noble earthquake,” he cried, as he ran from his tent in the 
early morning to get a better view of what was happening in the 
Valley. This was the famous Inyo earthquake of March 26, 
1872, about 2:30 a.m., with aftershocks until 6:30 a.m.; and 
probably the greatest seismic disturbance that has occurred in 
the United States for two centuries. It was quite severe in the 
whole Sierra zone, and of course to those who were in the 
Yosemite at the time was a most terrifying experience. Mr. 
Muir often described the scene to the writer and fellow mem- 
bers of the Sierra Club. It is plain that after the first two or 


* Dr. Otto Klotz, the Dominion Astronomer. 


Muir of the Mountains 21 


three seconds of doubt and trepidation, Muir realized what was 
happening and enthusiastically welcomed such an opportunity 
for close observation of the swaying trees, and the piling up of 
the talus by the torrent of rocks from the cliffs, forming a lu- 
minous bow as they fell. His intense interest and forgetfulness 
of self were not assumed, but the natural expression of a spirit 
all eager to observe and interpret, if he could, the shaking earth 
and allied phenomena. He was probably the one man in the Val- 
ley who kept his head while these unnerving events were in 
progress. 

He had many stirring adventures while climbing and roam- 
ing. One in particular was in later years somewhat joculary re- 
ferred to as “a personally conducted ride on an avalanche,” al- 
though at the time it was anything but a jocular matter. Here 
again Muir showed remarkable presence of mind. And how he 
exulted in the mountain storms! Nothing of their majesty and 
might escaped his notice. He knew them well, from the tower- 
ing cumulo-nimbus, whose slow upbuilding foretold the coming 
thunder, to the wild rush and wrestling of the blast with the 
forest monarchs. Sprung from a long line of Highland fore- 
bears, he scanned with critical eye the gray low-flying scud and 
the fast falling flakes that blotted out the landscape and bewil- 
dered men. To Muir these were never-to-be-forgotten and ever- 
to-be-enjoyed manifestations of Nature’s might and her thou- 
sand ways of casting forth her strength. 

Or turning from scenes of elemental strife to those of ele- 
mental calm, we can picture him keeping lonely vigil on the 
summit of Whitney. Wandering as night falls, near the crest of 
the range, the solitary figure looms large against the sky-line. 
Out of the world, yet in it; no human hand within touching dis- 
tance, no human habitation within a day’s march; serene and 
self-poised, like one of the prophets of old he strays from men. 
And as the sun passes below the farther peaks, and darkness 
broods o’er the vast stretch of earth, he holds communion with 
the friendly stars, nor knows nor feels his loneliness. 

Of all the mountains he had visited, and he had climbed many 
in all parts of the world, his heart ever turned to and yearned 
most for the Sierra, or, as he called them, the Mountains of 
Light. They were his constant inspiration, and all their varying 


22 Sierra Club Bulletin 


moods he knew and loved. Loitering through the meadows or 
scaling the heights, Muir was here at home and at his best. Not 
infrequently he was called upon to act as guide, interpreter and 
host to those who came from afar. For all such he mixed with 
the independence of a mountaineer a true Highland hospitality. 
It was delightful to hear him tell of Emerson’s visit, all too 
brief, or the later, longer outing of an intrepid former presi- 
dent, who insisted on having Muir for his escort and Muir only. 
Both saw to it that the trivialities of city life were left behind 
and forgotten. There was no room for artificialities in the 
friendly mountains. Rather the long day’s tramp, the inspiring 
views, the refreshment of the mountain stream, the growing ap- 
petite, the simple meal, the quiet mind, the pine-bough bed and 
restful sleep beside the camp-fire, that, flickering, threw into 
bolder relief the sentinel Sequoia. 

Muir was the keenest of observers and no mean scientist ; but 
it was his power of expression and gift of interpretation that 
made him known among men. He was able to convey to others 
a full measure of his own enthusiasm, and kindle in them an un- 
quenchable longing for out-of-door life, and golden, glorious 
days and nights in Nature’s own playground, the mountains. 
This was Muir’s mission and at it he wrought diligently. His 
influence was not confined to one city or one State. It is indeed 
a question if this was not greater in distant lands than in the 
State and section where he dwelt and which he loved so well. 

When a mountain falls and jars the planet’s crust, the earth 
waves spread in all directions with ever widening circles but 
ever diminishing energy. When a great man passes from the 
sunlit way, human interest is stirred in many lands, but there is 
no lessening of appreciation and sympathy with increasing dis- 
tance. Thus it is with Muir. He stood as a great advocate for 
the preservation of the wild and the beautiful; he gave the best 
that was in him to the service of men; he strove earnestly to 
turn their thoughts from the daily routine, with its unrest and 
turmoil, to the peace and beauty of the hills. 

His eloquent sentences will remain as long as our mother 
tongue endures; his pleadings will not lose their force, and his 
influence can but spread and strengthen as the years pass. 


JOHN MUIR 
By Ropert B. MARSHALL 


- 


I have put my brain to the test to find if it could choose words 
expressive of the grand old man Muir. It does not respond at 
all fittingly. My appreciation, feelings, respect and love for my 
friend Muir are all of the heart, and so intense and sacred that 
I cannot tell them even to my friends. Most of us have suf- 
fered the loss of those dear to us, and each one who has so suf- 
fered surely appreciates the force of my reluctance in attempt- 
ing to put down in words my soul’s sorrow in the loss of a 
friend so big, so powerful—and yet he was the plainest and 
simplest person I ever knew. His simplicity was his power. He 
knew nature as no one else did, and with his God, he wor- 
shipped it. It was so much a part of him that the little children 
could understand him and knew what he said, and loved him 
even more than the older children, such as we all became in his 
presence. 

His affection for the commonplace little pine-needle was as 
genuine as that for the most beautiful flower or the grandest 
tree, and the little flakes of snow and the little crumbs of gran- 
ite were each to him real life, and each had a personality worthy 
of his wonderful mind’s attention; and he talked and wrote of 
them as he did of the ouzel or the Douglas squirrel—made real 
persons of them, and they talked and lived with him and were 
a part of his life as is our own flesh and blood. 

IT knew Mr. Muir long and intimately, and each day I learned 
something new and beautiful of life and of his wonderful mind. 
He did not enjoy answering questions, and in fact it was rarely 
necessary to ask one. Only allow him to be with a person for 
a short time and some sort of conversation would start ; then by 
sheer force of intellect his mind would take the lead and his 
companion would drink in the purest of English, charmingly 
phrased, until soon a sermon of life was given that would re- 
main one of the most wonderful experiences of a lifetime. 

I cannot write a line worthy of the man we wish to honor. 


24 Sierra Club Bulletin 


One cannot describe Mount Rainier, one cannot describe the 
Grand Canyon, one cannot describe his beloved Yosemite: 
humanity is silent in their presence. So it was with John Muir 
to all who knew him; so has his influence affected mankind, 
and so will his life and work impress generations to come. This 
most wonderful of men, lifted above death and time by his hu- 
man sympathy no less than by his genius, will forever influence 
the world, and it will be the better for his example and his in- 
spiration. 


JOHN MUIR - DOCTOR OF LAWS: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


- JOHN MUIR - 

BORN IN SCOTLAND - REARED IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - BY FINAL CHOICE 
A CALIFORNIAN - WIDELY TRAVELED 
OBSERVER OF THE WORLD WE DWELL IN 
MAN OF SCIENCE AND OF LETTERS 
FRIEND AND PROTECTOR OF NATURE 
UNIQUELY GIFTED TO 
INTERPRET UNTO OTHER MEN 
HER MIND AND WAYS 


BERKELEY - CALIFORNIA BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 
MAY 14-A-D- 1913 PRESIDENT 


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BulpuyM “Bursy oy} * * * UM UUNNe Ur }souUY ynq ‘e924 Jo Wt} AUB JSOWN[e je SpUNOIS SULJO}UNeS ULLT,, 


MIA WAATIS LNADININOVW AO LSHdOd 


“TIAXXXO ALVTd °*X “IOA ‘NILATTAG ANTO WuUaIS 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CXXXVIII. 


YOUNG MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK 


“No other of our alpine conifers as finely veils its strength; poised in thin white sunshine 
. . . loving the ground, conscious of heaven and joyously receptive 
of its blessings.’’—The Yosemite 
Photo by Herbert W. Gleason 


JOHN MUIR 
By Enos MILits 
- 


In December, 1914, John Muir vanished into that mysterious 
realm into which all trails inevitably lead. He rendered man- 
kind a vast and heroic service. His triumphs were the very 
greatest. They were made in times of peace for the eternal 
cause of peace. We are yet too close to the deeds of this magnifi- 
cent man to comprehend the helpfulness of his work to human- 
ity. His books and his work are likely to be the most influential 
force in this century. The twentieth century promises to be for 
mankind the beautiful century of scenery. 

The grandest character in national park history and in nature 
literature is John Muir. He has written the great drama of the 
outdoors. On Nature’s scenic stage he gave the wild life local 
habitation and character—did with the wild folk what Shake- 
speare did with man. He puts the woods in story, and in his 
story you are in the wilderness. His prose poems illuminate the 
forest, the storm, and all the fields of life. He has set Pan’s 
melody to words. He sings of sun-tipped peaks and gloomy 
cafions, flowery fields and wooded wilds. He has immortalized 
the Big Trees. His memory is destined to be ever with the silent 
places, with the bird songs, with wild flowers, with the great 
glaciers, with snowy peaks, with dark forests, with white cas- 
cades that leap in glory, with sunlight and shadow, with the 
splendid national parks, and with every song that Nature sings 
in the wild gardens of the world. 


AN APPRECIATION 
By Harriet MONROE 


+ 


I was fortunate enough to take two Sierra Club outings 
when John Muir was of the company during the whole four 
weeks—the first in 1908, through the Kern, and again the next 
year in the Yosemite. He talked often at the camp-fires, giving 
generously of his knowledge and love of nature, as everyone 
knows. But he talked also to smaller groups, and even to any 
chance companion on the trail, and it is some of these casual 
hours of happy intercourse which I remember most vividly. 

One day, at the Big Arroyo camp, it was butterflies, for some 
youth was trying to take a picture of one as it poised on a flow- 
er. I was struck with the old man’s tenderness for these exqui- 
site fairies of the forest, and with the depth and breadth of his 
knowledge. This was a rare spirit; never had I encountered 
such delicacy of sympathy with little fluttering, flitting lives. 
Again, in some high place, it was of a certain species of little 
bird he talked—I have forgotten their name—a Latin one, for 
they live incredibly high, beyond the reach of the vulgar tongue 
—and his voice softened as he described the valor of their daily 
life. | 

But it was on two occasions in the Yosemite that John Muir 
gave me perhaps the richest of my mountain days. And each 
day took form in a poem, which I shall probably quote on the 
trail as we pass. One morning we were climbing out of the 
Valley by way of Vernal and Nevada Falls. I was a poor climb- 
er, always the last on the trail, and Nevada, the dancer, held 
me back with her beauty. When at last I reached the level 
granite above her, John Muir was there, mounted on the horse 
which he rode now and then when no woman would accept the 
loan of it. He was rapt, entranced; he threw up his arm in a 
grand gesture. ‘This is the morning of creation,” he cried, “the 
whole thing is beginning now! The mountains are singing to- 
gether’—ah, I can not remember his dithyrambic pzan of 
praise, which flowed on as grandly as the great white waters 


An Appreciation 27 


beside us. Four days later I made of it this poem, which offers 
something of what he said, though his free biblical rhythms feel 
somewhat cramped in my rhymes, and it was I who dragged the 
human beings in: 


It is creation’s morning— 
Freshly the rivers run. 

The cliffs, white brows adorning, 
Sing to the shining sun. 


The forest, plumed and crested, 
Scales the steep granite wall. 

The ranged peaks, glacier-breasted, 
March to the festival. 


The mountains dance together, 
Lifting their domed heads high. 

The cataract’s foamy feather 
Flaunts in the streaming sky. 


Somewhere a babe is borning, 
Somewhere a maid is won. 

It is creation’s morning— 
Now is the world begun. 


A few days later we took the “long, long hike,” as my diary 
records it, from Lake Merced to Tuolumne Meadows. Before 
many hours I met John Muir, who insisted on my riding his 
horse most of the time; and so it was in his company that I 
crossed the wet snows and slushy waters of Vogelsang Pass. 
He introduced me to that lady of the snows, the mountain hem- 
lock, who was just then lifting her head from under the white 
weight of winter, and spreading her trailing garments in the 
sun. He told me how she pushed out of the rock and grew, how 
she bowed to the wind and gently resisted the storm; how she 
bent under mountain-loads of ice each year, and rose again to 
the beauty of the sun for a brief summer of joy. He described 
her moods, revealed her graces—gave me her individuality, her 
character, until I felt something of his love and intimacy. “You 


28 Sierra Club Bulletin 


poet, write about that!” he commanded, and so once more—a 
few days later—I tried to catch the beauty of the moment: 


The mountain hemlock droops her lacy branches 
Oh, so tenderly 
In the summer sun! 
Yet she has power to baffle avalanches— 
She, rising slenderly 
Where the rivers run. 


So pliant yet so powerful! Oh, see her 
Spread alluringly 
Her thin sea-green dress! 
Now from white winter’s thrall the sun would free her 
To bloom unenduringly 
In his glad caress. 


I wonder sometimes if there was ever such another lover of 
nature as John Muir. Never at least for me! He really loved 
every littlest thing that grows; studied the mole, the beetle, the 
lily, with complete and perfect sympathy. And for his glorious 
commanding love nothing was too sublime—not the sequoia, 
the cataract, the blizzard in the mountains. 


JOHN MUIR 
By Henry FAIRFIELD OSBORN 


¥ 


I believe that John Muir’s name is destined to be immortal 
through his writings on mountains, forests, rivers, meadows, 
and the sentiment of the animal and plant life they contain. I do 
not believe anyone else has ever lived with just the same senti- 
ment toward trees and flowers and the works of nature in gen- 
eral as that which John Muir manifested in his life, his conver- 
sations and his writings. 

In the splendid journey which I had the privilege of taking 
with him to Alaska in 1896 I first became aware of his passion- 
ate love of nature in all its forms and his reverence for it as the 
direct handiwork of the Creator. He retained from his early re- 
ligious training under his father this belief, which is so strongly 
expressed in the Old Testament, that all the works of nature 
are directly the work of God. In this sense I have never known 
anyone whose nature philosophy was more thoroughly theistic; 
at the same time he was a thorough-going evolutionist, and al- 
ways delighted in my own evolutionary studies which I de- 
scribed to him from time to time in the course of our journey- 
ings and conversations. 

It was in Alaska that he quoted the lines from Goethe’s Wil- 
helm Meister which inspired all his travels: 


Keep not standing fixed and rooted, 
Briskly venture, briskly roam; 

Head and hand, where ’er thou foot it, 
And stout heart are still at home. 

In each land the sun doth visit, 
We are gay what ’er betide, 

To give room for wandering is it 
That the world was made so wide. 


Another sentiment of his regarding trees and flowers always 
impressed me: that was his attributing to them a personality, 
an individuality such as we associate with certain human beings 
and animals, but rarely with plants. To him a tree was some- 


30 Sierra Club Bulletin 


thing not only to be loved, but to be respected and revered. I 
well remember his intense indignation over the proposal by his 
friend Charles S. Sargent to substitute the name Magnolia foe- 
tida for Magnolia grandiflora on the grounds of priority. He 
quoted Sargent as saying, “After all, ‘what’s in a name?” and 
himself as replying, “There is everything in the name; why in- 
flict upon a beautiful and defenceless plant for all time the stig- 
ma of such a name as Magnolia foetida? You yourself would 
not like to have your own name changed from Charles S. Sar- 
gent to ‘the malodorous Sargent.’”’ 

John Muir’s incomparable literary style did not come to him 
easily, but as the result of the most intense effort. I observed his 
methods of writing in connection with two of his books upon 
which he was engaged during the years I911 and 1912. He 
came to our home on the Hudson in June, 1911, after the Yale 
Commencement, where he had received the degree of LL.D. on 
June 21. He brought with him his new silken hood, in which 
he said he had looked very grand in the Commencement parade. 
On Friday, June 21, he was established in Woodsome Lodge,* 
a log cabin on a secluded mountain height, to complete his vol- 
ume on the Yosemite. Daily he rose at 4:30 o'clock, and after a 
simple cup of coffee labored incessantly on his two books, The 
Yosemite and Boyhood and Youth. It was very interesting to 
watch how difficult it was for him. In my diary of the time I 
find the following notes: “Knowing his beautiful and easy style 
it is very interesting to learn how difficult it is for him; he 
groans over his labors, he writes and rewrites and interpolates. 
He loves the simplest English language and admires most of all 
Carlyle, Emerson and Thoreau. He is a very firm believer in 
Thoreau and starts my reading deeply of this author. He also 
loves his Bible and is constantly quoting it, as well as Milton © 
and Burns. In his attitude toward nature, as well as in his spe- 
cial gifts and abilities, Muir shares many qualities with Thoreau. 
First among these is his mechanical ability, his fondness for 
the handling of tools; second, his close identification with na- 
ture; third, his interpretation of the religious spirit of nature; 
fourth, his happiness in solitude with nature; fifth, his lack of 


* The name is now changed to John Muir Lodge. 


John Muir 31 


sympathy with crowds of people; sixth, his intense love of ani- 
mals.” Thoreau’s quiet residence at Walden is to be contrasted 
with Muir’s world-wide journeyings from Scotland to Wiscon- 
sin; his penniless journey down the Mississippi to Louisiana, 
Florida, across Panama and northward into California in its 
early grandeur; his establishment of the sawmill, showing again 
his mechanical ability, as a means of livelihood in the Yosemite; 
his climbs in the High Sierra and discovery of still living gla- 
ciers; his eagerness to see the largest glaciers of Alaska and 
his several journeys and sojourns there; his wandering all over 
the great western and eastern forests of the United States; his 
visits to special forests in Europe; his world tour, without pre- 
conceived plan, including the wondrous forests of Africa, Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand and Asia. Finally, his very last great 
journey. 

When starting out on this South American journey, from 
which I among other friends tried to dissuade him, he often 
quoted the phrase, “I never turn back.” Although he greatly 
desired to have a comrade on this journey, and often urged me 
to accompany him, he finally was compelled to start out alone, 
quoting Milton: ‘‘I have chosen the lonely way.” 

On July 26 I said good-bye to this very dear friend, leav- 
ing him to work on his books and prepare for the long journey 
to South America, especially to see the forests of Araucaria. I 
know that at this time he had little intention of going on to 
Africa. It was impulse which led him from the east coast of 
South America to take a long northward journey in order to 
catch a steamer for the Cape of Good Hope. 

He remained at Garrison for more than two months, writing 
his Boyhood and Youth and his Yosemite, and I have just de- 
cided to erect a tablet at the log cabin where this work was done 
and to name the cabin John Muir Lodge. 

Among the personal characteristics which stand out like crys- 
tal in the minds and hearts of his friends were his hatred of 
shams and his scorn of the conventions of life, his boldness and 
fearlessness of attack, well illustrated in his assault on the de- 
spoilers of the Hetch Hetchy Valley of the Yosemite, whom he 
loved to characterize as “thieves and robbers.” It was a great 
privilege to be associated with him in this campaign. But cer- 


22 Sierra Club Bulletin 


tainly his chief characteristic was his intimate converse with 
nature and passionate love of its beauties; also I believe his 
marvelous insight into the creative powers of nature, closely 
interwoven with his deep religious sentiments and beliefs. 

There were published in the New York Evening Mail some 
verses by Charles L. Edson with which I would close this all 
too brief tribute: 


John o’ the mountains, wonderful John, 

Is past the summit and traveling on; 

The turn of the trail on the mountain side, 
A smile and “Hail!” where the glaciers slide, 
A streak of red where the condors ride, 

And John is over the Great Divide. 


John o’ the mountains camps today 

On a level spot by the Milky Way; 

And God is telling him how He rolled 

The smoking earth from the iron mold, 

And hammered the mountains till they were cold, 
And planted the Redwood trees of old. 


And John o’ the mountains says: “I knew, 
And I wanted to grapple the hand o’ you; 
And now we’re sure to be friends and chums 
And camp together till chaos comes.” . 


PLATE CXXXIX. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


eR ANAS 


A NOTEBOOKS 


OK 


/s 
i 


JOHN MUIR’S AL 


S 


PENGIE SKELECH OF THE ALASKA EIORDS FROM 


PLATE CXL. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


JOHN MUIR AT HOME, SEPTEMBER, 1913 
Photo by Herbert W. Gleason 


John Muir, Mrs. Herbert W. Gleason, Edward T. Parsons, Mrs. E. T. Parsons 


JOHN MUIK AND THE ALASKA BOOK 
By Marion RANDALL PARSONS 


& 


In November, 1912, not long after his return from his last 
long journey across South America and Africa, Mr. Muir came 
to Berkeley to begin work on his Alaska notes. For a month he 
worked at my home with a stenographer, getting an exact 
transcription of the journals. The travel-worn, weather-stained 
little books carried on those memorable exploring trips of near- 
ly forty years before were crammed with sketches and volum- 
inous notes, jotted down perhaps in the canoe, or around the 
camp-fire, but oftenest in the solitudes of the great glaciers in 
whose study he cheerfully underwent so much cold and hunger 
and hardship. 

It was most amusing to watch Mr. Muir at work. His intense 
interest in his subject led him to make many a long digression 
as his notes brought this or that incident to mind. Time meant 
nothing to him. Household machinery might stop, food grow 
cold on the table, and the business members of the family miss 
their morning trains while Mr. Muir pursued the tranquil 
course of his subject to the end. And so for an hour or more he 
might discourse while the stenographer sat with her hands 
folded. Her stolidity and indifference exasperated him beyond 
measure. To have no curiosity about the “terrestrial manifesta- 
tions of God,” above all to have no interest in glaciers, was to 
him both incomprehensible and sinful. 

Once started on a task Mr. Muir was a tireless worker. The 
book in hand might have lain fallow for thirty years, but when 
it began to take form and substance he was all afire with eager- 
ness to see it finished. Long evenings he spent poring over the 
notebooks or drawing from them the texts of the monologues 
he delighted in. His mind, indeed, dwelt with such complete 
absorption on his work that his conversation nearly always in- 
dicated its trend. His speech had all the beauty of phrase, the 
force and vigor of style of his written word, but with an added 
spell of fire and enthusiasm and glowing vitality that made it 


34 Sierra Club Bulletin 


* 


an inspiration and never-ending delight. Many a page of this 
Alaska book is for me a living record of our fireside hours of 
companionship. 

Not until many months later, however, did I have any close 
acquaintance with Travels in Alaska. After working on it only 
a short time, Mr. Muir laid the book aside to take an active 
part in the fight for Hetch Hetchy. A few weeks after the final 
defeat a severe illness, from whose effects he never fully recov- 
ered, again interrupted the book. In his weakened condition the 
mere sifting out of the enormous mass of material was a task 
almost beyond his strength. Finding him one day utterly dis- 
couraged over it, I offered to go to him a day or two each week 
to help him until he could find the secretary to his mind. The 
arrangement proved unexpectedly happy and congenial to us 
both, and lasted until within a week of his death. 

No one unacquainted with Mr. Muir’s habits of work and 
living could appreciate the difficulty, nor, indeed, the humorous 
nature of the task. He was living alone in the dismantled old 
home, unused save for his study and sleeping porch. He went to 
his daughter’s home for his meals, but neither she nor anyone 
else was allowed to touch the study, overflowing as it was with 
books and papers. Confusion was no word for the state of the 
manuscripts. He had been collecting material for over thirty 
years. In the interval that had elapsed since he began real work 
on it the two typewritten copies of the journals had become 
mixed, and in some cases both had been revised. Material from 
certain parts of the journals, moreover, had been used in news- 
paper letters and again in magazine articles, so as many as five 
different versions of some passages were in existence. Even 
had they been collected together and in order, to read and com- 
pare and reject would have been sufficiently hard, but fresh ver- 
sions were constantly coming to light, or in my absence Mr. 
Muir would unearth a copy of some version already disposed of. 
He was in the habit of making notes on anything that came to 
hand—an opened envelope, a paper bag, the margin of a news- 
paper. No scrap of manuscript could ever be destroyed, and 
I could devise no system of putting the rejected material aside 
that served to keep him from “discovering” it at some later 
date. Finally I took to hiding copied and rejected sheets alike 


John Muir and the Alaska Book 35 


inside a great roll of papers conspicuously tied with red ribbons 
and labeled in huge capitals “Copied!” and little by little the 
orange-box full of manuscript and the piles of scattered notes 
littering desk and table were reduced to a single working copy. 

By seven o'clock each morning Mr. Muir had breakfasted 
and was ready for the day’s work, usually lasting, with but the 
interruption of an hour at lunch and dinner and another at mail 
time, until ten at night. Composition was always slow and la- 
borious for him. “This business of writing books,’ he would 
often say, “is a long, tiresome, endless job.” To read his easy, 
flowing, forceful sentences, as rich in imagery and simple in 
diction as Bible English, no one would dream what infinite 
pains had been taken in their creation. Each sentence, each 
phrase, each word, underwent his critical scrutiny, not once but 
twenty times before he was satisfied to let it stand. His rare 
critical faculty was unimpaired to the end. So too was the fresh- 
ness and vigor of his whole outlook on life. No trace of pessim- 
ism or despondency, even in the defeat of his most deeply cher- 
ished hopes, ever darkened his beautiful philosophy, and only 
in the intense physical fatigue brought on by his long working 
hours was there any hint of failing powers. 

Mr. Muir himself, however, seemed to know that the end was 
near. Very touching were his attempts to rehabilitate the old 
house, whose forlorn emptiness and desolation were never al- 
lowed to weigh upon his own serene spirit, to put it in readiness 
for whomsoever should next live there. During the latter months 
of his life he often expressed the conviction that he would never 
live to write another book. His plan had long been to have his 
books tell the story of his life and travels, and in the early days 
of our work together he would often speak of the volumes of 
this wanderer’s autobiography that he hoped yet to complete. 
But he was curiously untroubled about leaving his work unfin- 
ished. To a most unusual degree he seemed to feel that his had 
been a glorious life, wholly worth while. “Oh, I have had a bully 
life!” he said once. “I have done what I set out to do.” And 
again: “To get these glorious works of God into yourself— 
that’s the great thing; not to write about them.” That nature’s 
beauty had a deep and lasting influence on character was one of 
his most earnest beliefs. No impassable gulf between things ma- 


36 Sierra Club Bulletin 


terial and spiritual ever existed for him, and scientific study only 
served to deepen his natural reverence and faith. Throughout 
this book, as through all the others, rings his triumphant belief 
in the harmony and unity of our universe, its imperishable beau- 
ty, its divine conception, “reflecting the plans of God.” 

It was a rare privilege to work with him day by day, a man of 
the most original thought, of the very highest ideals, of sim- 
plicity and truth and kindliness unsurpassed. He gave of his best 
in conversation. His genial, whimsical humor, his acute ap- 
praisal of character and motives, his wide knowledge of litera- 
ture and intimate friendship with many of the leading men of 
his time, made him a wonderful companion. The memory of our 
long hours together will always remain a delight and an inspira- 
tion, for they brought me not only increased love and reverence 
for a beautiful spirit, but a new conception of the spiritual sig- 
nificance of the great world of nature he loved so well. 

The work on this book was the chief pleasure and recreation 
of Mr. Muir’s last days, for through it he lived again many of 
the most glorious experiences of his life. Always I shall remem- 
ber the glow that would light his face whenever he paused in 
his work to tell in stirring words the story of some particularly 
inspiring day. Many years ago, after watching a sunrise in Gla- 
cier Bay, he wrote: “We turned and sailed away, joining the 
outgoing bergs . . . feeling that, whatever the future might 
have in store, the treasures we had gained this glorious morning 
would enrich our lives forever.”” How true this was, how vital a 
part of his life these treasures of memory were, no one who met 
him couid fail to know. For him neither time nor age had power 
to dim the glory of that icy land, after the Sierra Nevada, the 
best loved of all his wilderness homes. 


JOHN MUIR 
By CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT 


- 


Few men whom I have known loved trees as deeply and 
intelligently as John Muir. The love of trees was born in 
him, I am sure, and had abundant nourishment during his 
wanderings over the Sierra, where for months at a time he 
lived among the largest and some of the most beautiful trees 
of the world. No one has studied the Sierra trees as living 
beings more deeply and continuously than Muir, and no one 
in writing about them has brought them so close to other 
lovers of nature. 

Muir and I traveled through many forests, and saw to- 
gether all the trees of western North America, from Alaska 
to Arizona. We wandered together through the great for- 
ests which cover the southern Appalachian Mountains, and 
through the tropical forests of southern Florida. Together 
we saw the forests of southern Russia and the Caucasus 
and those of eastern Siberia, but in all these wanderings 
Muir’s heart never strayed very far from the California Si- 
erra. He loved the Sierra trees the best, and in other lands 
his thoughts always returned to the great sequoia, the sugar 
pine, among all trees best loved by him; the incense cedar, 
the yellow pine, the Douglas spruce, and the other trees 
which make the forests of California the most wonderful 
coniferous forests of the world. With these he was always 
comparing all minor growths, and when he could not re- 
turn to the Sierra his greatest happiness was in talking of 
them and in discussing the Sierra trees. 


TO AIGHER SIERRAS 
By WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 
- 


“Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time- 
effacing enjoyment—of work that is a steady delight. Such a 
life may really comprise an eternity upon earth.” These words 
of John Muir I noted down after one of our last conversations. 
To few men was it given to realize so completely the element 
of eternity—of time-effacing enjoyment in work—as it was to 
John Muir. The secret of it all was in his soul, the soul of a 
child, of a poet, and of a strong man, all blended into one. 
Only such a one would have mounted the top of a pine tree in 
a gale-swept forest in order to enjoy the better the passionate 
music of the storm, and then tell how “we all travel the milky 
way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until 
this storm-day that trees are travelers in the ordinary sense. 
They make many journeys, not extensive ones it is true; but 
our own little journeys,away and backagain, are only little more 
than tree-wavings—many of them not so much.” When the 
storm had abated, he wrote, he “dismounted and sauntered 
down through the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, 
and turning toward the East, I beheld the countless hosts of the 
forests hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the 
slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled 
them with amber light, and seemed to say while they listened, 
‘My peace I give unto you.’ ” 

These quotations illustrate the irresistible charm of simplic- 
ity, the directness of poetical feeling and perception, that were 
a part of everything which Mr. Muir wrote, said, and did. 
When he struck out upon the long trail he was not only fore- 
most among the nature writers of America, but in many re- 
spects the most distinguished figure among contemporary men 
of letters. It will take more than this hasteful, fretful genera- 
tion to take the measure of his greatness, and to explore the 
sources of his power. 

Before me lies a letter written to Mr. Muir by a friend forty- 


To Higher Sierras 39 


nine years ago. He was then twenty-nine years old and had 
just received a serious injury to one of his eyes. “Dear John,” 
the writer says, “I have often wondered what God was training 
you for. He gave you the eye within the eye, to see in all na- 
tural objects the realized ideas of His mind. He gave you pure 
tastes, and the steady preference of whatsoever is most lovely 
and excellent. He has made you a more individualized exist- 
ence than is common, and by your very nature and organiza- 
tion removed you from common temptations. . . . Do not 
be anxious about your calling. God will surely place you where 
your work is.” 

Thus early did his friends see in him those personal qualities 
and those powers of insight which gave a rare distinction to his 
person and his presence. Evil thoughts fled at the sound of his 
voice. An innate nobility of character, an unstudied reverence 
for all that is sublime in nature or in life, unconsciously called 
forth the best in his friends and acquaintances. In the spiritual 
as in the physical realm flowers blossomed in his footsteps 
where he went. After all it is to such men as John Muir that 
we must look for the sustenance of those finer feelings that 
keep men in touch with the spiritual meaning and beauty of the 
universe, and make them capable of understanding those rare 
souls whose insight has invested life with imperishable hope 
and charm. 

Not many years ago the Directors of the Sierra Club ar- 
ranged for a quiet little dinner in honor of Sir James Bryce, 
when he returned from his visit to Australia. To all intents 
and purposes there were only two men at the dinner, Bryce and 
Muir, for the rest were intent listeners—too intent, altogether, 
to take more than mental notes. Both were enlarging upon the 
value of the civilizing influences that arise from a deep and hu- 
mane understanding of nature. Sir James ventured the remark 
that the establishment of national parks, and the fostering of a 
love of nature and out-door life among children, would do more 
for the morals of the nation than libraries and law codes. Muir 
welcomed this opinion, and added that children ought to be 
trained to take a sympathetic interest in our wild birds and ani- 
mals. “Under proper training,” he said, “even the most savage 
boy will rise above the bloody flesh and sport business, the wild 


40 Sierra Club Bulletin 


foundational animal dying out day by day as divine uplifting, 
transfiguring charity grows in.” 

To all who knew John Muir intimately his gentleness and 
humaneness toward all creatures that shared the world with 
him, was one of the finest attributes of his character. He was 
ever looking forward to the time when our wild fellow crea- 
tures would be granted their indisputable right to a place in the 
sun. The shy creatures of forest and plain have lost in him an 
incomparable lover, biographer, and defender. 

John Muir’s writings are sure to live—by the law that men 
who lift their eyes at all from the commonplace ideals of work- 
a-day life will inevitably fix them on the snowy crests of human 
thought and achievement. Thence it is that they must derive 
their power to hope and to toil. Long as daisies shall continue 
to star the fields of Scotland men will choose to see them 
through the eyes of Burns. Forgotten generations have heard 
the nightingale sing her love-song at twilight ; but a finer music 
is in her song since Keats listened to the notes from the thicket 
on the hill. Nor will the name of Wordsworth ever be dissoci- 
ated from the warble of the rising lark and the call of the 
cuckoo across the quiet of rural England. John Muir is of their 
number. Among those who have won title to remembrance as 
prophets and interpreters of nature he rises to a moral as well 
as poetical altitude that will command the admiring attention of 
men so long as human records shall endure. He had “the eye 
within the eye.” Thousands and thousands, hereafter, who go 
to the mountains, streams and cafions of California will choose 
to see them through the eyes of John Muir, and they will see 
more deeply because they see with his eyes. 

But while in a high sense his wisdom has become a part of 
us forever, his going has left an aching void in the hearts of all 
lovers of the California mountains. Long accustomed to meet 
him where wild rivers go singing down the cafions, and skyey 
trails are lost amid cloudy pines, they now must perforce apply 
to him the simple words which sixteen years ago he wrote on 
his visit to the grave of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson: “He 
had gone to higher Sierras, and, as I fancied, was again waving 
his hand in friendly recognition.” 


SUINT ‘yy ‘O9r) AY OJOU 


SYID] [DUOMIN A1¢ "S19JUM SUL[LF 9} YIM psO9ow UL ‘SPUTM dy} YIM SurjuLyo ‘YSUIIS Aoy} UL SUI1Of91 SLODULLJUNOW pojJ-uNG,, 


SANId AHL ONOWV YINW NHOL 


“ITXO ALVId “TOA ‘NILAITTNG ANTS VANAIS 


PLATE CXLII. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


Re aus 


TERS 


(Op ag 


Ge Dwi ADA AS Ra 


PENCIL SKETCHES OF TOTEMS FROM THE OLD STICKEEN VILLAGE 


FROM JOHN MUIR’S ALASKA NOTEBOOKS 


A Pi BViIOGRAPHY OF JOHN MUIR* 


By JENNIE ELtiot DorAN 


aS 


S 


This bibliography is an attempt to present an annotated list, 
complete, with the exception of newspaper articles, of John 
Muir’s writings and of works about him. The arrangement of 
material is alphabetical under the different headings—Muir’s 
writings being followed by the works about him. 

For assistance in the preparation of this list thanks are due 
Professor C. B. Bradley of the University of California, for the 
use of his “Reference List to the Published Writings of John 
Muir,” published in 1897} Earlier lists published in the Over- 
land Monthly by E. A. Avery and W. T. Kittredge have also 
been used. 

HONORS 


A.M., Harvard University, 1806. 
LL. D., University of Wisconsin, 1897. 
Litt. D., Vale University, Iort. 
LL.D. University of Califorma, ror3. 
Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters. 
Member, Washington Academy of Science. 
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
President, Sierra Club. 
President, American Alpine Club. 


*[Note.—This bibliography is a thesis for graduation from the Library School of 
the University of Wisconsin, prepared by Miss Doran in June, 1915, under the su- 
pervision of Miss Mary Emogene Hazeltine, Preceptor of the school. Miss Doran 
had found some help in her work from the use of a Reference List made by me in 
1897, and on completing it was good enough to remember me with a copy of her 
manuscript. Being myself under promise to the editor to furnish a bibliography for 
the forthcoming Muir Memorial number of the S1ErrRA CLuB BULLETIN, I was of 
course overjoyed to find the work thus done to my hand, and, as appeared on ex- 
amination, so well done that very little was left for me to do save to add the publi- 
cations which have appeared since Miss Doran completed her work, and a few older 
ones which have recently come to my notice, together with an occasional note of 
information which seemed worthy of being included in the record. All material so 
added by me has been included within square brackets. An asterisk indicates that 
the reference has not been personally verified because the publication itself was not 
available for verification either in Madison or here in California. 

Both Miss Doran and her preceptor have kindly consented to its publication here. 
And it seems in every way fitting that this—which seems likely to be the definite 
bibliography—should be the work of a student of John Muir’s own university, and 
should be published by the Sierra Club with which he was ever increasingly identi- 
fied from its very beginning to the day on which he left us. 

CoRNELIUS BEACH BRADLEY. 
January 15, 1916.] 


+ University of California Magazine, December, 1897. 


42 Sierra Club Bulletin 


BIBLIOGRAPHIES 
Avery, E. A. Bibliography of John Muir. Overland, Oct., 
1885, v. 6, p. 445-446. 


Bradley, C. B. Reference List to the Published Writings of 
John Muir. Berkeley, University of California, 1898. 
From the University of California Magazine, Dec., 1897. 


Kittredge, W. T. Bibliography of John Muir. Overland, Oct., 
1886. v. 8, p. 441-442. 
A revision of the bibliography published by E. A. Avery in Over- 
land, Oct., 1885, v. 6, p. 445-446. 


San Francisco Public Library. Writings of John Muir. Bul- 
letin, Feb. 1902. v. 8, p. 19. 


BOOKS BY MUIR 


Edward Henry Harriman. Doubleday, 1912. Gratis to libra- 
ries. 


“Enumerates the characteristics that made Harriman a fundamen- 
tal and progressive factor in the financial world, and no less among 
his fellow men.” Book Review Digest. 

Reviewed in Dial, June I, 1912, v. 52, p. 442. 


Letters to a Friend. Houghton, 1915. 300 copies, $3.00. 


“They were written in the impressionable years of early manhood, 
soon after their writer had completed his four years of unprescribed 
studies at the University of Wisconsin.” Dial. 

Reviewed in Dial, April 15, 1915, v. 58, p. 204-295, by P. F. Bick- 
nell; N. Y. Times, April 18, 1915, v. 20, p. 144, by Hildegarde Haw- 
thorne. 


Mountains of California. Century, 1894. $1.50. New and en- 
larged edition, IQII. 
“We have here nature pure and unadulterated . . . sixteen chap- 
ters, each a gem of landscape or animal painting.” Nation. 
Reviewed in Atheneum, Jan. 19, 1895, p. 77-78; Dial, Feb. 1, 1895, 
v. 18, p. 75-77, by A. M. Earle; Nation, Nov. 15, 1894, v. 59, p. 366- 
6 


The book is chiefly made up of articles, revised and enlarged, which 
appeared in Century and Scribner’s Monthly under the following 
titles and dates: 

Bee-pastures of California. Century, June-July, 1882, v. 24, p. 222- 
220, 388-306. 

Coniferous Forests of the Sierra Nevada. Scribner’s Monthly, 
Sept., 1881, v. 22, p. 710-723, 921-931. 

Douglass [Douglas] Squirrel of California. Scribner’s Monthly, 
Dec., 1878, v. 17, p. 260-266. 

Glacier Meadows of the Sierra. Scribner’s Monthly, Feb., 1879, v. 
17, D. 478-483. Me 

Humming-bird of the California Waterfalls. Scribner’s Monthly, 
Feb., 1878, v. 15, P. 545-554. 

In the Heart of the California Alps. Scribner’s Monthly, July, 
1880, v. 20, p. 345-352. 

Mountain Lakes of California. Scribner’s Monthly, Jan., 1879, v. 


17, p. 411-420. 


A Bibliography of John Mur 43 


Passes of the Sierra. Scribner’s Monthly, March, 1879, v. 17, p 
644-652. 

Wild Sheep of the Sierra. Scribner’s Monthly, May, 1881, v. 22, p. 
I-II. 

Wind Storm in the Forests of the Yuba. Scribner’s Monthly, Nov., 
1878, Vv. 17, DP. 55-59. 


My First Summer in the Sierra. Houghton, 1911. $2.50. 


“As a revelation of ‘the glory and freedom of the out-of-doors’ ex- 
emplified in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in and about the Yosemite 
Valley, Mr. Muir’s narrative of his first impressions in those regions 
is most charming and refreshing.” Dial. 


Reviewed in A. L. A. Booklist, Sept., 1911, v. 8, p. 25; Dial, Oct. 1, 
HOER, We 51, Pp. 251-252, by CA. Kofoid; Literary Digest, Aug. 5, 1011, 
WiA3) pi 210), Nation,’ Jine 20; 1O1l, v: 02, p: 651; N.,Y. Times, June 
II, IQII, v. 16, 6. 374; Review of Reviews, July, I9II, v. 44, p. 123. 

Enlarged from sketches published in the Atlantic, Jan.-April, 1911, 
v. 107, p. I-II, 170-181, 339-349, 521-528. 


Our National Parks. Houghton, 19o1. $1.75. New and en- 
larged edition, 1909. $3.00. 


“Throughout this volume there is a mixture of aesthetic apprecia- 
tion, scientific knowledge, and personal adventure that gives it a 
unique charm.” Nation. 

Reviewed in Dial, March 1, 1902, v. 32, p. 163-164; Nation, April Io, 
1902, V. 74, PD. 204-205. 

The book is made up of sketches published in the Atlantic under 
the following titles and dates: 

American Forests. Aug., 1897, v. 80, p. 145-157. 

Among the Animals of the Yosemite. Nov., 1898, v. 82, p. 617-631. 

Among the Birds of the Yosemite. Dec., 1898, v. 82, p. 751-760. 

Forests of Yosemite. April, 1900, v. 85, p. 493-507. 

Fountains and Streams of Yosemite National Park. April, 1901, v. 
87, D. 556-565. 

Hunting Big Redwoods. Sept., 1901, v. 88, p. 304-320. 

Wild Gardens of the Yosemite Park, Aug, 1900, v. 86, p. 167-179. 

Wild hanes and Forest Reservations of the West. Jan., 1898, v. 81, 
p. 15-28. 

Yellowstone National Park. April, 1898, v. 81, p. 509-522. 

Yosemite National Park. Aug., 1899, v. 84, p. 145-152. 


Stickeen. Houghton, 1909. 6oc. New edition, 1914. 25c. (Riv- 
erside literature series. ) 

“Relates the narrow escape of the explorer and his faithful dog 
companion during a storm in the glacier country.” A. L. A. Booklist. 

Reviewed in A. L. A. Booklist, May, 1909, v. 5, p. 149; Nation, July 
8, 1900, v. 89, p. 37; N. Y. Times, April 3, 1909, v. 14, p. 197; Review 
of Reviews, Aug., 1900, v. 40, p. 253. 

Enlarged from a sketch published in Century, Sept. 1897, v. 54, P 
769-776, under the title “An Adventure with a Dog and a Glacier.” 


Story of My Boyhood and Youth. Houghton, 1913. $2.00. 


“The author’s adventures as a wholesome, nature-loving boy in a 
strict Presbyterian home in Scotland, his emigration to America, his 
interest in the domestic animals and wild life about his home in Wis- 
consin,. . . his enthusiasm as an inventor, and his life at the Univer- 


44 Sierra Club Bulletin 


sity of Wisconsin, are recounted in a vivid and interesting style, with 
many well told anecdotes and much humor.” A. L. A. Booklist. 
Reviewed in A. L. A. Booklist, May, 1913, v. 9, p. 382; Dial, April 
I, 1913, V. 54, p. 293-294, by P. F. Bicknell; Independent, July 3, 1913, 
v. 75, D. 43-44; Literary Digest, July 5, 1913, v. 47, p. 26-27; Nation, 
April 17, 1913, v. 96, p. 391-392; N. Y. Times, March 23, 1913, v. 18, 
p. 158; Outlook, May Io, 1913, v. 104, p. 71-72; Review of Reviews, 
June, 1913, v. 47, p. 761; Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, Dec., 1913, v. 
15, p. 134; Yale Review, April, 1914, v. 3, p. 611-614, by W. E. Leon- 
ard. : 
Enlarged from sketches published in the Atlantic under the follow- 
ing titles and dates: 
Lessons of the Wilderness. Jan., 1913, v. I1I, p. 81-02. 
My Boyhood. Nov., 1912, v. 110, p. 577-587. 
Out of the Wilderness. Feb., 1913, v. III, p. 266-277. 
Plunge Into the Wilderness. Dec., 1912, v. 110, p. 813-825. 
Selections from the final chapter reprinted in the Wisconsin Alum- 
ni Magazine, April, 1914, v. 15, p. 295-301. 


[Travels in Alaska. Houghton, 1915. $2.50; large paper ed., 
$5.00. 


The late and ripe fruitage of the remarkable series of explorations 
made by Mr. Muir during the summers of 1879, 1880 and 1881. His 
immediate impressions were graphically recorded in three series of 
letters published in the San Francisco Bulletin. See Reference List 
which follows this article, p. 58. ] 


The Yosemite. Century, 1912. $2.40. 


“Earthquake and avalanche adventures, careful studies of flowers, 
trees, rocks, streams, and other features, by the most ardent of nature 
lovers, go to make up a book of exceptional interest:” A. L. A. Book- 
list. 


Reviewed in A. L. A. Booklist, June, 1912, v. 8, p. 404; Bellman, 
May. 18, 1012, v..12, p. 627; Dial, June 1, 1012, 'v. 52, p) 420.) by) PB 
Bicknell; Literary Digest, June I, 1912, v. 44, p. 1165-1168, by John 
Burroughs; Nation, May 9, 1912, v. 94, p. 472; N. Y. Times, April 28, 
IQI2, v. 17, p. 253; Outlook, May 4, 1912, v. IoI, p. 43; Review of Re- 
views, June, 1912, v. 45, p. 766-767. 


CHAPTERS BY MUIR IN BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS 


Alaska via Northern Pacific Railroad. St. Paul, 1892. 


Railroad folder descriptive of Alaskan scenery. 


Botanical Notes on Alaska (in U.S. House documents, 47th 
Congress, 2d session, v. 23, No. 105, p. 47-53). 


“Plants named will be valuable for comparison with the plants of 
other regions.” 


[Glaciers and Snow-banners. Contemporary biography of 
California’s Representative Men. San Francisco. Ban- 
ChoOlt, W882): Vv. 2) Pp 104-102: 
The selection follows a two-page biographical notice. ] 


A Bibliography of John Muir 45 


Letters to Professor J. D. Butler (in Butleriana. Miscella- 
nies. v. 2). 


Contents: John Muir home from a year of world-circling, July 20, 
1904—His telepathic search for Professor J. D. Butler, Aug., 1869. 


Linnzus (in Warner, C. D., Library of the World’s Best Lit- 
erature. 1897. v. 16, p. 9077-9083). 
The life and writings of the Swedish naturalist, with special refer- 
ence to his contributions to the science of botany. 
Notes on the Pacific Coast Glaciers (in Harriman Alaska 
Expedition!) 1901) v. I; p. 119-135. Woubleday, $7.50 
each volume). 


[On the Effects of the Earthquake of 26th March, 1872, in the 

Yosemite Valley. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist; Proc., 1873, v 
15, p. 185-186. 

Extract from a letter of Mr. John Muir, read by Dr. S. Kneeland. ] 


On the Glaciation of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions vis- 
ited by the United States steamer “Corwin” in the 
year 1881 (in U.S. Senate documents, 48th Congress, 
Ist session. v. 8, No. 204, p. 135-147). 


On the Post-Glacial History of Sequoia Gigantea (in Ameri- 
can Association for the Advancement of Science. Pro- 
ceedings. Aug. 1876. v. 25, p. 242-253). 


Clear and compact account of his explorations in the “Sequoia belt 
of the Sierra Nevada.” 


[Read by Professor Asa Gray at the meeting of the Association. | 


Picturesque California and the Region West of the Rocky 
Mountains from Alaska to Mexico; ed. by John Muir. 
San Francisco, Dewing, 1888. 2 v. 
The following chapters were written by Muir: Peaks and Glaciers 
of the High Sierra, The Passes of the High Sierra, The Yosemite 


Valley, Mount Shasta, Alaska, Washington and Puget Sound, The 
Basin of the Columbia River. 


Scenery of California (In California the Land of Promise, p. 
16-21. State Board of Trade, San Francisco, 1897- 
1898). 
Selections (in In American Fields and Forests, 19009, 
Houghton. $1.50). 
[The selections by Mr. Muir are both from Our National Parks, 
viz: Among the Birds of the Yosemite, p. 191-214; and The Sequoia, 
p. 215-267. | 
Studies in the Formation of Mountains in the Sierra Nevada, 
California (in American Association for the Advance- 
ment of science, Proceedings. Aug, 1874, v.23, pt. 2, 
p. 49-64). 


46 Sierra Club Bulletin 


A scholarly article giving detailed information. 
[This paper was read by Professor Asa Gray at the meeting of the 
Association. ] 
[Winter Phenomena of the Yosemite Valley. Bost. Soc. Nat. 
list: Proc.,.1873, vi15,(p. 146-150. 
Extracts from eine by Mr. Muir read before the Society by Dr. 
S. Kneeland. ] 


PERIODICAL ARTICLES BY MUIR 
Note.—Periodical articles, subsequently collected in book form, have 
been listed under the title of the specific book. 
Alaska. American Geologist, May, 1893, v. II, p. 287-299. 


Extremely interesting account of an Alaskan trip. 


Alaska Trip. Century, Aug., 1897, v. 54, p. 513-526. 


Descriptive of the rivers, forests, and glaciers of Alaska. 


Ancient Glaciers of the Sierra. Californian, Dec., 1880, v. 2, 
P. 550-557. 
Characteristic specimens are described. 
Browne the Beloved. Dial, June 16, 1913, v. 54, p. 492. 


A tribute to the memory of Francis Fisher Browne. 


By-ways of Yosemite Travel. Overland, Sept., 1874, v. 13, 
p. 267-273. 
Discovery of Glacier Bay. Century, June, 1895, v. 50, p. 234- 
247. 
An account of Muir’s explorations in Alaska in 1879 and 1880. 
Endangered Valley. Century, Jan., 1900, v. 77, p. 464-469. 
Description of the beauty of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley in the Ye- 
semite National Park. 


[Appeared also in what seem to be two editions of the same cam- 
paign pamphlet with different titles, viz: a, “Let All the People Speak 
and Prevent the Destruction of the Yosemite Park,” not dated, but 
probably issued early in 1909; and b, “Let Every One Help to Save 
the Famous Hetch-Hetchy Valley,” Nov., 1909, p. 14-17.] 


Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cajfion. Overland, 
Ae, 1873, Vv. 1L)-py 139-147; 


Method of study was to drift about “from pos to rock, from stream 
to stream, from grove to grove.” 


Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park. Century, 
Sept., 1890, v. 40, p. 656-667. 

“Briefly touched upon a number of the chief features of a region 
which it is proposed to reserve out of the public domain for the use 
and recreation of the people.” 

Flood-storm in the Sierra. Overland, June, 1875, v. 14, p. 
489-496. 


Vivid description of a storm witnessed by Muir. 


A Bibhography of John Mur 47 


Forest Reservations and National Parks. Harper’s Weekly, 
June 55 1897, Vv. 4I, Pp. 563-567. 
With special reference to their preservation and management. 
[Same article in SrzrrRA CLUB BULLETIN, Jan., 1806, v. I, p. 271-284.] 
Geologist’s Winter Walk. Overland, April, 1873, v. 10, p. 
355-358. 


A letter containing detailed descriptions of the cafions, rivers, and 
mountains studied on a walking trip. 


Grand Cafion of the Colorado. Century, Nov., 1902, v. 65, 


p. 107-116, 
Clear and interesting descriptions of the wonders of “a gigantic 
sunken landscape made out of . . . limestone and sandstone.” 


Hetch-Hetchy Valley. Overland, July, 1873, v. 11, p. 42-50. 
Notes the similarity to the Yosemite Valley. 


Letter from the Yosemite Valley. Craftsman, March, 1905, 
v. 7, p. 654-665. 
Description of the natural beauties observed on approaching the 
Yosemite. 


Living Glaciers of California. Harper’s Magazine, Nov., 


1875, Vv. 51, p. 769-776. 


Discussion of the essential characteristics of glaciers. 


Living Glaciers of California. Overland, Dec., 1872, v. 9, 
P- 547-549. 


Tells of the discovery of living glaciers, and of the method of prov- 
ing that these ice-masses are glacial formations. 

Reprinted in Journal of Science and Arts, Jan. 1873, v. 5, p. 69-71. 

[The observations which form the kernel of this article seem first 
to have taken shape in a letter to Mrs. Carr, now published on pages 
140-142 of his Letters to a Friend. The language of the letter is re- 
produced verbatim in the article. ] 


New Forest Reservation. Mining and Scientific Press, v. 74, 
Dp. 282. 
New Sequoia Forests of California. Harper’s Magazine, 
Nowe T878)\V..57, P..O13-827. 
Studies of the big trees, their size, distribution, and beauty. 


Rambles of a Botanist Among the Plants and Climates of 
California. Old and New, June, 1872, v. 5, p. 767-772. 


Rival of the Yosemite. Century, Nov., 1891, v. 43, p. 77-97. 
Description of “The Cafion of the South Fork of Kings River, Cal- 
ifornia.” Sub-title. 
Sargent’s Silva. Atlantic, July, 1903, v. 92, p. 9-22. 


A masterly review of The Silva of North America, 1890-1902, by 
C. S. Sargent. 


48 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Snow Banners of the California Alps. Harper’s Magazine, 
July, 1877, v. 55, p. 162-164. 


Personal observations of a “storm phenomenon.” 


Snow-storm on Mount Shasta. Harper’s Magazine, Sept., 
187/759 955, Pa 5212530) 


Graphic account of personal experiences in a severe storm. 


Studies in the Sierra. Overland, 1874-1875. 


A series of articles which appeared in the above periodical under 
the following titles and dates: 


Ancient Glaciers and their Pathways. July, 1874, v. 13, p. 67-79. 
Formation of Soils. Dec., 1874, v. 13, p. 530-540. 

Glacial Denudation. Aug., 1874, v. 13, p. 174-184. 

Mountain Building. Jan., 1875, v. 14, p. 64-73. 

Mountain Sculpture. May, 1874, v. 12, p. 393-403. 

Origin of Yosemite Valleys. June, 1874, v. 12, p. 489-500. 
Post-glacial Denudation. Nov., 1874, v. 13, p. 393-402. 


[The article on Mountain Sculpture is noticed and quoted from at 
considerable length in Jour. Am. Sci., 1874, v. 7, p. 515-516; and 
strangely enough is ascribed to Prof. Ezra F. Carr, who sent it to 
the Journal. The error, due probably to the fact that the Overland did 
not then print the names of its contributors along with their articles, 
was corrected in the next volume (8) p. 8o.] 


Three Adventures in the Yosemite. Century, March, 1912, 
v. 63, p. 656-661. 


Contents: Perilous Exploration of the Yosemite Fall—Ride on an 
Avalanche—Earthquake Storms. 


Treasures of the Yosemite. Century, Aug., 1890, v. 40, p. 
483-500. 

Description of the Yosemite Valley, “a noble mark for the traveler, 
whether tourist, botanist, geologist, or lover of wilderness pure and 
simple.” 

Tuolumne Yosemite in Danger. Outlook, Nov. 2, 1907, v. 87, 
p. 486-489. 

Compares the Hetch-Hetchy Valley with Yosemite Valley, and 

tells of the scheme to make it into a reservoir. 


Twenty Hill Hollow. Overland, July, 1872, v. 9, p. 80-86. 
“A word for the great central plain of California in general, and 
for Twenty Hill Hollow, in Merced County, in particular.” 
Wild Sheep of California. Overland, April, 1874, v. 12, 
P. 358-363. 


Describes their habits and appearance, and compares them with do- ~ 
mestic sheep. 


Wild Wool. Overland, April, 1875, v. 14, p. 361-366. 


Compares the quality of the wool of the wild sheep with that of the 
domestic. 


SMNOOTALON VMISVIV S.NIQW NHOf WOW ANVI ASVAC AO HOLAMS TIONAd 


“IIITXOD ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATING €ANTO VUNAIS 


PLATE CXLIV. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


PENCIL SKETCH FROM JOHN MUIR’S ALASKA NOTEBOOKS 


i aa 


A Bibliography of John Mur 49 


Yosemite Storms and Floods. Outlook, June 3, 1905, v. 80, 
Pp. 297-302. 
The waterfalls of the Yosemite in flood time and storm. 
Yosemite Valley in Flood. Overland, April, 1872, v. 8, p. 347- 
350. 


Account of a three days’ storm, and its resulting flood. 


ARTICLES ON MUIR IN ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND OTHER 
GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS 


Adams, O. F. Dictionary of American Authors. 1901, p. 265. 
4 lines. 


American Men of Science. 1910, p. 338. 7 lines. 


Americana. I912, v. 14, pages unnumbered. % col. 

Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography. 1900, v. 7, 
p. 2012 col. 

Appleton’s New Practical Cyclopedia. 1910, v. 4, p. 348. 
y% col. 

Century Cyclopedia of Names. IQII, p. 713. 14 lines. 

Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Encyclopedia. 1913, v. 18, 
Dp: 20,24 'col: 

Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History. 1902, v. 6, 
pi300. 14 col. Por. 

Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary. 1903, v. 5, p. 616. 34 col. 

Men of America. 1908, p. 1668. 34 col. 

National Cyclopedia of American Biography. 1899, v. 9, 
p- 449. 2 col. Por. 


Good biographical sketch, with special note of his periodical arti- 
cles. 


Nelson’s Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encyclopedia. 1909, v. 8, 
p. 340. % col. 
New International Encyclopzedia. 1905, v. 14, p. 91. % col. 


New International Year Book. 1914, p. 470. 1% col. 
Good summary of Muir’s activities and writings, written after his 
death. 
New Student’s Reference Work. IgI1, v. 3, p. 1275. % col. 
Brief account of his explorations in studying glaciers. 
Standard Reference Work. 1913, v. 4, pages unnumbered. 
2 col. 


Biographical sketch, and description of Muir Glacier, with good il- 
lustration. 


50 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Thomas, Joseph. Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Bi- 
ography and Mythology. 1901, v. 2, p. 1781. 5 lines. 

Warner, C. D. Library of the World’s Best Literature, by 
C. D. Warner and others. 1897-1898, v. 18, p. 10405- 
TOA1 4: Pore; Vii 20,1). /3O4.(Sulinies: 


V. 18 contains a biographical sketch, followed by a selection, “A 
Wind-storm in the Forests,” from his ‘““The Mountains of California.” 


Who’s Who. 1914, v. 66, p. 1507. % col. 
First entry made in 1903, v. 55, p. 990. 

Who’s Who in America. 1914-1915, v. 8, p. 1689. % col. 
First entry made in 1899-1900, v. I, p. 514. 


CHAPTERS ABOUT MUIR IN BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS 


Barrus, Clara. Our Friend John Burroughs. Houghton, 1914. 
$2. 

Scattered references to Muir. For pages see index under Muir. 
California—Public Instruction Dept. Two California Neigh- 
bors. Sacramento, published by the State) 1912) 

Contains an extract from John Swett’s “Public Education in Cali- 
fornia,” describing Swett’s friendship with Muir; also gives a bio- 
graphical sketch by E. F. Strother. 

James, G. W. Studious Hero of the Mountains, John Muir 
(in James, G. W. Heroes of California. 1910, p. 338- 
360. Little, $2.) 


Interesting account of Muir’s life and character. Contains extracts 
from his letters. 


Markham, Edwin. John Muir, Poet-Scientist (in Markham, 
Edwin. California the Wonderful. 1914, p. 368-369. 
N. Y. Hearst’s International Library Co. $6.) 
[Pammel, L. H. John Muir (in Major F. Lacey Memorial 
Volume and Report of lowa Park and Forestry Asso- 
ciation for 1913, p. 477-481.) 
An appreciative sketch of his life and work.] 
PERIODICAL ARTICLES ABOUT MUIR 


An Act of Heroism. Craftsman, March, 1905, v. 7, p. 665-667. 
Describes the heroic rescue, by Muir, of a companion in danger. 
Badé, W. F. John Muir. Science, March 5, 1915, v. 41, p. 353- 
354. 
A concise, clear account of his life, activities and writings. 
Baker, R. S. John Muir. Outlook, June 6, 1903, v. 74, p. 365- 
377: 


“Shows how the lad Muir prepared himself, unconsciously and un- 
knowingly, for the work of the man Muir.” James. 


A Bibliography of John Mur 5 


Barrus, Clara. In the Yosemite with John Muir. Craftsman, 
Mec) fOU2)iV.\23))p. 324-325. Por. 
Personal impressions of Muir formed on a camping trip in the Yo- 
semite. 


With John o’ Birds and John o’ Mountains in the 
Southwest. Century, Aug., 1910, v. 80, p. 521-528. Por. 
Contrasts Muir’s character with Burrough’s. 


Bland, H. M. John Muir. Overland, June, 1906, v. 47, p. 517- 
525. Por. 
Purely biographical. 


Buckley, E. R. John Muir. Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, 
fans, 1900, v.15 p. 141-146, ‘Por: 


“The information and part of the phraseology of this biography 
was taken from the “National Cyclopedia of American Biography.” 
Footnote. 


Carr, J. C. John Muir. Californian Illustrated Magazine, 
ume. 1892) 17 2.,p. 86-04). Por. 


Descriptions of Muir’s inventions as a young man, and of his wan- 
derings and final arrival in California. 


Clarken, G. G. At Home with John Muir. Overland, Aug., 
1908, v. 52, p. 125-128. 
“A keen appreciation of Mr. Muir and his characteristics.” Over- 
land. 
Comrade of the Giant Trees. Literary Digest, Jan. 16, 1915, 
VW, 50, p. 114-110. 
“A man so moved by the spiritual forces that he actually compelled 
a careless nation to preserve the Yosemite Valley, the Big Trees, and 
the Yellowstone National Park as an everlasting heritage of the 
people.” 
In “ Personal Glimpses.” 


Concerning an Old Student. Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, 
Nov., 1900, v. 2, p. 75-76. 


Description of Muir’s inventions during his student life at the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. 


Conversation with John Muir. World’s Work, Nov., 1906, 
v. 13, p. 8249-8250. 
In “Among the World’s Workers.” 
Editorials on John Muir. Nation, Dec., 1914, v. 99, p. 762, 
781-782. 
Gives brief sketches of his life and works. Written after his death. 
French, Harold. Psalmist of the Sierra. Sunset, Aug., 1914, 
¥..33; PB» 355-357- For. 


52 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Graydon, Katherine Merrill. John Muir. Butler Alumni 
Quarterly (Indianapolis), July, 1915, p. 81-92. 


A series of remarkably vivid sketches of John Muir at successive 
stages of his development and achievement, written by one who knew 
him well and loved him; one who when a mere child used to accom- 
pany her aunt as she came to his darkened room to befriend and com- 
fort the suffering stranger after the accident to his eye. | 


John Muir. Bookman, Dec., 1898, v. 8, p. 288-290. Por. 


In “Chronicle and Comment.” 


John Muir. Century, March, 1915, v. 89, p. 794-796. 


Comparison with John Burroughs. 
Same in Pattie, F.L., American Literature Since 1870. Not yet 
published. 


John Muir. Chautauquan, Sept., 1907, v. 48, p. 87-88. 


As a nature student. 


John Muir. Scientific American, Jan. 9, 1915, v. 112, p. 47. 
Written after his death. 


John Muir: Geologist, Explorer, Naturalist. Craftsman, 
March, 1905, v. 7, p. 637-654. 
Tells of the influences that helped to mold his character, and of his 
later writings and activities. 


John Muir: Naturalist. Outlook, Jan. 6, 1915, v. 109, p. I1-12. 
Editorial written after his death. 


“John o’ the Mountains.” Review of Reviews, Feb., 1915, 
v. 51, p. 242-242. 
Enumerates his activities and contains extracts from other periodi- 
cal articles. Written after his death. 


Johnson, R. U. Personal Impressions of John Muir. Outlook, 
June 3, 1905, v. So, p. 303-306. Por: 


Impressions gathered on a camping trip with Muir. Tells of the or- 
igin of the Yosemite National Park. 


Johnson, W. H. John Muir. Nation, Jan. 14, 1915, v. 100, 
p..56: 


A letter to the editor of the Nation noting the attractiveness of 
Muir’s Stickeen, and suggesting a new low-priced edition. 


Knapp, Adeline. Some Hermit Homes of California Writers. 
Overland, Jan: 1900;\va135,\p..2-5. bom 
Description of Muir’s “shelter in which he might take refuge dur- 
ing the least endurable storms.” 


Lore of the Late John Muir. Bookman, Feb., 1915, v. 40, 
p. 616-618. Por. 


An appreciation of his life and work. Written soon after his death. 


A Bibliography of John Muir 53 


Millard, Bailey. John Muir. Country Life, March, 1915, v. 27, 


pe 70-77. Por. 
Sketch of his life and activities. Written after his death. 
* 


John Muir. Suburban Life, Sept., 1908, v. 7, p. 121- 
122,140. 


Skyland Philosopher. Bookman, Feb., 1908, v. 26, 
P. 593-599. 
Biographical sketch containing anecdotes illustrating his character- 
istics. 
Nature-Study Transmuted Into Literature. Dial, Jan. 16, 
1915, v. 58, p. 39. 
Editorial expressing the regret caused by the death of Muir. 
Reid, Harvey. John Muir. Outlook, Nov. 28, 1903, v. 75, 
p. 763-764. | 
Anecdotes by a classmate of Muir’s in the University of Wisconsin. 
Roorbach, Eloise. John Muir. Craftsman, Feb., 1915, v. 27, 
P. 479-480. | 
A tribute to Muir’s power of interpreting nature. Written after his 
death. 
Roosevelt, Theodore. John Muir: an Appreciation. Outlook, 
Jane 6, 1915, Vv. 109, p. 27-28. 


Reminiscent of a few days spent with Muir in the Yosemite. Writ- 
ten aiter his death. 


Strother, French. John Muir. World’s Work, April, 1907, 
v. 13, p. 8804-8808. 


“Naturalist, geologist, interpreter of nature.” Sub-title. 


Three Days with John Muir. World’s Work, March, 
1909, V. 17, p. 11355-11358. 


“Conversations with the man who has a most intimate knowledge 
of nature—his home in the Alhambra Valley, and his excursions into 
the Sierras.” Sub-title. 


Sudworth, G. B. John Muir. American Forestry, March, 
IQI5, V. 21, p. 184-185. 


Recounts the value of his efforts in forest preservation. Written 
after his death. 


Swett, John. John Muir. Century, May, 1893, v. 46, p. 120- 


122) 
Biographical sketch, with special emphasis on his explorations and 
discoveries. 
Wyatt, Edith. John Muir. New Republic, Feb. 20, 1915, v. 2, 
p. 69-71. 


A tribute to his memory. 


54 Sterra Club Bulletin 


Young, S. H. Alaska Days with John Muir. Outlook, v. 110. 
Three articles which appeared under the following 


titles and dates: 
The Mountain. May 26, 1915, v. 110, p. 189-199. 
The Ice Chief. June 23, 1915, v. 110, p. 431-442. 
The Lost Glacier. July 28, 1915, v. 110, p. 723-733. 

The first is an intimate account of a mountain-climbing expedition 
and of the author’s rescue by Muir from a perilous situation. The 
other two are accounts of two long voyages of exploration and dis- 
covery which Muir and the writer of these articles took together in 
1879 and 1880. [The three were afterwards published in book form 
under the same title as above, by Fleming H. Revell Co., 1915, $1.25.] 


POEMS ABOUT MUIR 
Bland, H. M. John Muir. Out West, March, 1915, v. 41, 


Pp. 120, 
Edson, C. L. John o’ the Mountains. Collier, Jan. 16, 1915, 
v. 54, p. 14. 


Tompkins, I. C. John Muir: the Mountaineer. Sunset, May, 
1060, V2 5; Pp. 41. 
Reprinted in the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, Nov., 1900, v. 2, p. 
74- 


PORTRAITS OF MUIR 


Chautauquan, May, 1904, v. 39, p. 256. 

Craftsman, Feb., 1915, v. 27, p. 458. 

Outing, May, 1903, v. 42, p. 140. 

Outlook, Jan.:6, 1015; 'V 100; p. 32. 

Overland, Aug., 1908, v. 52, p.05; May, 1013, v. G1, on4e4 

Popular Science Monthly, March, 1915, v. 86, p. 310. 

Review of Reviews, Nov., 1902, v. 26, p. 569. 

Sunset, July, 1000, v.23, p. 2: 

World’s Work, March, 1902, v. 3, p. 1802; Feb., 1910, v. 19, 
p. 12529. (With John Burroughs.) 


ARE PERENCE LIST TO JOHN MUIR’S NEWSPAPER 
ARTIC ES 


By CorNELIUS BEACH BRADLEY 
- 


Newspaper articles have no proper place in a bibliography. 
If noticed at all, they must appear as addenda or as postscript 
—as they do here. Yet Mr. Muir’s letters are of much more 
than ordinary interest, not merely in themselves as immediate 
memoranda of vivid experience and kindled feeling on the part 
of a gifted personality, but also for the rdle they played in the 
development of the writer’s powers. So far as he continued the 
practice of writing them, they were the first drafts of chapters 
in his later books—the fresh-quarried ore which, in his brood- 
ing mind, through the long years was slowly transmuted into 
the fine gold of his finished work. 

In Mr. Muir’s case, indeed, the process began long before he 
became a newspaper correspondent. We see it in his Letters to 
a Friend—now happily accessible—portions of which are found 
to have been transferred almost verbatim into subsequent pub- 
lications. And the material of his very latest work, Travels in 
Alaska, published since his death, first saw the light thirty-six 
years ago in the shape of three series of letters to the San Fran- 
cisco Bulletin. 

Nearly all these newspaper letters are grouped in distinct se- 
ries, each series being the record of a season’s explorations or 
quest. The serial letters began with a group of three Yosemite 
studies in 1871-1872, and were concluded eighteen years later 
in another group of three written from the same beloved valley. 

The stream of Mr. Muir’s writing of this sort rose steadily 
for ten years to its flood-tide in 1881, in the famous series of 
twenty-one letters written during the cruise of the “Corwin” in 
search of the “Jeanette.” Then it suddenly ebbed. After that 
there was one letter in 1885, three—already mentioned—in 
1889, and one more in 1897. There ends Mr. Muir’s list. There 
were probably a few more written later, but they were no long- 
er an organic feature of his literary work. 


56 Sierra Club Bulletin 


The causes for this change are not far to seek. His later trav- 
els were no more by untrodden ways and in unexplored realms. 
The powerful stimulus of discovery became therefore less and 
less an element in his inward prompting to write. Coincident 
with this was the absence henceforth of financial necessity. He 
no longer needed to write that he might have the means to con- 
tinue his travels and studies. He was now free to address him- 
self directly to putting into final and enduring shape the price- 
less results already won through long years of toil and hard- 
ship. But more potent probably than all these causes was the in- 
ward ripening of the man himself in heart and mind, not unlike 
that of Wordsworth when he exchanged the ecstasies—the 
“aching joys’ and “giddy raptures’—of his youthful passion 
for Nature and of his pursuit of her, for a more thoughtful and 
more manly devotion. In Mr. Muir’s case the change was no 
doubt less pronounced, but it was there, and it found significant 
and noble expression thenceforth in his ceaseless efforts on the 
one hand to rescue the glory and charm of Nature from selfish 
spoliation and wanton destruction; and on the other, so to in- 
terpret Nature that all men might worthily love and enjoy her. 


* * * *K *K * 


The newspaper articles here listed are the ones which ap- 
peared in my Reference List of 1897, which again was based 
chiefly upon Mr. Muir’s printed List of the Published Wnitings 
of John Muir (Martinez, 1891), supplemented by entries in his 
own handwriting which brought it down to 1897. No serious 
attempt has been made to extend that list, both because after 
that date Mr. Muir very rarely wrote for the newspapers, and 
because no clue has been found to what he did write. 

His list was chronological—was apparently a transcript from 
a memorandum book in which he was in the habit of jotting 
down the general topic or topics of the article, the publication 
to which it was sent, and the date of writing or of sending— 
month and year only, or sometimes only the month. The date of 
publication never appeared at all. Since this last was absolutely 
indispensable, if only for verification, a systematic search was 
made through the newspaper files of those years to recover it. 
The task was rendered the more laborious and perplexing by 


John Mutr’s Newspaper Articles 57 


two circumstances: In the first place, Mr. Muir’s articles were 
dated letters, apparently without title or heading. The newspa- 
per headings were therefore the work of the editor, and not at 
all likely to correspond with Mr. Muir’s private memoranda. 
In the second place, through irregularities of the mails, or 
through accidents in the office, the letters did not always appear 
in the order in which they were written. In some cases they 
were delayed for months. Nevertheless the search was fairly 
successful. In the Californian files only four articles out of 
eighty-three remain undiscovered. Two of these, written in the 
Alaskan wilderness, probably never reached their destination. 
Files of the eastern newspapers concerned were not to be found 
in California, and, so far, attempts to have them searched in the 
East have not been successful. Four articles assigned to them 
must therefore remain for the present without verification. 

The alphabetical arrangement of the older list having proved 
unsatisfactory for the present purpose, it has been replaced by 
a serial arrangement in chronological sequence. The titles have 
been revised to correspond in general with the published head- 
ings, though, in certain cases where these seemed to give insuf- 
ficient characterization, a more fitting title from Mr. Muir’s list 
has been added or substituted. 

Dates in round brackets are the dates of writing, square 
brackets indicate that the article so included could not be found 
after diligent search. An asterisk indicates that the reference 
has not been verified because the files of the publication were 
not available for examination. 


i SERIAL LETTERS To THE (NEW YoRK TRIBUNE’ 
[ Yosemite Glaciers, Sept., 1871. ] 


[ Yosemite in Winter. Jan. 1, 1872.] 
[ Yosemite in Spring. May 7, 1872]—The dates are Mr. Muir’s. 


II. SERIAL LETTERS To THE “SAN FRANCISCO BULLETIN” 
First Series—The Shasta Region. 5 letters, Oct., 1874-Jan., 


1975) 
Salmon-breeding on the McCloud River. (Oct. 24.) Oct. 29, 1874. 
Shasta in Winter. (Nov. 24.) Dec. 2, 1874. 
Shasta Game. (Nov. 29.) Dec. 12, 1874. 
Modoc Memories—The Lava Beds. (No date.) Dec. 28, 1874. 
Shasta Bees. (Dec. 17, 1874.) Jan 5, 1875. 


58 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Second Series—Summering in the Sierra. 11 letters, June-Nov., 


1875. 
The Summer Flood of Tourists. (June 14.) June 22, 1875. 
A Winter Storm in June. (June 17.) June 24, 1875. 
In the Sierra Forests. (July ...) Aug. 3, 1875. 
The Kings River Yosemite. (Aug. 5.) Aug. 13, 1875. 
Ascent of Mount Whitney. (Aug. 17.) Aug. 24, 1875. 
From Fort Independence to Yosemite. (Sept. ..) Sept. 15, 1875. 
The Fresno Grove of Sequoia. (Sept. ..) Sept. 21, 1875. 
The Giant Forest of the Kaweah. (Oct. 19.) Oct. 22, 1875. 
[The Southern Limit of the Sequoia. (Oct., 1875) 2.28 ] 
Tulare Levels. (Oct. 25.) Nov. 17, 1875. 
South Dome. (Nov. 10.) Nov. 18, 1875. 


Third Series—Summering in the Sierra; Second Season. 5 
letters, July-September, 1876. 


The Calaveras Sequoias. (July 13.) July 20, 1876. 
Ancient River Channels. (July 17.) July 26, 1876. 
Sierra Caves. (Aug. 6.) Aug. 12, 1876. 

Yosemite Tourists. (Aug. 20.) Aug. 24, 1876. 

The Summit of South Dome. (Aug. 28.) Sept. 6, 1876. 


Fourth Series, AA—Notes from Utah. 4 letters, May-July, 1877. 
The City of the Saints. (May 15.) May 22, 1877. 
A Great Storm in the Basin of Salt Lake. (May 19.) May 25, 1877. 
Bathing in Salt Lake. (May 20.) June 14, 1877. 
Mormon Lilies. (July ..) July 109, 1877. 


B.—Semi-tropical California. 2 letters, September, 1877. 


San Gabriel Valley (Sept. 1.) Sept. 7, 1877. 
In the San Gabriel Mountains. (No date.) Sept. 11, 1877. 


Fifth Series—Nevada. 5 letters, October, 1878; January, 1879. 


Nevada Farms. (Oct...) Oct. 5, 1878. 

Nevada Forests. (Oct. 22.) Oct. 31, 1878. 

Nevada’s Timber Belt. (Oct. 20.) Nov. 19, 1878. 

Glacial Phenomena of the Great Basin. (Nov. 28.) Dec. 5, 1878. 
Nevada’s Dead Towns.‘(No date.) Jan. 15, 1870. 


Sixth Series—Notes of a Naturalist. 11 letters, Aug., 1879; 
January, 1880. 


Sea Voyage—British Columbia. (June 25.) Aug. 27, 1870. 
Puget Sound. (June 28.) Aug. 29, 1870. 

Fort Wrangel. (Aug. 8.) Sept. 6, 1870. 

Alaska Glaciers, I. (Sept. 5.) Sept. 23, 1870. 
Alaska Glaciers, II. (Sept. 7.) Sept. 27, 1870. 
Alaska Coast Scenery. (Sept. 25.) Oct. 29, 1879. 
Alaska Forests. (Oct. 3.) Oct. 30, 1879. 

A Deserted Indian Village. (Oct. 12.) Nov. 1, 1879. 
Alaska Climate. (Oct. 16.) Nov. 8, 1879. 

Alaska Goldfields. (Dec. 22, 1879.) Jan. 10, 1880. 
Alaska Rivers. (Dec. 27, 1879.) Jan. 20, 1880. 


Seventh Series—Alaska Land. 6 (or 8?) letters. September- 
November, 1880. 


Canoe Voyage Among Islands and Icebergs. (Aug.18.) Sept. 25, 1880. 
Sum Dum Bay. (Aug. 22.) Oct. 7, 1880. 


John Muw’s Newspaper Articles 59 


An Eventful Day. (Aug. 14.) Oct. 9, 1880. 


(sue) Dum Bay >; Exploring Right Fork. (Aug. 1880.) ............ ] 

An Alaska Yosemite. (Aug. 20.) Oct. 16, 1880. 

benent Arm or sum Dum. (Aug. 1880.) 2.2.2... 2... ] 

Among the Glaciers and Bergs of Sum Dum Bay. (Aug. 22.) Oct. 23, 
1880. 


Taku Fiords and Glaciers. (Aug. 24.) Nov. 13, 1880. 


Eighth Series—Cruise of the ‘‘Corwin.” 21 letters. June-Octo- 
ber, 1881. 


At Ounalaska. (May 18.) June 20, 1881. 

Ad St. Paul: (May 23.) July 13, 1881. 

On the Siberian Coast. (May 31.) July 13, 1881. 

Pushing Northwestward. (June 2.) July 13, 1881. 

Weathering a Gale in St. Laurence Bay. (June 6.) July 13, 1881. 

Dodging the Ice. (June 15.) July 13, 1881. 

The Aleutian Islands. (May 21.) July 25, 1881. 

Wreck of.the “Vigilant.” (June 29.) Aug. 15, 1881. 

St. Laurence Island. (July 2.) Aug. 15, 1881. 

Return to St. Michael’s. (July 8.) Aug. 15, 1881. 

At St. Michael’s. (June 20.) Aug. 16, 1881. 

At Metchigme Bay. (June 27.) Aug. 16, 1881. 

At East Cape. (July 1.) Aug. 16, 1881. 

Herald Island. (July 31.) Sept. 28, 1881. 

Wrangel Land. (Aug. 16.) Sept. 29, 1881. 

On Wrangel Land. (Aug. 17.) Oct. 22, 1881. 

Perils of Whaling. (Aug. 18.) Oct. 24, 1881. 

Arctic Coal Mines—The Diomede Bay Islands. (Aug. 25.) Oct. 25, 
1881. 

In Plover Bay—Reindeer. (Aug. 26.) Oct. 26, 1881. 

An Ice-bound Shore. (Sept. 3.) Oct. 27, 1881. 

Homeward Bound. (Oct. 4.) Oct. 31, 1881. 


Ninth Series—3 letters from the Yosemite Region. June, 1889. 


The Snow in the High Sierra. (No date.) June 22, 1880. 
Yosemite Valley in Early Summer. (June 21.) June 27, 1889. 
Forests of the Sierra. (No date.) June 29, 1889. 


III. Occasional Letters 

* Calypso Borealis. Boston Recorder, .......... 1865. 

Yosemite Glaciers. Their Progress and Present Condition. N.Y. Trib- 
une (Sept. 28, 1871), Dec. 5, 1871. 

God’s First Temples: How Shall We Preserve Our Forests? Sacra- 
mento Record-Union, Feb. 5, 1876. 

Notes from Shasta. San Francisco Bulletin. (Sept. 10.) Sept. 12, 1877. 

Lake Tahoe in Winter. San Francisco Bulletin. (No date.) April 3, 
1878. 

* Biographical Sketch of Daniel Muir. Portage (Wis.) Record, Oct. 


1885. 

The Yellowstone Park, San Francisco Bulletin, (Oct. 19.) Oct. 27, 
1885. 

Alaska Passes. San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 1, 1887. 


IV. Book Reviews 
Reminiscences of Scotch Life and Character, by Dean Ramsay. San 
Francisco Bulletin, April 20, 1878. 
[Life of Robert Dick. San Francisco Bulletin, (April 20, 1878) ....] 
Socialism, with Preludes on Current Events, by Joseph Cook. Aug. 
21, 1880. 


MUIR LODGE—AN APPRECIATION 
By Mary FRANCES KELLOGG 
- 


Of the worship due our western mountains, not a tithe has 
been paid. Nor does the finest homage come from tourists 
poured into resorts by swarming cities, but from the winnowed 
few who behold the snow-girdled peaks, the innumerable moun- 
tain lakelets and the myriads of flower-enameled, fern-brocaded 
meadows circled by majestic sequoias. And how many of these 
elect were imbued with enthusiasm by John Muir’s matchless 
word-pictures! This above all is both his legacy to us and his 
own crown of glory—to have taught us his beauty-lore. 

So John Muir has no need of a memorial. Rather do we 
long to express, though never so inadequately, the thanks we 
owe him. From magnificent glaciers, and forests, and moun- 
tains, even down to our own modest mountain home, all borrow 
honor from his name. 

If that which is essentially material ; if that which makes ease- 
ful the mountaineer’s toil; if that which cements friendships of 
the out-of-doors—if such may stand as an appreciation of one 
so predominantly of the spirit, who shunned no privation or 
hardship if it brought him into harmony with wildness, whose 
feet wandered so much alone and whose passionate search for 
understanding of the sculpturing of the ages found so few 
kindred souls—then Muir Lodge is, as intended, an apprecia- 
tion of John Muir. Though he walked alone, he valued friend- 
ship as one of the finest of mortal possessions. 

Muir Lodge is a brief home for the wayfarer, ever urging 
beyond—on—on, up the wonder-trails leading over the heights 
and far within the mountain barriers. In its simple plainness it 
is appropriate. No complications of thought, language or char- 
acter were his. All his life was as openly inspiring as one of his 
own books. 

John Muir could teach us because, like all great men, he ex- 
emplified a singleness of p-1rpose—a perfect absorption in that 
to which he was dedicated. Because he himself reverently 


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Mut Lodge—an Appreciation 61 


adored, he was able to give to us something of the majesty of 
the mountains, the glory of the glaciers, the records of the 
rocks, the teachings of the trees, the songs of the streams, the 
friendliness of the flowers. Material as these things are they 
roused in John Muir a very white heat of devotion—a devotion 
his writings breathe in every line. John Muir’s lofty worship, 
which thanked God for every good day and each bit of loveli- 
ness, must have been most acceptable to the Maker of the 
Universe, who saw that His works were good. Here is a man 
we may delight to honor. How the memory of him steadies us 
when our own understanding of essentials becomes warped. 

The first time I ever saw John Muir he spoke of his inten- 
tion to build some day a home close under the Sierra Madre 
Mountains. He often later spoke of this longing. And though 
it was never our good fortune to have him dwelling among us, 
yet in Muir Lodge we have a sort of shrine for his spirit, where 
none may sojourn without receiving the benediction of the 
mountains, which John Muir, more than any other, taught us 
to know aright. On the wall his pictured face first greets the 
entering guest. 

Such a true, simple heart could not fail to love to be loved. 
At the time of the dedication of Muir Lodge, he wrote, “I’m 
very glad to get the picture of the fine Muir Lodge. It’s pleas- 
ant to be remembered in this way in the midst of this long- 
drawn-out battle for our national parks.” 


S PUDIES VIN THE SIE RiRss 
By Joun Muir 


- 


No. 11. MOUNTAIN SCULPTURE, ORIGIN OF YOSEMITE VALLEYS 
All the valleys and cafions of the western flank of the Sierra, 
between 36° and 39° north latitude, naturally classify them- 
selves under two genera, each containing two species. One ge- 
nus comprehends all the slate valleys, the other all that are built 
of granite. The latter is far the more important, both on ac- 
count of the greater extent of its geographical range and the 
grandeur and simplicity of its phenomena. All the valleys of 
both genera are valleys of erosion. Their chief distinguishing 
characteristics may be seen in the following descriptions: 


SLATE VALLEYS 


I. Cross-sections, V-shaped, or somewhat rounded at bottom, 
walls wregular im structure, shattered and weak in appearance, 
because of the development of slaty cleavage planes and joints, 
which also prevent the formation of plane-faced precipices. Bot- 
tom showing the naked bed-rock, or covered by rocky debris, 
and sloping in the direction of the trend. Nearly all of the foot- 
hill valleys belong to this species. Some of the older specimens 
are smoothly covered with soil, but meadows and lakes are al- 
ways wanting. 

2. More or less widened, branching at the head. Bottom, with 
meadows, or groves, or lakelets, or all together. Sections and 
walls about as in No. 1. Fine examples of this species occur on 
the head-waters of the San Joaquin. 

GRANITE VALLEYS 

1. Cross-sections narrowly or widely V-shaped. Walls seldom 
interrupted by side cafions, magnificently simple in structure 
and general surface character, and presenting plane precipices 
in great abundance. Bottom sloping in the direction of the trend, 


* Reprinted from the Overland Monthly of June, 1874. This is the second of a 
series of seven studies in which Mr. Muir developed his theories of the geology of 
the Sierra.—Editor. 


Studies in the Sierra 63 


mostly bare, or covered with unstratified glacial and avalanche 
bowlders. Groves and meadows wanting. 

2. Branching at head, with beveled and heavily abraded lips at 
foot. Bottom level, meadowed, laked, or groved. Walls usually 
very high, often interrupted by side cafions. Sections as in No. 
1. To this species belongs the far-famed Yosemite* whose origin 
we will now discuss. 

Yosemite Valley is on the main Merced, in the middle region 
of the range. It is about seven miles long from east to west, with 
an average width at bottom of a little more than half a mile, and 
at the top of a mile and a half. The elevation of the bottom above 
sea level is about 4,000 feet. The average height of the walls is 
about 3,000 feet, made up of a series of sublime rock forms, 
varying greatly in size and structure, partially separated from 
one another by small side cafions. These immense wall-rocks, 
ranged picturesquely together, do not stand in line. Some ad- 
vance their sublime fronts far out into the open valley, others 
recede. A few are nearly vertical, but far the greater number 
are inclined at angles ranging from twenty to seventy degrees. 
The meadows and sandy flats outspread between support a lux- 
uriant growth of sedges and ferns, interrupted with thickets of 
azalea, willow and brier-rose. The warmer sloping ground along 
the base of the walls is planted with noble pines and oaks, while 
countless alpine flowers fringe the deep and dark side cafions, 
through which glad streams descend in falls and cascades, on 
their way from the high fountains to join the river. The life- 
giving Merced flows down the valley with a slow, stately cur- 
rent, curving hither and thither through garden and grove, 
bright and pure as the snow of its fountains. Such is Yosemite, 
the noblest of Sierra temples, everywhere expressing the work- 
ing of Divine harmonious law, yet so little understood that it has 
been regarded as “an exceptional creation,” or rather exception- 
al destruction accomplished by violent and mysterious forces. 
The argument advanced to support this view is substantially as 
follows: It is too wide for a water-eroded valley, too irregular 
for a fissure valley, and too angular and local for a primary 
valley originating in a fold of the mountain surface during 


* We will henceforth make use of the word Yosemite both as a specific and geo- 
graphical term. 


64 Sierra Club Bulletin 


the process of upheaval; therefore, a portion of the moun- 
tain bottom must have suddenly fallen out, letting the super- 
incumbent domes and peaks fall rumbling into the abyss, 
like coal into the bunker of a ship. This violent hypothesis, 
which furnishes a kind of Tophet for the reception of bad moun- 
tains, commends itself to the favor of many, by seeming to ac- 
count for the remarkable sheerness and angularity of the walls, 
and by its marvelousness and obscurity, calling for no investiga- 
tion, but rather discouraging it. Because we can not observe the 
bed-rock to ascertain whether or not it is fractured, this engulf- 
ment hypothesis seems to rest safely under cover of darkness, 
yet a film of lake gravel and a meadow blanket are its only con- 
cealments, and, by comparison with exposed sections in other 
Yosemites where the sheer walls unite with the solid, unfissured 
bottom, even these are in effect removed. It becomes manifest, 
by a slight attention to facts, that the hypothetical subsidence 
must have been limited to the valley proper, because both at the 
head and foot we find the solid bed-rock. 

The breaking down of only one small portion of the mountain 
floor, leaving all adjacent to it undisturbed, would necessarily 
give rise to a very strongly marked line of demarcation, but no 
such line appears; on the contrary, the unchanged walls are con- 
tinued indefinitely, up and down the river cafion, and lose their 
distinguishing characteristics in a gradual manner easily ac- 
counted for by changes in the structure of the rocks and lack of 
concentration of the glacial energy expended upon them. That 
there is comparatively so small a quantity of debris at the foot 
of Yosemite walls is advanced as an argument in favor of sub- 
sidence, on the grounds that the valley is very old, and that a 
vast quantity of debris must, therefore, have fallen from the 
walls by atmospheric agencies,and that the hypothetical “abyss” 
was exactly required to furnish storage for it. But the Yosemite 
Valley is not very old. It is very young, and no vast quantity of 
debris has ever fallen from its walls. Therefore, no abyss was 
required for its accommodation. 

If, in accordance with the hypothesis, Yosemite is the only 
valley furnished with an abyss for the reception of debris, then 
we might expect to find all abyssless valleys choked up with the 
great quantity assumed to have fallen; but, on the contrary, we 


Studies in the Sierra 65 


find their debris in the same condition as in Yosemite, and not 
more abundant. Indeed, in some portions of valleys as deep and 
sheer as Yosemite there is absolutely no talus, and that there 
never has been any is proved by both walls and bottom being 
solid and ice-polished, Many examples illustrative of this truth 
may be seen in the great Tuolumne and Kings River valleys. 

Where the granite of Yosemite walls is intersected with feld- 
spathic veins, as in the lowest of the Three Brothers and rocks 
near Cathedral Spires, large masses are loosened, from time to 
time, by the action of the atmosphere, and hurled to the bottom 
with such violence as to shake the whole valley; but the aggre- 
gate quantity which has been thus weathered off, so far from 
being sufficient to fill any great abyss, forms but a small part of 
the debris slopes actually found on the surface, all the larger 
angular taluses having been formed simultaneously by severe 
earthquake shocks that occurred three or four hundred years 
ago, as Shown by their forms and the trees growing upon them. 
The attentive observer will perceive that wherever a large talus 
occurs, the wall immediately above it presents a scarred and 
shattered surface whose area is always proportional to the size 
of the talus, but where there is no talus the wall is invariably 
moutonée or striated, showing that it is young and has suffered 
little change since it came to light at the close of the glacial pe- 
riod. On the 23rd of March, 1872, I was so fortunate as to wit- 
ness the sudden formation of one of these interesting taluses by 
the precipitation of the Yosemite Eagle Rock by the first heavy 
shock of the Inyo earthquake, whereby their local character and 
simultaneity of formation was fully accounted for. This new 
earthquake gave rise to the formation of many new taluses 
throughout the adjacent valleys, corresponding in every partic- 
ular with the older and larger ones whose history we have been 
considering. 

As to the important question, What part may water have 
played in the formation of Sierra valleys? we observe that, as 
far as Yosemite is concerned, the five large streams which flow 
through it are universally engaged in the work of filling it up. 
The granite of the region under consideration is but slightly 
susceptible of water denudation. Throughout the greater por- 
tion of the main upper Merced Valley the river has not eroded 


66 Sierra Club Bulletin 


its channel to a depth exceeding three feet since it first began to 
flow at the close of the glacial epoch, although acting under 
every advantage of concentration and quick descent. The high- 
est flood-mark the young river has yet recorded upon the clean 
glacial tablets of its banks is only seven or eight feet above the 
present level, at ordinary stages. Nevertheless, the aggregate 
annual quantity that formerly passed down these cafion valleys 
was undoubtedly far greater than passes at the present time, be- 
cause on the gradual recession of the glaciers at the close of the 
period, the supply would necessarily be more constant, from 
their melting all through the seasons. The evidence, however, is 
incontestable, which shows that the highest floods of Sierra riv- 
ers in the upper and middle regions of the range never much 
exceeded those of the present time. 

Five immense glaciers from five to fifteen hundred feet in 
depth poured their icy floods into Yosemite, uniting to form one 
huge trunk, moved down through the valley with irresistible and 
never-ceasing energy, crushing and breaking up its strongest 
rocks, and scattering them in moraines far and near. Many, 
while admitting the possibility of ice having been the great 
agent in the production of Yosemite valleys, conjecture that 
earthquake fissures, or cracks from cooling or upheaval of the 
earth’s crust, were required to enable the glaciers to make a be- 
ginning and to guide them in the work. We have already shown 
(“Studies in the Sierra,” in Overland for May*) that cleavage 
planes and joints exist in a latent or developed condition in all 
the granite of the region, and that these exert immense influ- 
ence on its glacial erodibility. During five years’ observation in 
the Sierra, I have failed to discover a single fissure of any kind, 
although extensive areas of clean-swept glacial pavements af- 
ford ample opportunity for their detection, did they exist. Deep 
slots, with regular walls, appearing as if sawed, or mortised, 
frequently occur. These are formed by the disintegration of soft 
seams a few inches or feet in thickness, contained between walls 
of stronger granite. Such is the character of the so-called fissure 
said to exist in a hard portion of the south wall of Yosemite, op- 
posite the Three Brothers, so frequently quoted in speculations 
upon the valley’s origin. 


* Reprinted in S1ERRA CLuB BULLETIN, Vol. IX, No. 4, January, 1915. 


Studies in the Sierra 67 


The greatest effects of earthquakes on the valley we have al- 
ready noticed in avalanche taluses, which were formed by the 
precipitation of weak headlands, that fell like ripe fruit. The 
greatest obstacle in the way of reading the history of Yosemite 
valleys is not its complexity or obscurity, but simply the magni- 
tude of the characters in which it is written. It would require 
years of enthusiastic study to master the English alphabet if it 
were carved upon the flank of the Sierra in letters sixty or sev- 
enty miles long, their bases set in the foothills, their tops leaning 
back among the glaciers and shattered peaks of the summit, oft- 
en veiled with forests and thickets, and their continuity often 
broken by cross-gorges and hills. So also the sculptured alpha- 
bet cafions of the Sierra are magnificently simple, yet demand 
years of laborious research for their apprehension. A thousand 
blurred fragments must be conned and brooded over with stu- 
dious care, and kept vital and formative on the edges, ready to 
knit like broken living bones, while a final judgment is being 
bravely withheld until the entire series of phenomena has been 
weighed and referred to an all-unifying, all-explaining law. To 
one who can leisurely contemplate Yosemite from some com- 
manding outlook, it offers, as a whole, a far more natural com- 
bination of features than is at all apparent in partial views ob- 
tained from the bottom. Its stupendous domes and battlements 
blend together and manifest delicate compliance to law, for the 
mind is then in some measure emancipated from the repressive 
and enslaving effects of their separate magnitudes, and gradual- 
ly rises to a comprehension of their unity and of the poised har- 
mony of their general relations. 

Nature is not so poor as to possess only one of anything, nor 
throughout her varied realms has she ever been known to offer 
an exceptional creation, whether of mountain or valley. When, 
therefore, we explore the adjacent Sierra, we are not astonished 
to find that there are many Yosemite valleys identical in general 
characters, each presenting on a varying scale the same species 
of mural precipices, level meadows, and lofty waterfalls. The 
laws which preside over their distribution are as constant and 
apparent as those governing the distribution of forest trees. 
They occur only in the middle region of the chain, where the 
declivity is considerable and where the granite is Yosemitic in 


68 Sierra Club Bulletin 


its internal structure. The position of each valley upon the Yo- 
semitic zone indicates a marked and inseparable relation to the 
ancient glaciers, which, when fully deciphered, amounts to cause 
and effect. So constant and obvious is this connection between 
the various Yosemites and the névé amphitheatres which foun- 
tained the ancient ice-rivers, that an observer, inexperienced in 
these phenomena, might easily anticipate the position and size of 
any Yosemite by a study of the glacial fountains above it, or the 
position and size of the fountains by a study of their comple- 
mentary Yosemite. All Yosemites occur at the junction of two 
or more glacial cafions. Thus the greater and lesser Yosemites 
of the Merced, Hetch Hetchy, and those of the upper Tuolum- 
ne, those of Kings River, and the San Joaquin, all occur imme- 
diately below the confluences of their ancient glaciers. If, in fol- 
lowing down the cafion channel of the Merced Glacier, from 
its origin in the névé amphitheatres of the Lyell group, we 
should find that its sudden expansion and deepening at Yosemite 
occurs without a corresponding union of glacial tributary cafi- 
ons, and without any similar expansion elsewhere, then we 
might well be driven to the doctrine of special marvels. But this 
emphatic deepening and widening becomes harmonious when 
we observe smaller Yosemites occurring at intervals all the way 
down, across the Yosemitic zone, wherever a tributary canon 
unites with the trunk, until, on reaching Yosemite, where the 
enlargement is greatest, we find the number of confluent glacier- 
cafions is also greatest, as may be observed by reference to 
Fig. 1. Still further, the aggregate areas of their cross-sections 
is approximately equal to the area of the cross-sections of the 
several resulting Yosemites, just as the cross-section of a tree 
trunk is about equal to the sum of the sections of its branches. 
Furthermore, the trend of Yosemite valleys 1s always a direct 
resultant of the sizes, directions, and dechivities of their conflu- 
ent canons, modified by peculiarities of structure in their rocks. 
Now, all the cafions mentioned above are the abandoned chan- 
nels of glaciers; therefore, these Yosemites and their glaciers 
are inseparably related. Instead of being local in character, or 
formed by obscure and lawless forces, these valleys are the only 
great sculpture phenomena whose existence and exact positions 
we may confidently anticipate. 


Studies in the Sierra 69 


Fig. 3.—Mercep YosEeMITE. (A, Yosemite Creek Glacier; B, Hoffmann Glacier; C, 
Tenaya Glacier; D, South Lyell Glacier; E, Illilouette Glacier; F, Pohono Glacier 


70 Sierra Club Bulletin 


DEPTH OF YOSEMITE 

Much stress has been laid on the mere uncompared arithmeti- 
cal depth of Yosemite, but this is a character of no consequence 
to the consideration of its origin. The greatest Merced Yosemite 
is 3,000 feet deep; the Tuolumne, 2,000; another, 1,000; but 
what geologist would be so unphilosophical as to decide against 
the identity of their origin from difference in depth only. One 
pine tree is 100 feet high, lean and crooked, from repressing 
winds and the poverty of the soil which nourished it; while an- 
other, more fortunate in the conditions of its life, is 200 feet 
high, erect and vigorous. So, also, one Yosemite is 3,000 feet 
deep because of the favorable structure of its rocks and the 
depth and number of the ice-rivers that excavated it; another is 
half as deep, because of the strength of its rocks, or the scanti- 
ness of the glacial force exerted upon it. What would be thought 
of a botanist who should announce that our gigantic Sequoia 
was not a tree at all, offering as a reason that it was too large 
for a tree, and, in describing it, should confine himself to some 
particularly knotty portion of the trunk? In Yosemite there is 
an evergreen oak double the size of ordinary oaks of the region, 
whose trunk is craggy and angular as the valley itself, and col- 
ored like the granite bowlders on which it is growing. At a little 
distance this trunk would scarcely be recognized as part of a 
tree, until viewed in relation to its branches, leaves and fruit. It 
is an admirable type of the craggy Merced cafion-tree, whose 
angular Yosemite does not appear as a natural portion thereof 
until viewed in its relations to its wide-spreading branches, with 
their fruit and foliage of meadow and lake. 

We present a ground-plan of three Yosemite valleys, showing 
the positions of their principal glaciers, and the relation of their 
trends and areas to them. The large arrows in Figs. 1, 2, 3 show 
the positions and directions of movement of the main confluent 
glaciers concerned in the erosion of three Yosemites. With re- 
gard to the number of their main glaciers,the Tuolumne Yo- 
semite may be called a Yosemite of the third power; the Kings 
River Yosemite, of the fourth power; and the Merced Yosemite, 
of the fifth power. The granite in which each of these three Yo- 
semites is excavated is of the same general quality; therefore, 
the differences of width, depth, and trend observed, are due al- 


Studies in the Sierra 73 


most entirely to the number, magnitude, declivity and mode of 
combination of the glacial system of each. The similarity of their 
ground-plans is obvious from a single glance at the figures ; their 
cross-sections are no less similar. One of the most characteristic 
from each of the valleys under consideration is shown in Figs. 
4, 5 and 6, drawn on the same scale. 


i st Pass “a 2 
Fig. 4.—Section across the Hetch Fig. 5.—Section across the Kings River 
Hetchy Valley, or Yosemite 


lower Tuolumne Yosemite 


Fig. 6.—Section across Merced reas Fig. 7 

The perpendicularity of Yosemite walls is apt to be greatly 
over-estimated. If the slopes of the Merced Yosemite walls were 
to be carefully measured with a clinometer at intervals of say 
100 yards, it would be found that the average angle they make 
with the horizon is less than 50°, as shown in Fig. 7. It is not 
possible that the bottom could drop out of a valley thus shaped, 
no matter how great the upheaval or down-heaval, or side- 
heaval. 

Having shown that Yosemite, so-called, is not unique in its 
ground-plan or cross-sections, we will now consider some of the 
most remarkable of its rock forms. The beautiful San Joaquin 
Dome in the cafion of the San Joaquin, near the confluence of 
the south fork, looking south (Fig. 9), shows remarkable re- 
semblance to the Yosemite Half Dome, as seen from Tenaya 
Cafion (Fig. 8). They are similarly situated with reference to 
the glaciers that denuded them, Half Dome having been assailed 


72 Sierra Club Bulletin 


by the combined Tenaya and Hoffman glaciers on the one side, 
and by the South Lyell or Merced Glacier on the other; the San 
Joaquin Dome, by the combined glaciers of the middle and 
north forks, on one side, and by the glaciers of the south fork on 
the other. The split dome of Kings River Yosemite is a worthy 
counterpart of the great Half Dome of the Merced Yosemite. 


They occur at about the same elevation, and are similarly situ- 
ated with reference to the ancient glacial currents, which first 
overswept them and then glided heavily by on either side, break- 
ing them up in chips and slabs, until fashioned and sculptured 
to their present condition. The Half Dome is usually regarded 
as being the most mysterious and unique rock form in the val- 
ley, or, indeed, in the world, yet when closely approached and 
studied, its history becomes plain. 

From A to B, Fig. 10, the height is about 1,800 feet; from A 
to the base, 3,000. The upper portion is almost absolutely plain 
and vertical, the lower is inclined at an angle with the horizon 
of about 37°. The observer may ascend from the south side to 
the shoulder of the dome at D, and descend along the face to- 
ward A H. In the notch at F a section of the dome may be seen, 
showing that it is there made up of immense slabs set on edge. 
These evidently have been produced by the development of 
cleavage planes, which, cutting the dome perpendicularly, have 
determined the plane of its face, which is the most striking char- 


Studies in the Sierra We 


a 


eas 


acteristic of the rock. Along the front toward A H may be seen 
the stumps of slabs which have been successively split off the 
face. At H may be seen the edges of residual fragments of the 
same slabs. At the summit we perceive the cut edges of the con- 
centric layers which have given the curved dome outline, B B. 
At D, a small gable appears, which has been produced by the 
development of diagonal cleavage planes which have been cut 
in front by vertical planes. After the passage of the main Tenaya 
Glacier in the direction of the arrows, small glacierets seem to 
have flowed down in front, eroding shallow groove channels in 
the direction of greatest declivity ; and even before the total re- 
cession of the main glacier a wing-shaped ice-slope probably 


: pallid if ad Ei 


Fig. 10. aes Facet or HAatr DoME, YOSEMITE VALLEY 


74 Sierra Club Bulletin 


At 
Tie 


A 
_— 
ea 


petit 


® ' H 
Hy, ; ! 3 
< oe fy ‘ wath 
ee le eit em | f 


Fig. 11.—Nortu Face or Hair DomE oF KiNGs RIVER YOSEMITE VALLEY 


leaned back in the shadow, and with slow action eroded the up- 
per portion of the dome. All the rocks forming the south walls 
of deep Yosemite cafions exhibit more or less of this light after- 
sculpture, effected in the shade after the north sun-beaten rocks 
were finished. . 

The south side of the dome has been heavily moutonée by 
the Lyell Glacier, but is, nevertheless, nearly as vertical as the 
north split side. The main body of the rock corresponds in form 
and attitude with every other rock similarly situated with refer- 
ence to ice-rivers, and to elevation above sea level, the special 
split dome-top being, as we have seen, a result of special struc- 
ture in the granite out of which it was formed. Numerous ex- 
amples of this interesting species of rock may be culled from the 
various Yosemites, illustrating every essential character on a 
gradually changing scale. 


Studies in the Sierra 75 


Fig. 12 is a view of the back or south side of Half Dome, Yo- 
semite, showing its moutonée condition; Fig. 13 represents El 
Capitan of Yosemite, situated on the north side of the valley; 
Fig. 14, El Capitan of Big Tuolumne Cafion, near the middle, 
situated on the north side; Fig. 15, El Capitan of Big Tuolumne 
Cafion, near the head, situated on the north side. 


ad 


W Gif i ae 
= Mh os 7 
ae ow ! fe PIL Mi j di 


(ge y 
ia = Jy 
vi) 3 


The far-famed El Capitan rock presents a sheer cleaved 
front, over three thousand feet high, and is scarcely less im- 
pressive than the great dome. We have collected fine specimens 
of this clearly defined rock form from all the principal Yosemi- 
tes of the region. Nevertheless, it also has been considered ex- 


76 Sierra Club Bulletin 


ceptional. Their origin is easily explained. They are simply split 
ends of ridges which have been broken through by glaciers. 
For their perfect development the granite must be strong,and 
have some of its vertical cleavage planes well developed, nearly 
to the exclusion of all the others, especially of those belonging 
to the diagonal and horizontal series. A powerful trunk glacier 
must sweep past in front nearly in the direction of its cutting 
planes, with small glaciers, tributary to the first, one on each 
side of the ridge out of which the Capitan is to be made. This 


] arrangement is illustrated in 
Ye i 


Fig. 16, where A represents a 
ZIMA Ly, 


horizontal section of a Capitan 
rock, exposing the edges of 
the cleavage planes which de- 
termined the character of its 
face; B, ‘the .)main)telaeien 
sweeping down the valley in 
front; and CU, the tributamies 
isolating it from the adjacent 
softer granite. The three Cap- 
itans figured stand thus related 
to the glaciers of the region where they are found. I have met 
with many others,all of which are thus situated, though in some 
instances one or both of the side glaciers had been wanting, 
leaving the resulting Capitan less perfect, considering the bold 
advancing Yosemite Capitan as a typical form. 

When the principal surface features of the Sierra were being 
blocked out, the main ice-sheet was continuous and moved in a 
southerly direction, therefore the most perfect Capitans are in- 
variably found on the north sides of valleys trending east and 
west. The reason will be readily perceived by referring to Fig. 
8 of No. 1, “Mountain Sculpture,” in Overland for May.* 

To illustrate still further how fully the split fronts of rocks 
facing deep cafions have the angles at which they stand meas- 
ured by their cleavage planes, we give two examples (Figs. 17 
and 18) of leaning fronts from the cafion of the north fork of 
the San Joaquin River. Sentinel and Cathedral rocks also are 
found in other glacial cafions, and in every instance their 


* SIERRA CLuB BULLETIN, Vol. IX, No. 4, page 233. 


Studies in the Sierra W7) 


— 


fi the Wy 


| i 17 


pein 
AN 


forms, magnitudes, and positions are obviously the necessary 
results of the internal structure and general mechanical charac- 
ters of the rocks out of which they were made, and of the gla- 
cial energy that has been brought to bear on them. The abun- 
dance, therefore, of lofty angular rocks, instead of rendering 
Yosemite unique, is the characteristic which unites it most in- 
timately with all the other similarly situated valleys in the range. 


D Dink ROA Cn 


Founded 1892 
402 Mitts Burtpina, San Francisco, CALIFORNIA 
Annual Dues: $3.00, (first year $5.00) 


T THE PURPOSES OF THE CLUB ARE: 
0 explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific 
Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; to enlist the sup- 
port and co-operation of the people and the Government in preserving the 
Sorests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada. 
- 
Joun Murr, President 1892 to 1914 


OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES FOR THE YEAR 1915-1916 
BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


JosrepH \N.:Le Conte, Berkeley: ..0.0..c020 4 cee President 
VERNON Ly KErEocG) Stanford joc eck aoe ee ee Vice-President 
Marion RANDALL Parsons, Berkeley... 20.00 \0 2.0 eee Treasurer 
Wrisam FE. Cotsy; San Francisco. 6.).200. 645. idee «eee Secretary 


Wi.u1AM F. Bank, Berkeley CHartes P. Douctas, San Diego 
WALTER L. Huser, San Francisco 
Vice Davip P. Barrows, Berkeley, resigned 
Rosert M. Price, Reno, Nevada Crain S. TAppaan, Los Angeles 


HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS 
Sir JAMES Bryce, London, England 

Henry S. Graves, Washington, D. C. 

Rosert UNDERWOOD JOHNSON, New York City 
Davip STARR JORDAN, Stanford University 
J. Horace McFarvanp, Harrisburg, Pa. 

ALEXANDER G. McApztg, Harvard University 

Enos A. Mitts, Estes Park, Colorado 

COMMITTEES 

Outing Committee: Witt1am E. Cortsy (Chairman and Manager), 
CLair S. TAPppAAN (Assistant Manager), JosepH N. LE Contre. 

Committee on Local Walks: J. E. RotHer (Chairman), GrorcE Ep- 
WARDS, HAROLD FRENCH, FRED R. PARKER. 

Le Conte Memorial Lodge Committee: Marion RANDALL PARSONS 
(Chairman), JosepH N. LE Conte, RoBert M. PRICE. 

Librarian: NELL L. TAGGARD. 

Southern California Section Executive Committee: EVERETT SHEPARD- 
son (Chairman), CHarLtes J. Fox (Treasurer), Puit S. BERNAYS 
(Secretary, 318 W. Third Street, Los Angeles), Hrram E. BaILey, 
CuHarLes P. Doucitas, Mary F. Kettocc, MAaBELLE McCatia A, 

MarTHA WALKER, GEORGE A. WHITE. 
Co 
SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 
Published annually for the members 
EDITORIAL BOARD 


WHLEetAM By BADE. ee Cee ne ON EN tea a ag Editor 
WVTLETAM (EV COnBY Ou UN ORME Os uA Notes and Correspondence 
MARION RANDALL! PARSON'S (0 2002 boo Ol Pavia aint Meise Book Reviews 
WALTER Ti, TUBER hie ara Uae Mun nae leu RC ey tesa Forestry Notes 


ALBERT H. ALLEN, FRANCIS P. FARQUHAR, 
WILLIAM T. GoLDSBOROUGH, JOSEPH N. LE CONTE, 
ELitiott MCALLISTER 


EDITORIALS 


Tue PresipENcy Since the organization of the Sierra Club in eighteen 
OF THE CLUB hundred and ninety-two there has been but one Presi- 
dent—John Muir. A year ago his death left vacant 
the office which he filled so long and so ably. Professor J. N. Le Conte 
has been chosen by the Board of Directors to serve as his successor. 
There is fitness in this choice. The files of the Srzrra CLuB BULLETIN 
bear distinguished testimony to his work as a mountaineer and explorer 
of the Sierra Nevada. Of the present Board of Directors he is the one 
who has seen the longest term of service. He was one of the charter 
members of the Sierra Club, together with his father, Joseph Le Conte. 
who was in his day the most distinguished geologist of the Pacific Coast. 
In the office of treasurer, to which Mr. Le Conte was elected in eighteen 
hundred and ninety-nine, he is now succeeded by Mrs. Marion Randall 
Parsons. W. F. B. 


JoHN Murr anp Members of the Sierra Club will read with pride and 
JAMES BryYcE pleasure the fine tribute paid to our late President, 
John Muir, by the distinguished author, diplomat and 
fellow mountaineer, Sir James Bryce. In his letter to the Editor, Dr. 
Bryce refers to his meeting with Mr. Muir on the occasion of a dinner 
given by the Directors of the Club in the autumn of 1912. “It was a very 
great pleasure to me,” he writes, “to have had that talk with him and 
the rest of your party on that evening in San Francisco when I was re- 
turning from Australia. . . . How often since have I thought of it and 
wished that your city was not seven thousand miles from here! It is a 
pleasure to think that our friend’s name and services to the world will 
be commemorated by those superb woods on the slope of Tamalpais 
which are called after him.” Dr. Bryce was President of the British Al- 
pine Club from 1899 to Igo. W.F. B. 


MOouNTAINEERING From the wide-spread ruin wrought by the great 
AND THE WaR European war, mountaineering clubs, also, have not 
been exempt. Although the famous Swiss Alpine Club 
had an accession of over a thousand members during the past year, its 
treasury has become so depleted that very little could be done to estab- 
lish new alpine cabins or to repair old ones. There was found to be a 
deficit at the end of the year, and for the first time in nearly fifty years no 
“Year Book” is to be published. 
The Alpine Clubs of Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Aus- 
tria are prostrated by the scourge of war, and their memberships will be 


So Sierra Club Bulletin 


found sadly depleted when it finally ends. For most of the mountain regi- 
ments of the various combatants were in considerable part composed of 
alpinists. Foremost among the Italian army leaders stands the Duke of 
Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amadeo, who has an enviable record of explora- 
tion and first ascents. Eighty-two members of the British Alpine Club 


are now at the front, and six have been killed in action. W. F. B. 

NATURAL HIsToRY In a previous BULLETIN we have called attention 
SURVEY OF YOSEMITE to a natural history survey of Yosemite National 
NATIONAL PARK Park which has been undertaken by the Museum 


of Vertebrate Zoology of the University of Cali- 
fornia. The Sierra Club has a deep interest in the completion of this 
survey and has sought to encourage it both officially and through as- 
sistance rendered by individual members. It is gratifying to learn from 
Director Joseph Grinnell that a large amount of material and data have 
been gathered which will be utilized in the preparation of the following 
separate reports: “(1) a technical paper on the systematic status and re- 
lationships of the lesser known vertebrate species of the region; (2) a 
scientific treatise on the problems in animal distribution brought to light 
by the field explorations; and (3) a semi-popular account, in book form, 
of the natural history of the birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians of 
the Yosemite region, to be illustrated, and to include a discussion of 
animal life as an asset of National Parks.” Members of the Club and all 
who go into the High Sierra have a natural interest in the only poison- 
ous reptile of the region. It is known that rattlesnakes do not occur in 
the higher parts of the Sierra Nevada, but it is very desirable that a map 
be prepared for publication showing accurately their range in the Yo- 
semite Park. To this end members of the Sierra Club and others who 
have been in the Yosemite National Park are invited to report all their 
encounters with rattlesnakes, giving exact locality, altitude, date, and 
any exceptional circumstances. This information should be sent to Di- 
rector Joseph Grinnell at the University of California. W. E--B. 


NaTIONAL Park Every one who has the welfare of the national parks 
AFFAIRS at heart should “put his shoulder to the wheel” and 
help to pass the bill now pending before Congress and 
providing for a national park service. Practically every one is agreed 
that this is eminently desirable, but Congressmen must be impressed 
with its importance. Therefore, let each one write to as many Senators 
and Representatives as possible, and especially to those of his own dis- 
trict, urging the importance of passing such a measure. Do it now before 
the inclination is forgotten, for here is a chance to help materially. The 
terms of the bill are to be found in Notes and Correspondence of this 
issue. 
The good work inaugurated by Stephen T. Mather as assistant to the 
Secretary of the Interior, goes on. His task has been a monumental one. 


Agpieg ‘YT puowdey Aq oJoyg 
SMOGVAW ANWNTIONL ‘ADGOT IVINOWAW SNOSUVd AHL 


TLTATXD) ALY Id *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANTO VuUTIS 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CXLVIII. 


INTERIOR OF PARSONS MEMORIAL LODGE DURING CONSTRUCTION 
Photo by Marion Randall Parsons 


PARSONS MEMORIAL LODGE, CLOSED FOR THE WINTER 
Photo by Tracey I. Storer 


Editorials SI 


To bring order out of chaos and place the control and administration 
of all the national parks on a firm working basis is no small undertak- 
ing, especially when the red tape of Washington makes difficult even 
simple innovations. Mr. Mather has kindly consented to tell us elsewhere 
in this issue something of what he has done and is trying to do, but only 
those who have followed his work closely realize how much he has ac- 
complished and how hopeful he is making the future outlook for the 
parks. We owe it to him and the private sacrifice he is making to carry 
on this work, to do all we can to pass the National Park Service Bill, 
and thus perpetuate this unification of management which he is building 
up and which may all be lost later on without such an established ser- 
vice. 

As another step in the right direction, we note with profound satisfac- 
tion the appointment of Robert Bradford Marshall as General Superin- 
tendent of National Parks. Mr. Marshall succeeds Mr. Mark Daniels, 
who during his term of office accomplished much good in the way of 
suggesting plans for harmonious structures within the parks and the lay- 
ing out of roads with the best landscape ideas in mind. The pressure of 
private engineering practice compelled Mr. Daniels to tender his resig- 
nation. Mr. Marshall brings to this work unusual qualifications and 
sympathetic understanding. He has either personally mapped or super- 
vised the mapping of all of the parks and has visited them frequently in 
the past. He was Chief Geographer of the Geological Survey at the time 
of his appointment, and unquestionably his highest indorsement is to be 
found in one of John Muir’s letters to the Secretary of the Club when 
he says: “I’m delighted we are to see Marshall. The best fellow of them 
ale? 

A bill is pending in Congress for the creation of a national park em- 
bracing the Grand Cafion of the Colorado, which all agree should be 
done. Another bill providing for the enlargement of the Sequoia Na- 
tional Park by adding the wonderful Kern and Kings River region lying 
to the east and north, will shortly be introduced and its passage should 
be urged by our members. This will embrace the Kern River Cafion, 
South Fork of Kings River Cafion and Tehipite Valley, all of them Yo- 
semite-like valleys, and also countless wonderful features such as Mt. 
Whitney, the highest mountain in the United States. John Muir during 
his lifetime heartily indorsed this plan. The grazing and other interests 
in this proposed area must receive some protection and the bill will 
doubtless provide for this, but speaking comparatively, the scenic assets 
of this region far outweigh the commercial uses to which it might be put. 
It needs roads to make it accessible and usable, and the park control is 


much more likely to provide the needed money for this purpose. 
W.E. C. 


REPORTS OF COMMITTEES 
- 


REPORT ON IQI5 OUTING 


The 1915 Outing was a radical departure from the usual summer 
trips taken by the Club. Instead of moving the main camp and having the 
entire party travel over a rather comprehensive itinerary, a central camp 
in the Tuolumne Meadows on the Soda Springs property controlled by 
the Club was selected instead. From this camp side trips were taken to 
numberless points of interest, for in variety of attractive nearby features 
the Tuolumne Meadows surpasses any other campground in the entire 
Sierra. Another departure from our usual custom was keeping this cen- 
tral camp open for three months instead of the single month which 
usually covers the duration of our annual trips. Another smaller camp 
was established at Lake Tenaya for a portion of the time, since this was 
necessary to add to the convenience of those traveling to and from Yo- 
semite. A camp was also established in the Yosemite Valley for a couple 
of weeks prior to the first of July, on which date the Soda Springs camp 
was opened. The Outing was certainly a success judged from the stand- 
point of those who enjoyed its advantages. There were more Eastern 
visitors than usual and their enthusiasm was unbounded. All of us were 
particularly impressed with the wisdom and advantage to the Club of 
gaining control of the Soda Springs property. Now that we have the 
Parsons Memorial Lodge erected there, which will probably be kept 
open each summer by an attendant, our members will be able to derive a 
distinct advantage from its acquisition. It is probably the most desirable 
single piece of property which could be selected in the entire Sierra. 
The opening of the Tioga Road has made this whole region easily ac- 
cessible. 

Financially the Outing was a great failure, and one of the members 
of the Outing Committee was obliged to advance a large sum to cover 
the shortage, since the By-laws of the Club will not permit any outing 
deficit to be made good from the regular Club treasury. This shortage is 
easily accounted for in the light of the experience, The attempt to keep 
the camp running for so long a period, with the heavy continuing ex- 
penses, whereas the attendance was more or less concentrated during a 
portion of this time only, and the greater counter attraction of the Ex- 
position, which very materially reduced the attendance of our own mem- 
bers, explains the failure to make good the heavy initial outlay neces- 
sary to equip such a camp. It may be that some of this shortage can be 
recovered by either continuing a camp there in the future or by dispos- 
ing of the equipment on hand. 

Either the Club will have a camp there this next summer or Mr. 
Desmond, who has the government concession for establishing a chain 


Reports of Comnuttees 83 


of camps throughout the park, will have a camp nearby which will be 
available. 

The regular Club Outing in July, 1916, will be as previously an- 
nounced a trip into the famous Kern River Cafion, affording an easy 
chance to climb Mt. Whitney and other peaks over 14,000 feet in eleva- 
tion, and the party will then enter the upper basin of the South Fork of 
the Kings River, which is another region of wonderful surprises, with 
its splendid peaks, beautiful lakes, waterfalls, and some of the very best 
of “pure Sierra wildness.” More can be seen on this trip, with greater 
comfort and less expense, than would be possible under any other cir- 
cumstances. Those planning to take this trip should enroll now as the 
list is rapidly filling and the number will be strictly limited. Members 
of any mountain club and their relatives are welcome. An announce- 
ment giving complete details will be issued during the spring. 


Wo. E. Cotsy, Chairman, 

J. N. Le Conte, 

Cairn S. TAPPAAN, 
Outing Committee 


REPORT ON LE CONTE MEMORIAL LODGE 


The Le Conte Memorial Lodge, in Yosemite, was officially open this 
year from May 18th to August 26th. On account of the Panama-Pacific 
Exposition at San Francisco the majority of visitors were from the 
Eastern States. The number registering was 1800, and, although there 
must have been at least twice that number of visitors, there were fewer 
this year than usual. This, I think, was due partly to the fact that the 
majority did not know of the Lodge. It seems, therefore, that something 
should be done to inform the public of its existence. Several times peo- 
ple did not come in until their last day in the Valley, and expressed 
their regret at not knowing of the Lodge earlier. 

A number of improvements were made early in the season under the 
direction of Professor Le Conte. The roof was repaired and the old and 
warped floor in front of the fireplace was replaced. The work of piping 
water to the Lodge was finished. 

Perhaps the greatest addition this year was a set of the birds of the 
Yosemite lent by the “Museum of Vertebrate Zoology” of the University 
of California. Many visitors expressed their appreciation of this. Mr. 
Romeyn B. Hough donated a transparency of “Specimen Pages from 
American Woods.” Two or three books were donated to the library. 

The Lodge is in need of two or three small tables on which to place 
the photograph albums, etc., as those in use at present are old and dilap- 
idated. The end walls of the wing storerooms have spread from the 
roof and need repairing. 

Besides serving as a reading room and place of information for the 


84 Sierra Club Bulletin 


tourists of the Valley, this year the Lodge was used as the headquarters 
in the Yosemite Valley for the Sierra Club’s Camp in the Tuolumne 
Meadows. Visitors to this camp could secure information at the Lodge 
concerning it and leave their baggage there. 


The:sale’of maps amounted to. .4. 2.8. $16.50 
The sale of BULLETINS amounted to...... 2.50 
G We) r:) Rr NAM tin NK EAL 7 $19.00 


BayarD BucKHAM, Custodian, 
Marion RANDALL Parsons, Chairman, 
J. N. Le Conte, 
R. M. Price, 

Committee 


REPORT ON PARSONS MEMORIAL LODGE 


During the 1914 outing in the Yosemite National Park the suggestion 
was made that there should be some sort of enduring memorial to the 
late Edward Taylor Parsons, whose untimely death had so recently de- 
prived the Club of the companionship and services of one of its most 
loyal members. Towards the close of the outing the suggestion took 
definite shape, when Mr. Russ Avery proposed at a camp-fire in Hetch 
Hetchy that a memorial lodge be built on the property in Tuolumne 
Meadows controlled by the Club. This location seemed particularly ap- 
propriate to those who knew of Mr. Parsons’ enthusiasm for that partic- 
ular spot and his interest in having it brought within the control of the 
Sierra Club. The proposition was universally approved, and during the 
next few months steps were taken to raise the necessary funds and to 
prepare for the construction of the building. Mr. Mark White rendered 
invaluable assistance in designing the lodge and personally supervising 
during the early part of its construction, and Mr. Walter L. Huber made 
plans covering the structural engineering. As soon as the trails were 
open in the summer of 1915 the materials were sent forward, and early 
in July the work of grading and construction was begun. 

As far as possible the material was obtained from the immediate 
neighborhood. An abundance of just the right kind of rock for the walls 
was found close at hand, and logs for the roof and supports had to be 
hauled but a short distance. The hardware and cement, however, had to 
be packed in on animals by way of Yosemite, and the galvanized iron 
for the roof was brought in by motor truck after the opening of the 
Tioga Road. This roofing will later be covered with some better appear- 
ing material. A very substantial form of construction was sought in or- 
der to render it proof against the severities of winter. The walls are of 
rough granite, bound by a core of cement mortar. They are nearly three 
feet thick at the base, tapering to two feet at the top. The roof is of 


Reports of Committees 85 


hewn logs, laid side by side and covered with galvanized iron sheeting. 
The rafters are bolted to the walls with large iron bolts and held secure 
with heavy straps of iron designed for the purpose. The front door is of 
four-inch planks bound with special straps and hinges. The windows are 
fitted with heavy shutters which can be securely fastened when the lodge 
is closed for the season, so that equipment can be stored with more than 
ordinary safety. The interior is a single room, 40 by 26 feet, with two 
windows on each side and two smaller ones in the front wall, and a 
handsome fireplace at the end opposite the door. The external appear- 
ance harmonizes well with the surroundings. As a prominent architect, 
who has seen it, expresses it, “The building seems to grow out of the 
ground naturally and to belong there just as much as the neighboring 
trees and rocks.” 

This lodge will be used as a headquarters for members of the Club 
and probably will be in charge of a custodian during the summer months, 
making the Soda Springs property controlled by the Club a desirable 
center to visit and from which to make side excursions. 


The cost of construction considerably exceeds the amount of the fund 
- that has so far been raised for the purpose. Many of the members who 
contributed to this fund originally have expressed their intention of add- 
ing a further contribution, and there are doubtless many other members 
who will be glad to be identified with this pioneer effort towards estab- 
lishing a permanent headquarters in the High Sierra. Any contributions 
in excess of the amount needed to make up the deficit will be applied to 
improvements to the lodge. 

A brief summary of the cost of construction and the condition of the 
fund is appended: 


Metemiale amy tOOlSwis eee ele ler aise $ 4090.23 
Freight and express to Yosemite Valley...... 165.24 
Wscansportation: to Seda Springs... 60.4000). 563.55 
TS oYey GL MA SC be aa PA A a 1,244.95 
Maimbenancer Or WwOrkimen: ote 6 ee ge ele 500.00 
Miscellaneous) expenses! i Pt eek 47.51 

Pata ee UN tc vapee cele ceene he Monch Mutu onal Wal $3,011.48 
siotalveontribution tor tund so) ie we ee oe 1,906.15 


1D, SISTCT ea Ss ANE ANSE SO eA INS GDR EE ARS $1,105.33 


The deficit has been temporarily advanced by one of the committee in 
charge of the building. 
Wo. E. Corsy, Chairman, 
J. N. LE Conte, 
Wo. F. Bape, 
Committee 


NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 
Edited by Wi1LL1AM E. CoLsy 


- 
THE JoHN Muir TRAIL 


During the 1914 outing of the Sierra Club, a suggestion was made by 
Mr. Meyer Lissner of Los Angeles that a State appropriation should be 
secured for building trails with which to make the High Sierra more 
accessible. After Mr. Muir’s death, the happy idea occurred of making 
this appropriation a State recognition of his inestimable service in 
bringing the wonderful mountains of California to the attention of the 
world. Accordingly a bill was drafted by the Sierra Club making an ap- 
propriation of $10,000 (to be paid in two equal annual installments) 
with which to construct a trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney, to 
be known as the John Muir Trail. In spite of adverse financial condi- 
tions, the State Legislature was persuaded by earnest work of the mem- 
bers of the Sierra Club, aided by several civic organizations, to pass the 
bill. Governor Johnson’s final approval made the construction of the trail 
possible. It is, indeed, a most appropriate memorial to John Muir, who 
spent many of the best years of his life exploring the region which it . 
will make accessible. This trail will afford a route for traveling with 
saddle and pack animals north and south along and near the crest of the 
entire High Sierra. It will begin the work of making accessible one of 
the grandest mountain regions on the American continent. 

State Engineer Wilbur F. McClure was charged with the selection of 
the final route and the actual construction of the trail. Mr. McClure, 
after considering suggestions from the Sierra Club, from federal off- 
cials and others, made two trips over the lower part of the trail before 
determining its final location as follows: 


Beginning at a ‘point on the north floor of the Yosemite Valley 
and running from thence by the most practicable route northeasterly 
to a junction with the Tioga Road at a point near Tenaya Lake; 
thence northeasterly and easterly along and upon said Tioga Road 
to a point near the Soda Springs in the Tuolumne Meadows; thence 
in a general southeasterly direction up Lyell Cafion to the headwaters 
of said cafion, to and over Donohue Pass; thence in a general south- 
easterly direction across Rush Creek and Island Pass to Thousand 
Island Lake; thence easterly and southeasterly through Agnew 
Meadows, Pumice Flat, past Devil Post Pile, Reds Meadows, Fish 
Creek Valley, over Silver Pass, and thence by the most feasible route 
to the north fork of Mono Creek. Thence in a general southerly di- 
rection down the north fork of Mono Creek Valley, and Mono Creek 


Notes and Correspondence 87 


Valley to Vermilion Valley; thence by the way of the present trav- 
eled trail southeasterly and southerly to Marie Lake and to and over 
Seldon Pass; thence continuing southerly and southeasterly along 
the valley of the south fork of the San Joaquin River to the mouth 
of Evolution Creek; thence continuing in a general southeasterly di- 
rection up Evolution Creek Valley, past Evolution Lake, Wanda 
Lake, over Muir Pass, down Le Conte Cafion to Grouse Meadow and 
the mouth of Palisade Creek; thence easterly up Palisade Creek Val- 
ley and over the pass between the waters of Palisade Creek and the 
drainage of the south fork of Kings River; thence through the Se- 
quoia National Forest, Upper Basin, and traversing headwaters of 
the south fork of Kings River to the pass about one and one-half 
miles southwest of Mount Pinchot; thence southerly and southwest- 
erly along. Woods Creek and the south fork of same; thence by the 
way of Rae Lake, Glenn Pass, Bullfrog Lake and Bubbs Creek to 
and over an unnamed pass near Junction Peak; thence into the water- 
shed of Tyndall Creek, and over and along the high sandy plateau 
and to Crabtree Meadows; thence in a general easterly direction to 
Mount Whitney. 


For carrying on construction work, Mr. McClure wisely availed him- 
self of the splendid organization which the Forest Service had available 
for supervising the work. Thus neither time nor money was spent in 
exploration by those unfamiliar with the region. In short, every dollar 
spent bought the greatest possible value. In addition considerable valu- 
able supervision was given by forest supervisors and rangers without cost 
from the fund available for the John Muir Trail. The plans for co- 
operation between the State Department of Engineering and the Forest 
Service were agreed upon at a meeting held in the rooms of the Sierra 
Club, June 4, 1915, at which were present Mr. W. F. McClure, State en- 
gineer; Mr. Coert Du Bois, district forester; Mr. Roy Headley, assist- 
ant district forester; Mr. Paul G. Redington, supervisor of the Sierra 
National Forest; Mr. A. B. Patterson, superintendent of the Sequoia 
National Forest; Mr. W. E. Colby, secretary of the Sierra Club, and 
Mr. Walter L. Huber of the Sierra Club’s trail committee. 

The appropriation did not become available until August 8, leaving a 
short field season for work. However, in this short season much work 
was accomplished. Progress within the Sierra National Forest is well 
shown by Supervisor Redington’s report to the State Engineer, much of 
which is here quoted: 


REPORT ON JOHN Murr TRAIL Work, FOR SEASON OF 1915, SIERRA 
NATIONAL ForREST 


Route. The route which this trail will follow was outlined in a mem- 
orandum transmitted with the State Engineer’s letter of August 12, 
1915, to the District Forester. As a result of the field investigation made 
this year, it is believed that for the sake of economy, variety and ease 


88 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of travel, and to obtain greater scenic attractions, the stipulated route 
should be changed at certain points, which will be discussed in order. 

1. From Grouse Meadow, which lies on the Middle Fork of Kings 
River, near the mouth of Palisade Creek, the official routing of the trail 
is specified as: “Thence easterly, up Palisade Creek Valley and over the 
pass between the waters of Palisade Creek and the drainage of the south 
fork of Kings River.” No old trail exists over the pass in question, al- 
though a rough trail ascends Palisade Creek from its mouth to the 
mouth of Cataract Creek. 

Following a conference between the State engineer, Forest Service 
officials and representatives of the Sierra Club, when the status of the 
trail work previously done on the route up the Middle Fork of Kings 
River from Simpson Meadow, by funds furnished by Fresno County, 
the Sierra Club and the Forest Service, was explained, no work was 
planned up Palisade Creek, since it was impracticable to get an outfit 
there from the Owens River country, and impossible to move the trail 
crew at work lower down on the Middle Fork, up to the mouth of Pal- 
isade Creek. Later, the situation not having apparently been understood, 
the matter was taken up in detail by correspondence, and the State en- 
gineer authorized the continuance of the work on the Middle Fork 
trail, as preliminary to the work which would finally be undertaken 
from the mouth of Palisade Creek, east. Eventually the route over the 
pass at the head of Palisade Creek may be constructed. It has seemed 
to the Forest officers, however, since a good trail already exists from 
the South Fork of Kings River up Copper Creek, over Granite Pass, 
down to Simpson Meadow and thence up the Middle Fork to within 
11%4 miles of the mouth of Palisade Creek, that for the present at least 
the existing trail spoken of should be improved, and the new trail from 
Cartridge Creek to Palisade Creek should be finished. It will cost less 
money, so far as we can ascertain with certainty, to put the trail through 
to Palisade Creek than to put a trail up Palisade Creek and over the 
pass at its head at an elevation of 12,500 feet. Granite Pass, on the lower 
trail, can be crossed earlier in the year than would be possible on Pal- 
isade Pass, and the lower trail takes the traveler from Palisade Creek 
down the magnificent cafion of the Middle Fork, across a spectacular 
gorge near the mouth of Cartridge Creek, and into splendid camping 
for man and beast at Simpson Meadow. The travel is varied, far more 
than would be the case if the route over Palisade Pass was followed. 
With available funds somewhat limited in amount, keeping in mind the 
comparative maintenance cost, and with the desirability of making a 
long connected piece of safe trail for the least expenditure of money, it 
is recommended that the Palisade-South Fork unit be dropped from 
consideration until the balance of the work has been completed on the 
entire project. 

2. The second material change recommended is toward the northern 
end of the trail. The present route from Agnew Meadows to Thousand 


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Notes and Correspondence 89 


Island Lake leads through average mountain country. If changed as 
suggested it will take the traveler by the shores of three of the most 
picturesque lakes in the entire region (where splendid fishing of golden 
trout will be possible in 1917), and will give him a close view of the 
Minarets and Mounts Banner and Ritter. The expense to put this trail 
through will not exceed that necessary to establish a trail on the other 
route. 
METHODS OF WORK 


Supervision. The Middle Fork of Kings River unit of this year’s 
work was supervised by District Ranger Roy Boothe. He went in at the 
start, visited the project again with the supervisor from August 5 to 9, 
when the work being done was inspected and a reconnaissance of the 
proposed route of the trail from Palisade Creek to Muir Pass was made. 
He went again, in October, to help bring the crew out. 

The Muir Pass-French Cafion unit was supervised by District Ranger 
Frank Price, and during a large part of the work Assistant Ranger 
Mark Cathey was with the crew. Price was on the job three times, work- 
ing himself for over a week with the men. The supervisor visited this 
project in the latter part of July, going over the route from Blaney 
Meadow to Muir Pass. Later, in September, he inspected the work be- 
ing done and went over the proposed route of the trail from Blaney 
Meadow to the head of Fish Creek. He had in previous years gone over 
the route from Reds Meadows north to Island Pass. 

Deputy Supervisor Jordan, in September, went over the proposed 
route from Reds Meadows to the head of Fish Creek. With the excep- 
tion, therefore, of the stretch from the mouth of Palisade Creek to the 
pass at its head, the entire route of the trail within the Sierra Forest, 
as outlined by the State Engineer, has been gone over, and the situation 
ahead is thoroughly known to the supervising officers. 

Crews. Two crews were employed, one in the Middle Fork of Kings 
River, the other on the Muir Pass-French Cafion unit. Number of men 
in crews was eight, including foreman and cook. Wages paid foreman, 
$3.00 per day and board; laborers, $2.00 per day and board; cook, $60.00 
per month and board. The foremen selected were men of experience in 
handling crews and in trail work. The foreman of the crew in the Mid- 
dle Fork of Kings River, Sylvester Dehl, was chosen because of his 
experience also in rock and powder work. 

Transportation. The men walked to the job. Materials and supplies 
were taken into camp on pack animals. Informal bids were obtained 
from packers prior to start of work and lowest price accepted. Prices, 
$1.00 per day for pack and saddle horses; $2.00 per day for packer, one 
packer taking care of six animals. Each agimal packed a minimum load 
of 150 pounds. The schedule of travel was determined by Forest offi- 
cers and the packers were paid for the schedule time. 

The proportion of the packing charge on a job of this kind to its 
total cost will always be high on account of distance from supply points. 


go Sierra Club Bulletin 


Supplies. Formal bids on all supplies and materials needed in con- 
nection with the job were obtained prior to start of work, and supplies 
were purchased in accordance with the specifications of the accepted 
bid. The tools, equipment, etc., were, upon completion of the season’s 
work, cached in safe places convenient to the start of work for another 
year. The food supplies were practically all consumed. 

Trail Specifications. Tread, 30 inches minimum width. Plenty of 
turnouts provided in dangerous places. Grade in no case except under 
extraordinary conditions exceeding 15 per cent. The exceptions so far as 
noted were extremely few. 

Where grading work was done, ample clearance for packs was made 
in cuts, and in timber country six feet clearance between trees was ob- 
tained. Trail was placed, so far as possible, out of the way of slides, in 
order to decrease cost of up-keep. 

Monuments or trail blazes were placed close together, in no case more 
than the distance of a chain apart. Generally all prominent trees along 
the trail were blazed, the standard blaze of the Forest Service, which 
consists of one long blaze with a notch above it, being used. In the 
country above timber-line, monuments of large size were placed. Boggy 
ground was avoided as far as possible. Sufficient overhead brushing was 
done to allow of clearance of rider on horse of average height. Care 
was taken where trail traversed slick rock to chink crevices closely. 

Powder. The powder used on the Middle Fork of Kings River unit 
was Hercules 40 per cent; that on the Muir Pass-French Cafion unit 
was Trojan 40 per cent. Next year it is planned to use 60 per cent pow- 
der in the hard-rock work. 

Bridges. One bridge, that across the mouth of French Cafion, was 
built. This bridge is one of the most important features of the entire 
project. 

Recommendations. It is recommended that if we continue to work 
another year, we be notified at the start of the work of any overhead 
to be charged against the season’s allotment by the State Engineer’s 
office. 

It is also recommended that all checks for labor be sent to the ad- 
dresses of the individuals listed on the payrolls, or if this is not feas- 
ible, to the Forest Supervisor at his official address. This year checks 
were sent in one instance in care of the man who happened to have 
signed the payroll as acting supervisor. He was on leave, and delivery 
of the checks was delayed until the rangers felt it wise to avoid the 
neighborhood of the men who had money coming to them. In a sense 
the Forest Service, in having faeld charge of the work, is looked to for 
payment, and delay therefore is blamed to the field officers. This is not 
fair and can be avoided next year by following the above recommenda- 
tion. 

We shall keep in mind the State Engineer’s suggestion of obtaining 
outfits from the east side of the mountains. The feasibility of this is 


Notes and Correspondence OI 


doubted, since we could not satisfactorily pick our personnel and would 
have to hire unknown packers. Furthermore, the summit passes cannot 
usually be crossed by animals in June, when we would want to start 
work, and could get to the job readily from this side. 

Acknowledgment.—I desire to place on record my appreciation of the 
interest taken in the work by the men engaged in it, with particular 
reference to Forest Rangers Roy Boothe and Frank Price and Assistant 
Ranger Mark Cathey. The task of overseeing the packing of powder, 
steel, supplies, etc., over difficult mountain trails, and of handling men, 
the best of whom grow sick and tired of the isolation and monotony of 
camp fifty to seventy miles from civilization, is no small one and requires 
lots of patience and tact. I am glad to say that the work was so han- 
dled that many of the men who worked on the job this summer, and 
who are experienced, have asked to be considered for employment next 
season. Respectfully submitted, 

PAUL REDINGTON, 


Forest Supervisor 
Northfork, California, November 22, 1915. 


REPORT ON JOHN MUIR TRAIL WORK, SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST 
The route of the trail within the Sequoia National Forest was not 
definitely determined as early as in the Sierra National Forest, but, in 
the short period remaining after the final determination was made and 
before the close of the field season, good progress was made. The follow- 
ing expenditures were made for trail work within the Sequoia National 
Forest from the appropriation for the John Muir Trail: 


VV AGES) UA Ty ROE AN LUNE AUR CU a Rea an ae Aaa $ 650.50 
SUPSISECHCE SHIP PIIES ye ke elie WON MINER GM uci hl) 209.47 
@ther' supplies and equipment...) bl ss 281.50 
iBnneiht express and |hauling, 4.0. ee yoke 104.42 

TOG eT De AEN a UR ALR ISO a $1,245.89 


Approximately six miles of the hardest portion of the trail is com- 
pleted, and a route between Kern and Kings rivers is opened. A portion 
of the trail at the head of Shepherd’s Creek was completed with co- 
operative funds (not from John Muir Trail appropriation) at an ex- 
pense of $200.00. This makes the total cost of the trail $1,445.89. Of the 
$1,245.89 from the John Muir Trail appropriation, $76.60 was expended 
for camp equipment and tools, and $1,169.29 for actual trail construc- 
tion. With the additional $200.00 co-operative funds, the average cost 
per mile for the six miles, exclusive of camp equipment, was $228.21. 

Ranger Parkinson, who was directly in charge of the work, reported 
on October 8: 


“Saddle horses may pass from Center Basin to Tyndall 
Creek at the present time, but additional work will be done 


92 Sierra Club Bulletin 


in the spring on a short portion leading from Junction Pass 
to Center Basin, about 50 yards in distance . . . . Anexcel- 
ent grade was obtained on the trail throughout, and the 
scenery is beyond comprehension; ... . 

“Work on this trail was discontinued on September 27 
on account of weather conditions, and of the fact that the 
workmen had to walk three and one-half miles to work. 

“In the spring two men will be placed in Center Basin to 
complete the portion to Bullfrog, two at East Fork, and five 
at Crabtree Meadows.” 


With the remainder of the appropriation a passable trail for saddle 
and pack animals will be completed from Yosemite to Mount Whitney 
during the field season of 1916. Further appropriations must be secured 
to construct that part of the official John Muir Trail from Grouse 
Meadow easterly up Palisade Creek, over the pass from Palisade Creek 
to the South Fork of Kings River, down the latter and thence via Rae 
Lake and Glenn Pass to Bubbs Creek, Additional expenditures for the 
improvement of many places in the trail are also desirable. It is hoped 
that, after the splendid work accomplished, and with increasing favorable 
public sentiment, additional appropriations will be secured. 


LASSEN’S SECOND YEAR OF REJUVENATION 
By RuuirF S$. HoLway 

In the Sierra CLuB BuLietin of January, 1915, Mr. William C. 
Hodge gave a brief account of the eruptions of Lassen Peak during its 
first two or three weeks of activity, with especial reference to the injury 
to the forest-fire lookout house which had been placed on the highest 
point of the mountain. The eruptions during the remainder of the year 
1914 were on the average about as frequent as those during the first 
month of activity, but the maximum intensity as measured by the height 
of the column of steam and ash became approximately twice as great. 
From July to October, inclusive, in one or more eruptions of each 
month, the ejected ash column rose to estimated heights of 10,000 to 
12,000 feet above the crater. By October, 1914, the new crater was re- 
ported as being 900 feet in length and much more rounded in outline, 
the area of the opening being some five times as great as at the end of 
June. 

Some further idea of the magnitude of the eruptions may be gained 
from the record of distant observers. A letter from Professor Charles 
F, Shaw, who was at Amadee, about sixty-five miles eastward from Las- 
sen Peak on October 23, 1914, contains particularly interesting observa- 
tions. The eruptions began at 5:40 p.M. The crest of the mountain 
showed plainly over the tops of the nearer hills, and the smoke of the 
eruption was clearly silhouetted against the western sky, extending di- 
rectly upward from the peak. 


Notes and Correspondence 93 


“The smoke rolled up until practically the entire height (12,000 feet) 
was reached before any change in form occurred, when just below the 
top of the column there was a tendency to stratification, and a layer ex- 
tended out toward the south and toward the north. When this appeared, 
the smoke column began to lean toward the north and, from our point 
of vision, apparently toward the northeast, and with this inclination of 
the column distortion took place, the upper part spreading out into 
streamers. As soon as the inclination of the smoke column became very 
plain, we could readily distinguish indications of falling material. The 
lower two-thirds of the column seemed to be dropping some material 
that was falling in a slightly oblique line, the obliqueness pointing back 
toward the mountain peak. As the eruption continued and the smoke 
column blew out more toward the north, the streaked condition indi- 
cating falling material became more and more apparent.” 

So far as known to the writer, no one reached the summit of Lassen 
during the interval from October, 1914, to March 15, 1915. On that date 
Mr. George Olsen and Mr. Charley Yori, who remained during the win- 
ter, the one at Chester, the other at Drakesbad, made the ascent, using 
skis for the greater part of the way. Their report indicated some en- 
largement of the crater since October, but the general shape and ap- 
pearance were still the same. 

Accompanying Mr. Hodge’s article was a tabular list of eruptions, 
closing with No. 53, October 7, 1914, compiled by Forest Supervisor W. 
J. Rushing. Mr. Rushing has kindly furnished the list as continued by 
him to Nov. 22, 1915, to which date 132 eruptions are catalogued. Mr. 
Rushing has done a valuable service in compiling this list, which is un- 
doubtedly the best record available. It is well, however, to remind those 
not acquainted with the topography and the winter climate of that 
sparsely settled region that no list of eruptions can be complete, since 
the surrounding peaks and ridges shut off the view from several of the 
few near-by stations, particularly from the station nearest. which is 
seven miles away. During winter clouds frequently prevent observations 
from some directions and not from others, or shut off entirely any view 
from near or far. Mr. Olsen at Chester, about twenty miles away in an 
air line, was fortunate in having no hills to obstruct the view. From 
November 11, 1914, to May 13, 1915, he reports over forty eruptions 
with many cloudy periods intervening. During the same period Mr. 
Rushing reports 16 eruptions not observed by Mr. Olsen, and does not 
mention nineteen seen by Mr. Olsen. It seems therefore very probable 
that the average number of eruptions per month during the winter ap- 
proximated that of the preceding summer. 

During the summer of 1915 the most spectacular eruptions and the 
most interesting, scientifically, occurred on May 20 and 22. These erup- 
tions marked the culmination of nearly three weeks of activity, for Mr. 
Olsen’s record shows constant eruptions all day: May 4, 5, 6 and 7. 
Clouds then prevented further observation until the thirteenth, when a 
short period of clear sky revealed another eruption; after six more days 


94 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of storm a temporary break in the clouds showed Lassen in an active 
state on the nineteenth. The eruption during the night of May 20 re- 
sulted in the flood which swept down Hat Creek on the morning of May 
21. The first telegraphed reports regarding this eruption told of molten 
lava flowing down the mountain sides and of streams of mud ejected 
from the crater itself, but the fact is now well established that the mat- 
ter actually ejected from the crater consisted largely of rocks and ashes 
and of very hot steam. 

This eruption was markedly different from preceding eruptions in 
that the column of steam and ash, instead of being projected upward as 
usual, was directed obliquely down the slope of the mountain. Evidently 
the throat of the crater had been choked by debris and from under the 
edge of this lid the explosion forced the steam and highly heated rock 
and ashes down upon the great mass of snow lying on the northeasterly 
slope of the mountain; the resultant rapid melting produced the sudden 
flood which swept down Hat Creek on the morning of May 21. The ac- 
tual damage to the main farming which lies fully twenty miles to the 
northward of Lassen Peak was greatly exaggerated in the early reports. 
In fact in the lower valley it is highly probable that the value of the fer- 
tilizing action of the mud more than compensated for the damage of the 
flood. But at the foot of the mountain and along the headwaters of Hat 
and Lost creeks no description nor photographs can adequately express 
the feeling of desolation experienced when one sees the destruction of 
the natural features of these valleys. The downward blast leveled the 
forest as if it were no more than a grain field. That the trees were blown 
down and not broken off by the flood which followed is shown by Plate 
CLII, where trees leveled by the blast lie above the highest flood line. 
The needles of the pine trees standing on the borders of the sharply de- 
fined path of the blast were killed by the heat of the steam and ashes. 

Another feature of this eruption that has received but scant attention 
is the narrow fan-shaped belt of rock fragments projected for miles 
across the country in the direction of the Hat Creek blast. At Hat 
Mountain fragments ranging in size from dust particles to pieces seven 
inches long covered the snow on the old crater rim (Plate CLI). At 
Cinder Cone they were found “as large as hen’s eggs” and twenty miles 
away about the size of ordinary marbles. At Eagle Lake, some forty 
miles distant from Lassen, the lapilli were of the size of coarse sand. 

At the time of these eruptions the snow on Lassen Peak was so deep 
that it was not until May 27 that the actual crater was finally reached. 
In this first party were Mr. David Durst, from Susanville, and Mr. Wil- 
liam G. Reed and the writer, from the University of California. Even 
with the skilful guidance of Charley Yori, of Drakesbad, in picking a 
path among the snowdrifts, which covered rocks and gullies alike, the 
party was six hours on horseback making the six miles to the little pla- 
teau at the southeast base of the final peak. 

Having in mind the new chasm which yawned in the middle of the 
ancient crater, on climbing to the rim we were astounded to see an al- 


Notes and Correspondence 95 


most level plateau of ugly bare rocks, with hissing steam escaping from 
the many cracks and crevices, and over all the shimmering air indi- 
cating the heat below. Strange as it may seem, those of the party who 
had visited the crater before found this uplifted mass of old lava more 
awe-inspiring than the former depths of the crater, leading downward 
to the internal forces which had produced the great explosions. 

Closer inspection revealed the fact that the crater had not been filled 
by ejected material, but that the entire mass had been shoved bodily up- 
ward (Plate CLI). The old crater rim sloped downward some twenty 
feet and there met the almost vertical wall of the uplifted center with a 
strip of talus at its foot. Photographs taken later of the southwest and 
northwest slopes show the dark rocks of the uplift filling the well- 
known notches in the old crater rim, notches which prior to May, 1915, 
gave, from some points of view, the impression of two separate peaks. 

Interest in the eruptions occurring during the remainder of 1915 rests 
largely in the question whether they indicate that the volcano is be- 
coming quiescent once more. Professor Diller of the United States Geo- 
logical Survey has expressed the opinion that the great outbursts in 
May spent the present energy of the volcano and that it will again be- 
come dormant. The writer was at first apprehensive that Professor Dil- 
ler’s opinion was correct, but hope for continued activity is not yet lost. 
Eruptions have occurred at rather frequent intervals throughout the 
summer and fall. Many of them have thrown columns of steam and ash 
to a height of several thousand feet. The eruption during the night of 
October 30, 1915, was sufficient to cause a fall of ashes at Susanville, 
forty miles away, as attested by Mr. David Durst, principal of the High 
School at that place. The Shasta Courier of November 2 reports an 
eruption seen from Redding on November 1, “the most spectacular since 
May 22,” and estimates the ash column as 10,000 to 12,000 feet in height. 

One further question should be discussed, and that is the one so often 
asked: “Has any real lava been thrown out? Large quantities of real 
lava which in a former period cooled and became solid down in the 
throat of the volcano have been ejected, but there is no evidence that 
molten lava has flowed from the crater during the present period of ac- 
tivity. It is of course self evident that some source of great heat has 
existed within the volcano for the past two years. Several of the reports 
that hot rocks or luminous rocks have been seen during eruptions oc- 
curring at night are too reliable to be discarded. The following extract 
from a letter from Miss Inez Hyatt of Sacramento, whose party was 
camped at Manzanita Lake, scarcely five miles from the top of Lassen 
Peak, is clear and definite in its testimony. 

“We really did see a wonderful eruption at ten o’clock at night, June 
first (1915), when red-hot material shot up, looking very much like 
flames, and we clearly saw one huge red-hot rock roll down the slope 
toward Manzanita Creek. There were other rocks, too, which lodged, I 
suppose, near the top, but this one big rock shot far down beyond the 
rest. Then a big cloud of black smoke came out and hung like a big 


96 Sierra Club Bulletin 


balloon over the mountain for fifteen minutes and then disappeared. It 
was an ideal night, dark, but clear so that all the stars were out.” 

Subsequently Professor Diller found rocks in that vicinity which 
seemed to have been recently fused on their surface. It would seem to 
be a reasonable conclusion, then, that molten lava, whether actually 
ejected or not, has been nearer the surface than usual during the recent 
renewal of volcanic activity. 

During the present winter it is not probable that many reliable ob- 
servations of the crater can be made, but the general public as well as 
the physiographer will await with interest the coming of another sum- 
mer, which will give the opportunity to learn whether the volcano is 
really declining in activity or whether the slowly accumulating stress of 
the internal forces of the earth is to be relieved by an eruption greater 
than any of the past two years. It may be said, however, that downward 
blasts from volcanoes are relatively scarce and that the probabilities are 
against the repetition of the particular combination of circumstances 
which produced the Hat Creek flood. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLI. 


June 28, 1914. View across ancient crater from southern rim, showing new 
crater with escaping steam 


May 27, 1915. From approximately same position, showing chaotic mass of old lava 
uplifted and filling the former craters 


CHANGES IN CRATER OF MOUNT LASSEN 
Photos by R. S. Holway 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLII. 


DESTRUCTION OF TIMBER BY MUD-FLOW FROM MOUNT LASSEN 


These areas were originally heavily forested. Note trees above line of 
mud-flow which were felled by steam blast 


Photos by R. S. Holway 


NATIONAL PARK NOTES 
> 


NATIONAL PARKS—IHE FEDERAL Porticy, PAst AND FutTurReE* 
To My Fellow-Members of the Sierra Club: 


At the request of Mr. William E. Colby, your secretary, I am glad to 
give you a statement for the Srrrra CLuB BULLETIN of my stewardship 
over the National Parks during the past year, and something of the 
plans that the Department of the Interior has outlined for the coming 
year. 

The Yosemite National Park, in which the Sierra Club is more vital- 
ly interested than any of the others, has seen much interesting develop- 
ment during the past year. The most important has been securing and 
rebuilding the old Tioga Road, reaching some forty-five miles across 
the Park, from the west to the east side. Over $30,000 has been spent 
during the past season in putting this road in condition, constructing 
new bridges, putting in culverts, and general surfacing work. It is now 
passable to automobiles and is already an important link in the trans- 
continental travel, besides opening up portions of the Park that have 
hitherto been practically inaccessible to the ordinary tourist. The devel- 
opment of the road has been accompanied by close co-operation with 
State Engineer W. F. McClure. The State purchased the east and west 
ends of the Tioga Road and Mr. McClure promptly went ahead with the 
necessary work to put these sections into good condition, which made it 
possible to open up the whole road by the twenty-eighth of July last. In 
the estimates of appropriations for the coming year the Department of the 
Interior is asking for $75,000 for the further improvement of the Tioga 
Road. If Congress makes this appropriation the Department will arrange 
for regrading a number of points along the road, particularly at the 
crossing of Yosemite Creek. With the additional work which the State 
intends to do on their portions, the end of next season should make the 
Tioga road a perfect mountain highway, with grades that any car of 
moderate power can negotiate, and with scenery along the route that 
will be the equal of any in the land. 

The Big Oak Flat Road has been purchased by Tuolumne County and 
the portion within the Park given to the United States by the county 
authorities. This leaves the Wawona Road as the only toll road in the 
Park. The State authorities are arranging for the rebuilding of the por- 
tion of the Big Oak Flat Road outside the Park, and surveys have been 
made for the relocation at a point where it enters the Park near the 
Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees. A survey has been made by State and 


_ * The Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Stephen T. Mather, has. 
kindly written this comprehensive statement at our request. [W. E. C.] 


98 Sierra Club Bulletin 


National authorities in co-operation, and the heavy grades along the por- 
tion of the road just west of Crane Flat will be eliminated. $20.000 is be- 
ing asked for the improvement of this road for next year. Congress is 
also being asked for $110,000 to make the road between El Portal and 
the Yosemite Valley a surfaced boulevard, with a width of twenty-eight 
feet. If this amount is obtained, tourists will be landed in the Valley with 
far greater comfort than before. The Department is also asking for 
$4,000 for the construction of a trail to the Waterwheel Falls of the Tu- 
olumne River, which will make these wonderful falls readily accessible 
from Lake Tenaya. 

Concessions have been given to the Desmond Commissary Company 
for a new hotel to be erected in the Valley at a cost of approximately 
$150,000, and a new hotel at Glacier Point to cost approximately $35,000, 
and the establishment of at least four chalet camps in the upper Park 
country. One of these is to be located at Harden Lakes, from which 
point a view of the superb Tuolumne Cafion can readily be obtainable; 
another at Lake Tenaya, and one each at Lake Merced and in the Little 
Yosemite Valley. These are to be followed in later seasons by the es- 
tablishment of additional camps for the accommodation of tourists at 
low rates. The Desmond Company will establish an auto service between 
El Portal and the Valley, as well as on the Big Oak Flat and Tioga 
roads. In fact, it is planned to maintain an auto service on the Tioga 
Road as far as the Sierra Club camp at the Soda Spring in Tuolumne 
Meadows. If plans under way are developed, the service will also be 
maintained from Tuolumne Meadows by way of Mono Lake and Bridge- 
port to Lake Tahoe. A good saddle and pack horse service will also be 
maintained between the various camps established by the Desmond 
Company. Camps Curry, Lost Arrow and Ahwanee in the Yosemite Val- 
ley will be maintained as heretofore. 

Mr. Mark Daniels, for the past year general superintendent and 
landscape engineer of National Parks, has given much personal work to 
the development of plans for the new Yosemite Village, which will cen- 
ter around the new hotel to be built under the shadow of Yosemite 
Falls and directly across the river from the present Sentinel Hotel. Mr. 
Daniels is deserving of much credit for the artistic work that he has 
given in the development of his plan. 


I want to thank the officers of the Sierra Club, particularly your 
president, Professor Joseph N. Le Conte, and your secretary, Mr. Wil- 
liam E. Colby, for the assistance they have given me in working out the 
varied problems of this Park. Their intimate acquaintance and knowl- 
edge of the Valley have made their suggestions and recommendations 
of great value. 

In Sequoia National Park little was done in the way of important 
improvements during the past year, but for the next fiscal year the De- 
partment is taking an important step in asking for an appropriation of 
$50,000 to be expended by the Secretary of the Interior in the purchase 


National Park Notes 99 


of private holdings in the Park. This is for the purpose of securing some 
of the stands of sequoias in the Giant Forest now in private ownership, 
provided they can be obtained at a reasonable figure. Efforts have been. 
made in the past to appropriate for these holdings, and it is hoped that 
Congress this year will authorize the Secretary of the Interior to ex- 
pend this proposed sum. The Department is also asking for an appro- 
priation of $11,000 for the repair and improvement of the Mineral King 
Road for a distance of eleven miles across the Park. The Tulare County 
authorities are doing their part in improving the roads which lead to the 
Park entrances, and the proposed improvement of the Mineral King 
Road is intended to fit in with the work which they are doing. 

In the Mount Raimer National Park, now under Supervisor D. L. 
Reaburn, a civil engineer of high standing, much has been accomplished 
during the past year. Supervisor Reaburn did particularly excellent work 
in handling the auto traffic to Paradise Park without a single mishap, 
and in putting the roads in excellent shape for the heavy travel which 
they received during the past season. During the fall Mr. Reaburn made 
a survey of the proposed new road along the Carbon River, which, when 
built, will open up a new entrance to the Park from the northwest cor- 
ner. In the estimates for the next fiscal year the Department is asking 
for $46,000 for the construction of eight miles of this road, which would 
bring it up to the Carbon River Glacier, and also assist in making ac- 
cessible the beautiful Spray Park which lies on the northwest flanks of 
the mountain. 

Plans are well under way for a new camp hotel to be constructed in 
Paradise Park at the opening of the season of 1916, and much of the 
material is already on the ground. The Department also expects to con- 
struct next season a shelter at Camp Muir, so that the mountain climb- 
ers will have a refuge at this important point on the way to the summit. 

In the Yellowstone National Park the most important event during 
the past year was the opening of the Park on August 1 to automobiles. 
Nearly 1,000 machines visited the Park, operating under schedule which 
did not bring them in contact with the horse-drawn stages. During the 
coming year it is expected that a number of camps for the benefit of 
automobilists will be established at important points throughout the 
Park, and an effort will be made to develop the Cody, or eastern, en- 
trance of the Park, and, if feasible, an automobile stage service will be 
established from this entrance to connect with horse-drawn stages at 
Yellowstone Lake. 

The road construction and repairs in the Yellowstone National Park 
are carried on by the Engineer Corps of the Army, and the War Depart- 
ment is asking for next year a total appropriation of $292,000. This will 
be used largely in further improvement of the roads, and particularly in 
surfacing the portion of the road from the Gardiner entrance with oil 
and macadam. Under Major Fries of the Army nearly $200,000 was ex- 
pended during the past year, and the roads in the Yellowstone Park are 


100 Sierra Club Bulletin 


now in far better shape than ever before. Nearly all the old wooden 
bridges and culverts have been replaced by concrete, and the roadways 
straightened and widened. 

In the Crater Lake National Park the Army engineers are also in 
charge of road construction, and during the fiscal year ending June 30, 
1915, expended a total of $122,000. This work has made accessible to 
tourists a number of very interesting views of the lake along the rim, 
and has resulted in good roads being built to all the important entrances 
in the Park. The War Department is asking for $100,000 for the next 
fiscal year, to be used largely in surfacing the roads already completed. 
The hotel which has been in course of erection for some seasons is now 
practically finished, and if plans which the supervisor of the Park is ac- 
tively pushing for a new road from Medford to the western entrance of 
the Park are worked out by the State authorities, Crater Lake will be 
accessible next season more fully than it ever has before. 

The Rocky Mountain National Park was opened this summer and had 
its dedication last August under the chairmanship of Enos Mills, which 
was very largely attended. The State of Colorado, and the city of Den- 
ver in particular, has taken a keen interest in the development of this, 
the most eastern of our National Parks, and it is expected that from its 
accessibility the number of tourists visiting it will be much larger than 
visit any of the other parks. 

In the Glacier National Park the most important development during 
the past year was the opening up of the new Many Glaciers Hotel at 
Lake McDermott. Appropriations are being asked for a total of about 
$45,000 to improve the roads on the east side of the Park, making these 
new improvements more easy of access to tourists. Congress is also be- 
ing asked to appropriate $45,000 for the construction of a road along 
Lake McDermott, at the foot of Gunsight Pass, with the ultimate plan 
that a good automobile road will be built across Gunsight Pass to con- 
nect up the east and west sides of the Park. 

I feel that all of the friends of the National Parks are to be con- 
gratulated in securing the services of Mr. R. B. Marshall, former chief 
geographer and head of the topographic branch of the Geological Sur- 
vey, who now becomes superintendent of National Parks, succeeding Mr. 
Mark Daniels, whose personal business made it necessary for him to re- 
sign this important post. Mr. Marshall has been closely in touch with 
National Park work for many years and will give his close personal at- 
tention to the development of the parks. One important plan which is 
now under way and which will help materially in increasing an interest 
in the parks is the proposed Park-to-Park Highway, intended to link up 
the leading National Parks by good roads. Already much has been done 
towards the work of connecting up the Rocky Mountains and the Yel- 
lowstone National Parks by way of the Cody entrance to the latter. The 
people of Wyoming and Colorado are co-operating heartily on this proj-. 
ect and every indication points to the completion of this road by next 


National Park Notes IOI 


season. It is also planned to have appropriate gateways placed at the dif- 
ferent entrances of all the parks, and the Department will welcome any 
suggestions for any specific entrance. It is our purpose to have these 
gateways harmonize with the particular park for which they are in- 
tended. At the present time there are only two gateways of any dignity; 
one the Gardiner entrance to Yellowstone National Park, and the other 
the great gateway of cedar logs which marks the southern entrance of 
Mount Rainier National Park. STEPHEN T. MATHER 


\ 


EXTRACTS FROM THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE 
INTERIOR (IQI5.) 


PLACES OF BEAUTY AS AN ASSET 


In casting up the assets of the United States as a landed proprietor 
I have made no mention of one of the most delightful of our national 
enterprises. To build a railroad, reclaim lands, give new impulse to en- 
terprise, and offer new doors to ambitious capital—these are phases of 
the ever-widening life and activity of this Nation. The United States 
does more; it furnishes playgrounds to the people which are, we may 
modestly state, without any rivals in the world. Just as the cities are 
seeing the wisdom and the necessity of open spaces for the children, so 
with a very large view the Nation has been saving from its domain the 
rarest places of grandeur and beauty for the enjoyment of the world. 

And this fact has been discovered by many only this year. Having an 
incentive in the expositions on the Pacific Coast, and Europe being 
closed, thousands have for the first time crossed the continent and seen 
one or more of the national parks. That such mountains and glaciers, 
lakes and cafions, forests and waterfalls were to be found in this coun- 
try was a revelation to many, who had heard but had not believed. It 
would appear from the experience of this year that the real awakening 
as to the value of these parks has at last been realized, and that those 
who have hitherto found themselves enticed by the beauty of the Alps 
and the Rhine, and the soft loveliness of the valleys of France, may find 
equal if not more stimulating satisfaction in the mountains, rivers, and 
valleys which this Government has set apart for them and for all others. 

It may reconcile those who think that money expended upon such 
luxuries is wasted—if any such there are—to be told that the sober- 
minded traffic men of the railroads estimate that this year more than a 
hundred million dollars usually spent in Européan travel was divided 
among the railroads, hotels, and their supporting enterprises in this 
country. 

During the year a new national park of distinction and unusual ac- 
cessibility has come into existence. It crosses the Rockies in Colorado 
at a point of supreme magnificence; hence its title, the Rocky Mountain 
National Park. Through it, from north to south, winds the Continental 


102 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Divide—the Snowy Range in name and fact. Two hundred lakes grace 
this rocky paradise, and bear and bighorn inhabit its fastnesses. It has 
an area of 350 square miles and lies only 70 miles from Denver. Many 
hotels lie at the feet of these mountains and three railroads skirt their 
sides. 

This is Colorado’s second national park, the other being Mesa Verde, 
where this department, with the assistance of Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes, 
of the Smithsonian Institution, has uncovered during the last summer 
prehistoric ruins of unprecedented scientific interest. 

Oregon has but recently completed a great highway along the Colum- 
bia River. This should be connected by road with Mount Hood and a 
portion of the present forest reserve converted into a park. The limits 
of Sequoia Park, in California, the home of the great redwoods, should 
be so extended as to include the Kern River Cafion, a most practicable 
project today, but tomorrow may be too late because of the lumber in- 
terests. The Grand Cafion is not yet part of the park system, although 
as part of a national forest it comes under the control of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 

There is no reason why this Nation should not make its public health 
and scenic domain as available to all its citizens as Switzerland and 
Italy make theirs. The aim is to open them thoroughly by road and trail 
and give access and accommodation to every degree of income. In this 
belief an effort has been made this year as never before to outfit the 
parks with new hotels which should make the visitor desire to linger 
rather than hasten on his journey. One hotel was built on Lake Mc- 
Dermott, in Glacier Park, one is to be built immediately on the shoulder 
of Mount Rainier, in Paradise Valley, another in the valley of the Yose- 
mite, with an annex high overhead on Glacier Point, while more mod- 
est chalets are to be dotted about in the obscurer spots to make access- 
ible the rarer beauties of the inner Yosemite. For with the new Tioga 
road, which, through the generosity of Mr. Stephen T. Mather and a 
few others, the Government has acquired, there is to be revealed a new 
Yosemite, which only John Muir and others of similar bent have seen. 
This is a Yosemite far different from the quiet, incomparable valley. It 
is a land of forests, snow and glaciers. From Mount Lyell one looks, 
as from an island, upon a tumbled sea of snowy peaks. Its lakes, many 
of which have never been fished, are alive with trout. And through it 
foams the Tuolumne River, which in a mile drops a mile, a water spec- 
tacle destined to world celebrity. Meeting obstructions in its slanting 
rush, the water now and again rises nearly perpendicularly, forming 
upright foaming arcs sometimes 50 feet in height. These “water wheels,” 
a dozen or more in number, will be accessible next summer by a trail to 
be built when the snow melts in June. 

While as the years have passed we have been modestly developing the 
superb scenic possibilities of the Yellowstone, nature has made of it the 
largest and most populous game preserve in the Western Hemisphere. 
Its great size, its altitude, its vast wilderness, its plentiful waters, its fa- 


National Park Notes 103 


vorable conformation of rugged mountain and sheltered valley, and the 
nearly perfect protection afforded by the policy and the scientific care of 
the Government have made this park, since its inauguration in 1872, the 
natural and inevitable center of game conservation for this Nation. 
There is something of significance in this. It is the destiny of the nation- 
al parks, if wisely controlled, to become the public laboratories of nature 
study for the Nation. And from them specimens may be distributed to 
the city and State preserves, as is now being done with the elk of the 
Yellowstone which are too abundant, and may be later with the ante- 
lope. 

If Congress will but make the funds available for the construction of 
roads over which automobiles may travel with safety (for all the parks 
are now open to motors) and for trails to hunt out the hidden places of 
beauty and dignity, we may expect that year by year these parks will be- 
come a more precious possession of the people, holding them to the fur- 
ther discovery of America and making them still prouder of its resour- 
ces, esthetic as well as material. 


NATIONAL PARKS AND RESERVATIONS 


The creation of the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Mon- 
tana and Idaho by the act of March 1, 1872, marked the beginning of a 
policy on the part of Congress of setting aside tracts of land as recrea- 
tion grounds for all the people. Since that time 12 additional national 
parks have been established in various sections of the country, the latest 
being the Rocky Mountain National Park, in Colorado, which park was 
opened to the public last June. The total amount of land embraced in 
these reservations is 4,665,966.25 acres. To these parks should be added 
as speedily as possible the Grand Cafion of the Colorado River, with its 
wonderful scenic features. 

Visitors: The interest of the general public in these national parks 
has been clearly evidenced by the large number of requests for literature 
regarding them. During the season just closed there has been very 
marked increases in the number of tourists visiting these national play- 
grounds. In the Yellowstone National Park in 1914 there were 20,250 
visitors, and this year two and one-half times as many—51,895. Yosemite 
National Park in California had 33,452 visitors during the 1915 season, 
whereas in 1914 only 15,145 persons visited the park. Again, in Mount 
Rainier National Park, Wash., there has been an increase in the num- 
ber of visitors of over 100 per cent—35,166 in 1915 as against 15,038 in 
1914. 

Economic value of national parks: Leaving out of consideration the 
cost to visitors of transportation from their homes to the parks, a fair 
idea of the economic value of tourist travel in four of the larger parks 
may be obtained by consideration of the financial reports of concession- 
ers, which show gross receipts for past seasons in the following approx- 
imate estimates: Yellowstone National Park in 1912, $1,067,161.34; in 
1913, $1,186,811.36, and in 1914, $848,688.44. Yosemite National Park in 


104 Sierra Club Bulletin 


1912, $311,444.32; in 1913, $359,481.45, and in 1914, $334,914.32. Glacier 
National Park in 1913, $161,510.87, and in 1914, $155,716.14. Mount Ra- 
nier National Park in 1912, $56,735.93; in 1913, $66,942.76, and in 1914, 
$61,078.08. . 

Financial reports of concessioners in the parks for the season of 1915 
have not yet been received in the department, but in view of the large 
tourist travel to the far West initiated by the expositions held in Cali- 
fornia, it is anticipated that marked increases in gross receipts by na- 
tional-park concessioners will be noted. 

Third national-park conference: In prior annual reports attention 
has been directed to the very satisfactory results obtained from bring- 
ing together in conference the various park superintendents for the pur- 
pose of discussing the many difficult problems presented in the adminis- 
tration of these reservations. In March of the present year the third 
conference of superintendents was held at Berkeley, Cal., under the im- 
mediate direction of the assistant to the secretary, at which there were 
in attendance other representatives of this department, representatives 
of the Departments of Agriculture and War, of the transcontinental 
railways, of many of the concessioners in the parks, as well as a num- 
ber of other persons interested in national park matters. Questions were 
discussed pertaining to hotel accommodations, sanitation, transportation, 
construction of roads, trails, and bridges, forestry, fire protection, pro- 
tection of game, and other phases of park administration. A detailed re- 
port of the conference will be published by the department. 

The consensus of opinion at this conference as well as of those con- 
ferences held in 1911 and 1912, was that as many of the problems of park 
management were substantially the same throughout the several na- 
tional parks, their supervision should be centralized or grouped together 
under a single administrative bureau specifically charged with such 
work. The conference developed many instances where economy and 
efficiency would be increased by a central administration of all the 
parks. For instance, the law does not permit the resident engineer of the 
Yosemite to be utilized at times in any other national park. A temporary 
surplusage of service or equipment can not be used to meet a corre- 
sponding need elsewhere. Without a central administration the national 
parks can not be handled together, like departments of one business, for 
the good of all. 

Bills. to create a national park service have heretofore been intro- 
duced in Congress, but none has as yet been enacted into law. 

Appropriations and revenues: The total of appropriations made by 
Congress for protection and improvement of these parks during the year, 
expendable under this department, was $283,590, and the total revenues 
received from concessions in all the parks was $81,705.70. 

Automobiles in the parks: Automobiles have heretofore been admit- 
ted under strict regulations governing travel of the roads to the Mount 
Rainier, Crater Lake, Glacier, Mesa Verde, General Grant, Platt, and 
Wind Cave national parks; over the Giant Forest Road, in Sequoia Na- 


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Nattonal Park Notes 105 


tional Park; in Yosemite National Park, over the Coulterville Road 
from the Merced Grove of Big Trees into Yosemite Valley, over the 
Wawona Road leading to the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, and over the 
Big Oak Flat Road; and in the Yellowstone National Park, over a road 
in the northwestern section of the park not in general use, for the 
special accommodation of people of Gallatin County, Mont. 

During the past season the generally traveled roads in Yellowstone 
National Park were opened to motor-driven vehicles, operated for pleas- 
ure purposes only, under strict regulations which became effective on 
August 1, 1915. 

The opening during the year of Yellowstone National Park to auto- 
mobiles used for pleasure purposes has been much appreciated by the 
traveling public. They were operated under a very carefully worked out 
schedule which has proved to be highly satisfactory. 

This park .was visited during the season by 958 cars, carrying 3513 
people, which points to a much fuller enjoyment of the wonders in this 
park by motorists in 1916. The total receipts from automobiles and mo- 
tor cycles in all the parks were $42,589.73 in 1915, as against $14,243.07 
in 1914. 

The extremely rapid development of motoring throughout the coun- 
try, and its enjoyment by people of all degrees of income, has led to an 
active policy of road extension in all the national parks. An example is 
the acquisition and improvement of the old Tioga Road through the Yo- 
semite National Park, establishing another highway over the Sierras. 

Private holdings: The administration of affairs in all of the national 
parks, with the exception of the Yellowstone, General Grant, Platt, 
Wind Cave, and Sullys Hill, is considerably embarrassed by the fact that 
within the respective boundaries are many patented lands and some toll 
roads. These private holdings are as follows: Yosemite National Park, 
19,827 acres; Sequoia National Park, 3,716.96 acres; Crater Lake Na- 
tional Park, 1337 acres, and 1,121.11 acres of unperfected claims; Mesa 
Verde National Park, 875 acres and 118 acres unperfected claims; Mount 
Rainier National Park, 18.2 acres; and Glacier National Park, 8,864.40 
acres of patented lands and 7,803.71 acres of unperfected claims. 

The majority of these lands, including the Mineral King Road in Se- 
quoia National Park, and the Coulterville and Wawona toll roads in 
Yosemite National Park, should be acquired by the Government. Dur- 
ing the year, through the instrumentality of Mr. Stephen T. Mather, as- 
sistant to the Secretary, the title by donation to portions of the “Great 
Sierra wagon and toll road” (also known as the Tioga Road) and the 
portions of the “Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Toll roads,” within the 
limits of Yosemite National Park, were transferred to the United States, 
such donations being accepted by the Secretary of the Interior under 
the provisions of the sundry civil act of March 3, 1915, authorizing the 
Secretary of the Interior to accept patented lands or rights of way, 
whether over patented or other lands, in Yosemite National Park that 
may be donated for park purposes. 


106 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Congress, by the act approved April 9, 1912 (37 Stat., 80), authorized 
the Secretary of the Interior, for the purpose of eliminating private 
holdings within the Yosemite National Park and to preserve intact the 
natural timber along the roads in the scenic portions of the park, both 
on patented and park lands, in his discretion, to obtain by exchange 
complete title to any and all of the lands within the boundaries of the 
park held in private ownership. Among other things it was provided that 
the value of patented lands within the park offered in the exchange and 
the value of timber on park lands proposed to be given in the exchange 
should be ascertained in such manner as the Secretary of the Interior 
might direct. 

The subject was taken up with the Yosemite Lumber Co., which has 
a large area of patented lands in the park, principally along the Wawo- 
na Road, and it was found that an exchange could not be made, for the 
reason that the value of the lands owned by the company with the tim- 
ber thereon was far in excess of the timber on the park lands, and Con- 
gress, by the act approved April 16, 1914 (38 Stat., 345), amended sec- 
tion 1 of the act of 1912 so as to authorize the secretaries of the Interior 
and Agriculture, for the purpose of eliminating private holdings in said 
park and preserving the timber along the roads adjoining the scenic por- 
tions thereof on patented lands, to obtain and accept for the United 
States a complete title to any and all patented lands within the bound- 
aries of the park “by the exchange of timber or timber and lands within 
the Yosemite National Park and the Sierra and Stanislaus National 
Forests for such lands and the timber thereon within the park.” 

Under this legislation the matter was taken up with the Yosemite 
Lumber Co., and a contract was entered into on January 18, 1915, be- 
tween it and the department under which the Government is to give tim- 
ber and timber lands in Yosemite National Park and Sierra National 
Forest to that corporation in exchange for lands and timber owned by 
it in the park and forest, the exchange values in each case to be equal. 
This contract is now being carried into effect under supervision of the 
representatives of the department in the park. 

The act of Congress approved May 13, 1914 (38 Stat., 376), for the 
purpose of preserving scenic features and consolidating certain forest 
lands belonging to the United States within the Sierra National Forest 
and the Yosemite National Park, Cal., authorizes the Secretary of the 
Interior, on the recommendation of the Secretary of Agriculture— 


“and after obtaining and accepting for the Government of the United 
States a valid title to the land to be acquired, which title shall be ap- 
proved by the Secretary of the Interior, to exchange lands belonging to 
the United States within the Sierra National Forest for privately owned 
timberlands of approximately equal area lying within the boundaries of 
said national forest and the Yosemite National Park.” 


Under this statute an exchange of lands has been consummated which 
will result in the addition of 160 acres of land to the park. 


National Park Notes 107 


Jurisdiction: The United States has exclusive jurisdiction over the 
lands in Yellowstone Park within the State of Wyoming and also over 
the lands within Glacier National Park, Mont., and Platt National Park, 
Okla., and Congress has provided a means of enforcement of the laws 
and regulations pertaining thereto. In the other national parks, how- 
ever, over which the laws of the States in which they are located obtain, 
great difficulties in administration have been encountered, owing to the 
fact that the department has no jurisdiction to punish offenses in viola- 
tion of the regulations relating thereto, and especially in the matter of 
preventing depredations on game and the selling of liquor therein. 

Conservation of wild animal life: The national parks, free as most of 
them are from all public lumbering and private grazing enterprises, and 
protected by law from hunting of any kind, alone have the seclusion and 
other conditions essential for the protection and propagation of wild an- 
imal life. Eventually they will become great public nature schools to 
which teachers and students of animal life will repair yearly for investi- 
gation and study. 

The enormous increase of wild animals in the Yellowstone since it be- 
came a national park in 1872 points the way. Deer, elk, moose, bison and 
antelope here abound in greater numbers no doubt than before the days 
of the white man, and many of them have become almost as fearless of 
man as animals in captivity. From here many State, county and city 
parks have been supplied, under proper restrictions, with surplus ani- 
mals for propagation purposes. When interfering private holdings are 
extinguished in other national parks and United States laws made to 
supersede State laws, these, too, will become centers of animal preser- 
vation as effective as the Yellowstone. 

Increasing park areas: Congress so carefully cut the boundaries of 
national parks to the express purpose for which each was created that, 
in some instances, scenic features of the very first order were excluded. 
In the careful study which the department has since made of each such 
territory it has become apparent that, in several instances, outlying ter- 
ritory should be added to these reservations. The most distinguished of 
these instances is Sequoia National Park,the boundaries of which should 
be extended to include the superb Kings Cafion on the north and on the 
east the Kern Cafion and the west slope and summit of Mount Whitney, 
the highest mountain under the American flag; also other instances are 
the Continental Divide for a few miles south of the new Rocky Moun- 
tain National Park, together with several small outlying features of ex- 
traordinary beauty. 

New national parks: Of the 10 or more scenic neighborhoods claim- 
ing national-park status the most distinguished is the Grand Cafion of 
the Colorado, now classed as a national monument. This is one of the 
greatest natural show places of the world. It demands and should have 
immediate recognition and development as a national park. 

Other proposed national parks have scenic value and availability of 


108 Sierra Club Bulletin 


high degree and will be considered as they come prominently before 
Congress through the desires and activities of the people of their re- 
spective States. It is the policy of the department not to actively seek 
the creation of new national parks but to develop and administer all 
such reservations accepted by Congress and intrusted to its care. 

General superintendent of national parks: Mr. Mark Daniels, gener- 
al superintendent and landscape engineer of the national parks under 
this department, made inspections during the year of the Mesa Verde, 
Platt and Wind Cave national parks, and the Hot Springs Reservation; 
supervised the enforcement of the regulations in the parks, the laying 
out of roads and trails, designing of buildings and structures, and the plan- 
ning of general improvements; provided for the establishment of a unit 
cost-keeping system in the Yosemite National Park which has resulted 
in considerable saving, supervised the construction of a concrete bridge 
in the Mount Rainier National Park, and wooden bridges in the Yo- 
semite National Park, and supplied plans and specifications for several 
different types of concrete bridges for other parks; replanned the road 
sprinkling system in Yosemite, established an automobile schedule there- 
in, designed a complete road and trail system for five of the parks, pre- 
pared plans for a new village in Yosemite, installed a purchasing branch 
for the several national parks in San Francisco and purchased through 
the same materials for most of the western parks, and gave attention to 
many other details of park administration. 


EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE CRATER LAKE 
NATIONAL Park, 1915 


HOTELS 


During the season of 1915 Crater Lake Lodge was opened to the 
public and is located directly on the rim of the lake, nearly 1000 feet 
above the water, where comfortable quarters are available for guests. 
The lodge is a cut-stone building containing about 60 rooms, some of 
which contain hot and cold water and other conveniences. During the 
season of 1916 it is proposed to build along the entire front of this 
building, over 100 feet, a 16-foot porch and pergola, from which one 
can look directly into the lake, nearly 1000 feet below. - 


TUNNEL TO THE LAKE 


From Crater Lake Lodge to the lake is a drop of nearly 1000 feet, 
and to reach the lake a trail of 2300 feet is provided. Owing to the rug- 
ged nature of the rim, this trail is necessarily steep and hard to climb, 
and many visitors are unable to go over it, so that they are denied the 
privilege of fishing or boating on the lake. This condition of affairs is 
a disappointment to many visitors and some sort of provision should be 
made to overcome it. A lift or other installation within the rim is 
wholly impracticable, for the reason that every spring enormous slides 


an 


National Park Notes 109 


of snow and rock would sweep any sort of framework into the lake. 
Under such conditions I would suggest the construction of a tunnel 
from a convenient point on the road, several hundred feet below the 
rim, to the surface of the water. With this end in view an appropriation 
of $1000 is desired with which to make investigations, surveys, etc. 


EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE SUPERVISOR OF THE MOUNT 
RAINIER NATIONAL Park, 1915 


The Mountaineers, about 90 in number, with a pack train of 50 horses, 
made the circuit of the mountain in August. The trip around the moun- 
tain can be made in about seven days, with an average march of twenty 
miles over the trail. This trip, with proper advertising, should become a 
very popular feature of the park. By making camp each night at certain 
designated points in the natural parks and upland meadows, the tourist 
can travel on foot by the shortest route, between camps, keeping above 
timber line, and obtain a magnificent view of the mountain and sur- 
rounding country from all angles, affording one of the most interesting 
scenic trips in all the world. 


EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE YOSEMITE 
NATIONAL Park, 1915 


Arrangements have been made for the erection of two new buildings, 
to be used for fire-protection purposes, known as fire-lookout stations, 
or triangulation stations. One will be situated on Mount Hoffman and 
the other on Sentinel Dome. 

During the past season there were constructed three new outpost or 
checking stations, which are used by the park rangers for outpost pur- 
poses, these cabins being located at Merced Grove, Crane Flat and Hog 
Ranch. 

The following new outpost stations for rangers’ use should be built 
the coming year: One on the Wawona Road, somewhere in the vicinity 
of Camp A. E. Wood, and a somewhat larger and more spacious out- 
post than those constructed this year should be built at Tuolumne Mead- 
ows, at which latter place are the Lambert Soda Springs and the Sierra 
Club’s buildings, which accommodate a large crowd each season, and in 
the near future it will probably be necessary for two park rangers to be 
stationed at this outpost—one of the first class for ranger duty and one 
of the second class to check automobiles, as the Tioga Road is now open 
and a large number of cars will be passing over that road yearly. 

Other new buildings especially needed are an administration build- 
ing, outpost quarters of less elaborate construction than the checking 
stations, and rescue lodges or chalets, as well as a new hospital. 


IIO Sierra Club Bulletin 


RANGERS 


The ranger department was reorganized under the new park system 
installed this year, the park rangers being divided into two classes, 
known as park rangers of the first class (mounted) and park rangers 
of the second class (unmounted) or automobile checkers. The park-rang- 
er force consists of a chief park ranger, Mr. O. R. Prien, two assistant 
chief park rangers, and two park rangers, all permanent employees, and 
seven temporary park rangers, all of the first class, together with four 
rangers of the second class or automobile checkers. With this ranger 
department the Government has been able to handle the checking of the 
automobiles, as well as the protection of the park against forest fires 
and poachers, with the enforcement of the park rules and regulations. 
This park-ranger force has very capably taken care of the work per- 
formed in previous years by troops of cavalry detailed from the United 
States Army and stationed in this park. 

It is recommended that this park-ranger force be increased by at least 
two permanent yearly men, one to take charge of the insect-control 
work, which should be carried on each season and which has been un- 
der the direction of Mr. J. J. Sullivan, entomological ranger, detailed 
for duty in this park from the Bureau of Entomology, Department of 
Agriculture, and the other to take charge of the newly established in- 
formation bureau. 

FOREST FIRES 


This season the forest fires did very little damage and were easily 
controlled by the park rangers, assisted by the other park employees. 

Arrangements have been made and materials purchased for the con- 
struction of two fire-lookout stations or triangulation stations for the 
use of the ranger department for fire protection. Owing to the location 
of these stations, one being on Mount Hoffman and the other on Sen- 
tinel Dome, it will be possible with the high power instruments at hand 
for the ranger department to instantly locate a fire or fires within the 
district, and by the triangulation system be able to give the exact loca- 
tion of the fire immediately the fire starts. It is absolutely necessary that 
these two stations co-operate with the triangulation stations of the For- 
est Service where possible in the surrounding districts and that we have 
telephonic communication, so that we may work together in locating 
forest fires, for the protection of the park as well as the national for- 
ests surrounding the park. It would be well when funds are available to 
establish one or more of these triangulation stations in other districts 
of the park, as it will not be possible for these two stations to control the 
whole park area. These stations will lessen the expense of fire protection 
as well as afford a great protection to the forests of the park. 


LAMBERT SODA SPRINGS 


The Lambert Soda Springs at the Tuolumne Meadows, on the Tuo- 
lumne River, about 25 miles by trail from Yosemite Valley, have been 
of considerable interest to the visitors to the Yosemite National Park 


National Park Notes TTT 


this year, owing to the fact that it has been the first time in the history 
of these springs that it has been practicable for tourists to make trips to 
this part and have fine service, such as is given them by the Sierra Club 
in connection with its camp located near the Soda Springs. There were 
registered at this camp this season 2236 visitors.* This was partially due 
to the Tioga Road, which has recently been opened and affords the tour- 
ist a convenient way of reaching that point by automobile. The Lambert 
Soda Springs have this year for the first time received any large extent 
of recognition, and it would be well for the Government to take the nec- 
essary steps to advertise these springs. 

The following is an excerpt from the report of Mr. Gerald A. War- 
ing, found on page 237 of Water-Supply Paper 338, of pamphlet entitled 
“Springs of California,” edition of 1915, prepared by the United States 
Geological Survey: 


“The springs rise at the northern edge of Tuolumne Meadows, about 
125 yards north of the river’s edge, at the upper border of a grassy 
slope. There is only one spring of appreciable flow, but water bubbles 
from numerous vents near by. The spring rises in a funnel-shaped pool 
about 14 inches in diameter in a little log cabin that protects it. In Aug- 
ust, 1909, it yielded about one gallon a minute, but its discharge is said 
to vary somewhat. The water is clear, strongly carbonated, and effer- 
vescing, but considerable iron is deposited in the pool. Within the cabin 
are also two small vents of inappreciable discharge, marked by bubbling. 
Six other similar pools, a few inches in diameter, lie on a low mound of 
iron-stained lime carbonate beside the cabin, and another group of eight 
small pools is located 15 to 25 yards northeast of the cabin. The water 
in all of the pools is carbonated and small amounts of iron and lime car- 
bonate are deposited at nearly all of them. Efflorescent soda salts also 
appear in the adjoining grassy land. The following analysis shows the . 
water to be primary and secondary alkaline in character: 


Analysis of the Lambert Soda Springs 


[Analyst and authority, F. M. Eaton (1909). Constituents 
are in parts per million. | 


ETRE Ce iS UUM SS ARI Wha h SGML MCE i 87. ©. (47° Fs) 

Properties of reaction: 
AA SA OILY nmi oer ieyaiee chars ih te WNIT wE MG el at 11 
Bee er clcarayan SAMI SNM uel acct ye! esr Uncle Valeri ta lode eee uds labs kta gual 4 0 
EMD IUIAVARSVIAMNILV Fy seNsca rarer TaN neha SVN URES MA eg at ik 0 
MS RAaee Lavaca AIATIU EY, Wels) Nav eee cite DEN hee a IA We att alti Wibdalesota eis dieudi bia: duelt 36 
Bae OIC Anay mre ELAE YY cadolscs shoe wivapn lahat ciel asec widlal Cle Biel dtese/ ea ial es 53 
TGC se aul eed bso hh Gi HE OSes see AIR LEN ACS Ae a 7 


c * The above was the registration at the ranger’s station, not at the Sierra Club 
‘amp. 


112 Sierra Club Bulletin 

: Reacting 
Constituents : By weight values 
SodiunaiC Nae ee as oe ieee cee ne ee 9.96 
Potassium (CK) (igiss eae ie anon (ae eee 5.5 14 
Caleta “OC Ca yr icy pee oe ho solticge clon tater 196 9.81 
Magnesium, (Mig). is. cleavable tine eect ater ae 20 1.64 

Tiron’ GRO): defsateiadees cg siete he eel etc eases ae eee a 
Atamiana CAV)! of aca a sareale ee abe, eter eee | oe = 
Sulphate «CSO uc icn tase aon ene ae 24 .49 
Chloride (CI) ons Sen en ne ee 66 1.87 
Carbonate “CCO2) 2. lo Gate deren ae 564 18.80 
Silica (SIOL) cond fl a ee 58 1.93 
1168.5. ee 
Carbon: idioxide: (CO2)i..3. eect ee Ace eee eee Present Present 


EXTENSION OF THE PARK BOUNDARIES 


Under the act approved February 7, 1905, entitled “An act to exclude 
from the Yosemite National Park, Cal., certain lands therein described 
and to attach and include the said lands in the Sierra Forest Reserve,” 
542.88 square miles were excluded, certain parts of which lie on the 
eastern boundary of the present park, and which contain many scenic 
views such as the Devils Post Pile, lakes, high mountains, glaciers, cafi- 
ons, which are in the judgment of many not equaled by any of the views 
that are within the present park boundaries. Such beautiful lakes as 
Thousand Island Lakes, Garnet Lake, and the Minaret, with the glaciers 
leading into it, and the floating glaciers in the lakes are remarkable. 
These lakes lie at the foot of Mount Ritter and Mount Banner, which 
are of great beauty, and also Mount Ritter is of higher altitude than any 
of the mountains within the boundaries of the present park and gives a 
very commanding and impressive view. This section compares very fa- 
vorably with the Canadian Rockies, and would make a beautiful trip of 
scenic value in connection with the people visiting the Tuolumne Mead- 
ows and the Lambert Soda Springs by automobiles traveling over the 
Tioga Road. 

I therefore would recommend to the Government that the necessary 
steps be taken to have put back into the park boundaries all the land 
excluded by this act lying on the eastern boundary of the park, and also 
taking in township 1 north, range 25 east, which will include the won- 
derful set of Saddlebag Lakes and also the Leevining Cafion, which is 
traversed by the Tioga Road after leaving the park boundaries in its 
route to Mono Lake, and which is of so much value to the park at the 
present time that people travel from Yosemite Valley, a distance of 80 
miles through the park land and out of its boundary on the east side, for 
the one purpose of seeing Leevining Creek Cafion, which is in the opin- 
ion of many people not equaled by the Grand Cafion for its impressive- 
ness as to depth, ruggedness, and other scenic beauties. Its head is con- 
tinuously capped with snow, large waterfalls pouring down the cajfion. 


National Park Notes 113 


From this road may be seen the Mono Craters, and one can see the edge 
of the desert far in the distance. This additional land will mean a great 
deal to the park from a scenic standpoint. Gro. V. Br, 


Superintendent 


EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT AND 
LANDSCAPE ENGINEER OF NATIONAL Parks, 1915 


Many of our parks are truly vast in area, encompassing within their 
boundaries innumerable wonders. To reach these the tourist, upon ar- 
riving at the park, must hire saddle animals, pack animals, a guide, cook 
and other help. The expense of such an outfit is prohibitive to all but the 
wealthy. Those who have waited and saved their money are denied the 
fuller enjoyment of our parks, for they can not bear the expense of 
transporting their supplies over the trails. There is but one solution of 
the problem of caring for this class of tourists, and that is the establish- 
ment of small inns at convenient intervals so that tourists may travel 
the trails afoot, purchasing their provisions and other necessities as they 
go. As you are aware, the first steps in an effort to bring about such a 
condition have been taken in Yosemite National Park. If this work is 
carried through, a blessing will have been conferred upon those whose 
lack of money has shut them from the greater part of our national parks. 
It will also be, in my opinion, the most potent factor in retaining, 
through the medium of our parks, a material percentage of tourist travel 
and will necessitate a careful consideration of the problem of a general 
policy. 

To the east of Sequoia National Park is some of the finest mountain 
scenery in the world. The area in which the scenery lies is of little or no 
value for purposes other than the pleasure of scenery lovers. It contains 
the great Kern Cafion, Kings River Cafions, and Mount Whitney, the 
highest peak in the United States, together with almost innumerable 
other features. I can not recommend too strongly that the Sequoia Na- 
tional Park be enlarged to take in the areas to the southeast and east, 
which contain these examples of wonderful mountain scenery. 


A Britt To EstABLIisH A NATIONAL PARK SERVICE* 


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled: 

Section 1. That there is hereby established in the Department of the 
Interior a service to be called the National Park Service which shall be 
under the charge of a director who shall be appointed by the Secretary, 
and there shall also be in said service such assistants and other em- 
ployees as the Secretary of the Interior shall deem necessary. 


* The American Civic Association is largely responsible for this bill through its 
national parks committee. 


II4 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Section 2. That the director shall, under the direction of the Secretary 
of the Interior, have the supervision, management and control of the 
several national parks, national monuments, the Hot Springs Reserva- 
tion in the State of Arkansas, and such other national parks, national 
monuments and reservations of like character as may hereafter be cre- 
ated or authorized by Congress. 

Section 3. That the Secretary of the Interior shall make and publish 
such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the 
use and management of such parks, monuments and reservations, as are 
hereby or may hereafter be placed under the jurisdiction of the National 
Park Service, and any violation of any of the rules and regulations au- 
thorized by this Act shall be punished, as provided for in Section 50 of 
the Act entitled “An Act to codify and amend the penal laws of the 
United States,” approved March 4, nineteen hundred and nine, as amend- 
ed by Section Six of the Act of June 25, nineteen hundred and ten, 
(Thirty-sixth United States Statutes at Large, page 857). He may also 
upon terms and conditions to be fixed by him, sell or dispose of timber 
in those cases where the cutting of such timber is requisite for properly 
controlling the attacks of insects or disease, or of otherwise conserving 
the scenery or the natural or historic objects in any park, monument or 
other reservation; grant privileges, leases and permits for the use of 
land, but only for the accommodation of visitors in the various parks, 
monuments or other reservations herein provided for, but for periods 
not exceeding twenty years, and that no natural curiosities, wonders or 
objects of interest shall be leased, rented or granted to any one on such 
terms as to interfere with free access to them by the public. It is 
further provided that in the granting of leases and concessions, and in 
the general management and development of said parks, monuments and 
reservations, no action unless specifically provided for by future enact- 
ments of Congress shall be detrimental to the fundamental object of 
these aforesaid parks, monuments and reservations, which object is to 
conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects therein and to 
provide for the enjoyment of said scenery and objects by the public in 
any manner and by any means that will leave them unimpaired for the 
enjoyment of future generations. The funds derived from such sales, 
leases, permits and privileges, shall be deposited in the treasury as a gen- 
eral fund to be expended by the director, under the supervision of the 
Secretary of the Interior, in the administration, maintenance and im- 
provements of the parks, monuments and reservations herein provided 
for. 

Section 4. That the expenses incident to the establishment of such 
National Park Service shall be met out of funds allotted to the Interior 
Department for similar purposes and shall be submitted in the book of 
estimates furnished to the House of Representatives by the Department 
of the Interior. 

Section 5. That all acts or parts of acts inconsistent herewith are 
hereby repealed. 


FORESTRY NOTES 
Edited by WALTER L. HUBER 


CI 
THE Forest Fire SEASON oF 1915 IN CALIFORNIA 


During the forest fire season of 1915 there were reported in District 5 
of the United States Forest Service, which includes California and 
southwestern Nevada, 1190 fires. Of these 80.25 per cent were put out 
when they had burned over areas of less than 10 acres. The total acre- 
age burned inside the National Forests by these fires was 41,990.05, and 
outside of the National Forests, 41,837.29. The damage is estimated at. 
$7,343.79. These fires originated from the following causes: Railroads, 
16; campers, 312; brush-burning, 62; lumbering, 58; lightning, 290; in- 
cendiary, 261; miscellaneous, 59; unknown, 132. With a fire season of 
the same number of days as that of last year the expenditure for fire 
fighting was only one-third as large. 


PREVENTING FIRES ON TAMALPAIS 


As a result of the great fire of 1913 the Tamalpais Fire Association 
was organized in the fall of that year. It has, therefore, been in opera- 
tion for two seasons, and so far its record is an excellent one. During 
the two years a total of only 640 acres has been burnt over, which, on a 
yearly basis, is equal to eight-tenths of one per cent of the 40,000 acres 
under protection. It is also worthy of remark that only 30 acres of brush 
land were touched by fire, the remaining 610 acres being grass land. The 
actual damage was slight and consisted for the most part of the scorch- 
ing of fences and out-houses. 

It is frequently said that the Association has been “lucky.” Of course 
a certain amount of chance enters into any system of fire prevention, 
and the results depend, to a certain extent, on the conditions of wind 
and weather when small fires break out. However, it seems only fair to 
assume that the good results on Tamalpais have been largely due to two 
things. In the first place, a campaign of education has been carried on 
which has impressed hunters, hikers and others using the mountain park 
with the importance of being extremely careful with the use of fire; and 
the education of the public has been supplemented by efficient policing 
during the dry seasons, with strict enforcement of the regulation which 
limits the building of camp fires to certain safely prepared spots, and 
which obliges one first to procure a written permit from the patrolman 
before lighting fires at these spots. These measures prevented the start 
of many fires which undoubtedly would have occurred in the absence of 
restrictions. In the second place, the organized fire-fighting forces of 


Tro Sierra Club Bulletin 


the Association reached and extinguished all the small fires so quickly 
that they had no chance to spread beyond control. The preventing of 
fires from starting and the prompt suppression of little fires were the re- 
sult of systematic work; luck played a very small part. 

There have now been constructed twenty-four miles of fire trails, and 
this winter, which will complete the three-year construction period, it is 
planned to build six miles additional. These thirty miles, of course, are 
merely a beginning, for eventually every principal ridge and spur should 
be traversed by a trail, even if the clearing is no wider than necessary 
for a foot trail. Quick communication and bases from which to back-fire 
are the first essentials in any brushy country. It seems probable that all 
trails must be cleared out at least once every two years, calling for a 
maintenance expense of about $25 per mile; the original cost of cleaning 
out strips of from 10 to 20 feet in width has averaged in the neighbor- 
hood of $100 per mile, and even at this cost the roots of the brush can 
not be grubbed out. 

Because of the fact that no fires have as yet approached the trails al- 
ready constructed no test of their usefulness has occurred, although in 
other regions the efficiency of fire trails has been demonstrated for many 
years. 

Several of the fires which have occurred during the past two seasons 
have started along the right of way of the Mount Tamalpais and Muir 
Woods Railway, doubtless from matches or burning tobacco carelessly 
thrown from the cars. That source will always remain as a considerable 
menace unless smoking on the trains should be prohibited. Other fires 
have started chiefly from hunters, from the burning of rubbish, and 
from boys playing with matches. The State fire laws are weak in many 
ways, and in several of the towns around the mountain the fire ordinan- 
ces are defective. Remedial legislation will be attempted. 

The main needs of the Association at present are many more fire pa- 
trolmen, more fire trails and a paid system for fire fighters. The creation 
of the Marin Municipal Water District will naturally help the work of 
fire prevention immensely, for it means the establishment of a 12,000- 
acre public park in the very heart of the Tamalpais country, implying 
permanent public management and greatly extended lines of travel. The 
Tamalpais Fire Association will continue in existence at least until such 
time as the water district is in a position to take over the work. 

The plan of financial co-operation is the most unique part of the As- 
sociation’s work. There is no other similar organization in the United 
States in which so many and so different interests are welded together 
for the public good. All the land is privately owned and neither the 
State nor federal governments assist in any way whatsoever. The prop- 
erty owners subscribe 10 cents per acre each year, according to the size 
of their holdings; the towns contribute lump sums, more or less in pro- 
portion to their assessed valuations; and the public which uses the 
mountain as a playground aids financially through membership dues. 
The property owners, without exception, have contributed generously 


Forestry Notes LL, 


and promptly, and, with one or two exceptions, the same is true of the 
towns; but the public which enjoys the mountain has responded lament- 
ably. Not only is the membership list ridiculously small; more unfortu- 
nate still is the fact that one-third of the members lack sufficient inter- 
est in the work to pay their dues. 

Incidentally, one-quarter of the Association’s income is contributed by 
Mr. William Kent. 

FREDERICK EF, OLMSTED, 
Consulting Forester 


DEVELOPMENT OF THE RECREATION USE OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS 
A CIRCULAR LETTER TO FOREST OFFICERS 


Forest Supervisors and District Rangers, District 5: 

What is the present status of the recreation use on your Forest? Not 
that I want a collection of dry figures on the number of travelers that 
annually go into the mountains. I want you to think about it. A few 
hundred or a few thousand auto- or wagon-campers wind up your roads 
in summer, or pack or hike over the trails in your back country. You 
know in a general way who they are and where they come from; but 
have you ever seriously studied them from the point of view of develop- 
ing and promoting this use to the fullest possible extent? 

What are the possibilities in this line? With no figures at all, simply 
from our general knowledge and common sense, we know that they are 
enormous. Every man or woman or child who gets out of a town or a 
hot valley and puts in ten days in the mountains in summer is a health- 
ier, happier and better citizen for it. Do you begin to see the possibilities 
opening before us for contributing to the public welfare? Suppose we de- 
fine the object we want to accomplish as increasing the recreation use 
tenfold in five years on every ranger district in every National Forest in 
California. Let’s see how we ought to go about it. 

The man who is going on a summer vacation will be looking for 
hunting or fishing grounds; for chances to live and sleep in the open—to 
camp; for impressive or beautiful scenery; for opportunities for swim- 
ming or boating, or for regions where he can explore unknown country 
or regions of scientific interest. Our job is to facilitate the accomplish- 
ment of these objects by the prospective vacationist. The most obvious 
road to it is publicity. 

What is wanted is to tell as many prospective visitors as possible all 
they would want to know about a trip into the mountains. A map is 
probably the most effective and useful means of conveying this informa- 
tion. Suppose each Forest starts systematically to work this winter pre- 
paring the very best “Recreation Map” possible. The information is all 
collected—it is either in the files or in the heads of one or more officers. 
It remains only to get it into usable shape. 

Take the camper map as a base, and put all the recreation data on it 


118 Sierra Club Bulletin 


as shown in the attached legend. I am informed that it will be mechan- 
ically impossible to run our existing camper maps through the press and 
have this data printed on them. Therefore, each Forest will go ahead 
and prepare the rough draft for a new edition of recreation maps which 
we will request Washington to lithograph for us in large numbers. 
These maps when completed should show to the prospective visitor 
everything of interest or value, among which are: 
1. Outfitting points : 
Where camp supplies can be obtained. 
Where gasoline can be obtained. 
Where saddles and pack stock can be obtained. 
Where guides, packers or camp-tenders can be obtained. 
Ranches where butter, milk, eggs, etc., can be obtained. 
Where meals and lodging can be obtained. 
2. Routes of travel : 
Roads passable for autos. 
Roads passable for wagons. 
Trails passable for stock. 
Trails passable for foot travel. 
3. Horse-feed : 
Meadows where cattle-grazing is permitted. 
Meadows where cattle-grazing is not permitted. 
Meadows fenced for use of traveling public. 
Meadows fenced for use of Forest officers only. 
4. Particularly good camp grounds. 
5. Interesting areas and scenic points: 
Forest. 
Particularly fine timber. 
Forest Service stations or improvements. 
Telephones, post-offices, stage stations, etc. 
Of geological or historical interest. 
Of botanical interest. 
Ofinterest to mountain climbers (safest routes to top indi- 
cated). 
Of interest to hunters. 
Localities where deer, bear, quail, grouse, etc., are most preva- 
lent. 
Of interest to fishermen. 
Stocked streams and lakes, with kinds of fish. 
Barriers impassable to fish. 
Of general scenic interest. 
Waterfalls. 
Lakes. 
Cafions. 
Peaks. 
Points from which wide views may be obtained. 


Forestry Notes 119 


Other features which should go on such a map will occur to you. I 
should be glad to have you send them in, in order that all new ideas on 
this subject may be circulated. We do not want Forest travelers to have 
to learn to read recreation maps anew for every Forest, so the legend 
should be standardized. I enclose a suggested standard legend, and shall 
be glad to receive comments upon it. 

Also, what do you think of getting up a recreation leaflet for each 
Forest to supplement the Forest map—the leaflet to outline certain trips 
and contain descriptive matter covering the principal recreation features, 
tables of distances (when not on back of map), and possibly a few pho- 
tographs? Would the work and expense of this be justified? 

Another thing needed is a district poster, with some such title as “The 
National Forests—California’s Recreation Grounds,” showing the loca- 
tion of the National Forests in relation to the cities and railroads of the 
State, and the terminals and routes of all auto and horse stage-lines 
reaching from railroad points into the National Forests. Please send in 
to this office the railroad terminal and stage-line data on a proclamation 
or other small-scale map of your Forest. 

A systematic plan must be made to secure the most effective distribu- 
tion possible of the above information material. The district poster 
should be sent in quantities to all railroad headquarter offices for posting 
in every railroad station in the State. It should also be in all garages. 
Forest recreation maps should be distributed from Forest and district 
mailing lists; through universities, schools and State government bu- 
reaus; through county governments, county and city boards of trade and 
chambers of commerce; through sporting-goods dealers and clubs, and 
through magazine and newspaper publishers. Further suggestions along 
this line are wanted. 

ne apd a hae Glee aa 3 


Passively permitting the public to enter and occupy their own prop- 
erty is no public service whatever. The question is, what more can be 
done by Forest officers to promote recreation use? 

There are many opportunities. We can encourage registration, in or- 
der to get in touch with the traveler in case of emergency. We can take 
careful note of campers’ horses so as to be of help in case any are lost. 
Opportunities will arise for tactful hints on care of horses in camp—the 
making of humane hobbles, for instance, or more comfortable camps. 
We will put into general use the system of cards of introduction devised 
by Ranger Wilson of the Tahoe. We can be sure that each party has all 
the information needed about trails, routes or country. A lost man 
ought to mean neglect somewhere and a black mark against the Forest 
where it occurs. We have only started in the business of posting signs— 
a real public service. 

We will consider that the recreation use is one of our major lines of 
work. Please be prepared to submit with your next improvement esti- 
mates the most important projects along this line. We expect to spend 


120 Sierra Club Bulletin 


some money on it, and will want to consider projects for tourist trails, 
drift fences to keep stock out of valuable recreation areas, fenced camp- 
ers’ pastures, improved camp grounds, water troughs, hitching racks, re- 
clamation of eroding meadows by ditching, auto turn-outs on roads now 
unusable for lack of them, improvement of viewpoints, Forest portals 
and signs, etc. 

In your time-estimates, please include such activities as stocking 
streams with fish, and exploration to develop new recreation areas. 

There are many potentialities of securing co-operation in such im- 
provements and activities. The camper trade is a profitable one for a lo- 
cality, and county supervisors, chambers of commerce or sportsmen’s 
clubs may be willing to work with us, Let us make sure that every or- 
ganization which is willing has an opportunity to go the limit. 

You or your deputy take many trips into interesting country on your 
Forest each year. Work up a party or two to go with you next season, 
made up of representative men from the region you wish to interest in 
the recreation resources of your Forest. This need not interfere with 
your regular work in the slightest, nor cost the government a cent. At 
the same time it will not only be the most effective kind of advertising, 
but will establish personal relations between the Service and recreation 
users that will be immensely valuable. 

Most important of all, every supervisor and district ranger must see 
to it that he and every man on the job has the correct point of view. 
The incorrect point of view is that campers are nothing more than a fire 
risk, that they are a nuisance, or that their lack of knowledge of the 
mountains is ridiculous. The correct point of view is that each one is a 
citizen using the National Forest and becoming a better citizen by doing 
so; that while there he is the guest of the Forest Service, and that we 
have distinct responsibilities concerning him. It might be profitable to 
think what impression we are making on the camper. We will have 
made the correct one only when every visitor leaves the Forest convinced 
of the fact that the pine-tree badge, wherever seen, means courtesy, 
friendliness and helpfulness—and does not mean surveillance or offi- 
ciousness. 

(Signed) Corrt Dusots, 
District Forester 


BOOK REVIEWS 
Edited by Marion RANDALL PARSONS 


> 


“TRAVELS IN. Whatever in the future may be given to the world of the 
ALASKA’* journals and other unpublished writings of John Muir, 
nothing is likely to come to us more alight with his person- 
ality than are the two volumes published since his death. They bear an 
interesting relationship to one another, for not only do the Letters end 
just as he was embarking on the first of the journeys recorded in Travels 
in Alaska, but the latter book, the last to leave his hands, is still ex- 
pressive of the ideals and enthusiasms of the young John Muir so vividly 
revealed to us in the letters. It is not often given to a man to have lived 
his life with such singleness of purpose, nor at three-score years and ten 
to have so completely fulfilled the aims and ideals of his youth. 

Travels in Alaska is a record of three journeys of exploration by 
canoe and afoot among the fiords and mountains of Southeastern Alas- 
ka. Although prospectors, traders and a handful of missionaries were 
scattered among the islands, and were beginning to push up the great 
river valleys, the greater part of Alaska was in 1879 still unexplored, its 
fiords uncharted since Vancouver’s day. With Fort Wrangell as his base, 
Mr. Muir made several short steamer trips, which gave him the op- 
portunity to learn something of the glaciers and forests of the vicinity. 
After his return from an extended trip up the Stickeen River in October, 
he set out with Mr. Young, a Wrangell missionary, and a crew of Indian 
canoemen, to visit the fiords to northward, near the country of the war- 
like Chilcat tribes. Their eventful journey culminated in the discovery of 
Glacier Bay and its glorious company of glaciers, the largest of which 
bears Mr. Muir’s name. The following year he continued his explorations, 
particularly in the region of Sum Dum Bay and the Taku Fiord, and in 
1890 returned a third time to the Muir Glacier for a more extended ex- 
ploration of its upper fields and study of its flow. 

Today, a generation after the journals were written that are the basis 
of this book, it is easy to under-rate Mr. Muir’s great service to science. 
He was the first American geologist to grasp the extent and scope of the 
glacial phenomena of our continent. Others have followed in the paths of 
research that he pioneered, and have laid before the world the truths he 
was the first to recognize. “Many detailed proof-facts will be required to 
compel the assent to this in the minds of most geologists . . . but the 
glacial millennium will come.” In this, as in many another passage of the 
original journal, omitted in the book, one may read Mr. Muir’s quiet 


* Travels in Alaska. By JoHN Mutir. Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston and 
New York. 1915. Price, $2.50. i 


122 Sierra Club Bulletin 


confidence in the truth of his theories, his knowledge that the time was 
not ripe for their general acceptance. It is a wonderful tribute to the 
thoroughness and soundness of his early investigations that none of his 
theories had to be modified in the light of later discoveries. His long, pa- 
tient revision of his notes was devoted entirely to the task of bettering 
the expression of his early thought, never to any change in the substance 
of the thought itself. 

No attempt has been made to rewrite or finish the book, which is pre- 
sented as Mr. Muir left it, with the exception of some of the chapter di- 
visions and the transposition of certain passages, and even these minor 
changes were made in accordance with Mr. Muir’s expressed intentions. 
It is not complete, inasmuch as it ends in the middle of the trip of 1890, 
nor as a whole can it be regarded as a finished production. The inequali- 
ties at once apparent in its style were not at all due to failing powers, 
but only to the fact that time was not granted him to finish it. Mr. Muir’s 
best work was always slow of fruition. To appreciate fully what the 
world has lost, one has only to compare the earlier published story, 
Stickeen, with the passages in Chapter XV, which give the incidents of 
that story practically as they were first written in the journals. The 
vivid, forceful language is there, the keen delight in the wild, stormy, 
icy day, the sense of oneness with elemental things, and yet it lacks some- 
thing of the flashes of insight, the philosophy, the poetry, the illuminat- 
ing touches of the master hand that make the little story a classic. 

Nevertheless the book abounds in passages of wonderful beauty. The 
description of his camp-fire in the storm, of the auroras, of the sunrise 
in Glacier Bay, of the view from Glenora Peak, and a score of others, 
will rank among his best work. An interesting aspect of the book is the 
new light in which it places Mr. Muir in his relation to humanity. His 
fine, broad understanding of the Indians, their virtues, their failings, the 
hopelessness of their situation, where the approach of civilization brought 
mainly the “contamination of bad whites,” is manifested most sympa- 
thetically throughout. His meeting with the coureur-de-bois, Le Claire, 
and their intimate companionship for a day and a night before life parted 
them forever, is another revealing glimpse of the John Muir known to 
his friends, the big-hearted, open-minded companion, the lover of all 
things simple, sincere and best in mankind. 

In this as in all his other books two qualities stand out pre-eminently 
—the sincerity of his enthusiasm, the intensity of his religious faith. The 
sound in the flow of a stream, the note of a thrush, the roar of a rain- 
laden gale—each of nature’s voices was to him the “very voice of God, 
humanized, terrestrialized, entering one’s heart as to a home prepared 
for it.” Perhaps in the years to come his greatest claim to the world’s 
love and reverence will be that in an age of groping, dark materialism 
he kept alight the flame of simple faith in God, of belief in the spiritual 
character of nature’s influence on man. M: RoE; 


Book Reviews 123 


“LETTERS TO Slight in form in comparison with his later writings, these 
A FRIEND’* early letters of John Muir to his friend come to us as a 

voice from the past, bearing a charm and a fragrance like 
that of his own dear flowers. Written to one who in motherly affection: 
offered her appreciation and sympathy, they are the outpouring of a 
heart in whose greatness many were to find companionship. But like all 
who bear to mankind a revelation of the invisible, Muir was destined to 
pass many lonely years with nature and with God before people in gen- 
eral were willing to receive his message. 

In 1868 Muir yielded to that silent but potent invitation which the 
great forests and wild-flower gardens of our glorious California ever 
extend to the lover of nature. Inquiring the way to Yosemite, he set out 
afoot across the continuous flower fields of the central valley, pausing 
at night to lie beneath their enfolding bloom, and pressing onward by 
day toward the heavenly mountains that were to receive him as their 
own. 

With an undying enthusiasm this prophet of the mountains casts for- 
ever aside the advice of his well-meaning friends, who would have him 
enter a career that amounted to something, and, with unspeakable joy, he 
roams over the untrodden paradise of our great Sierra Nevada. 

Patiently he studies the life of bird, and flower, and tree, discovering 
their inmost secrets and enabling them to converse with us in a common 
language. He forms close acquaintance with glaciers, standing amid a 
storm of criticism as their friend, for he showed how they have carved 
and polished these mountains and made possible the peace and joy of 
the valleys. Even the rocks seemed to reveal to him their age-long se- 
crets as he saw in them God’s own writing. 

In the incomparable waterfalls of Yosemite and other valleys of the 
range Muir found an unending source of pure delight. How reverently 
he worships their creator as he listens to their changing music! Each 
tiny drop to him is a heaven-born voice, and all are singing in wondrous 
melody. By night as well as by day he mingles with their spray, on one 
occasion following a tiny ledge that led him far behind the great Yo- 
semite Fall. Here, amid its ceaseless thunder, he watches the moon- 
beams as they filter through the mist. As he lingers long, some spent 
comets of the fall are blown inward, acquainting him with their hidden 
power, and speedily inducing him to depart from their sanctuary. 

But it is to the glorious, eternal mountains that Muir oftenest turns. 
With only a crust of bread, living on air and water as only a mountain- 
eer knows how, he seeks their distant summits. In all our wide domain 
none are more transcendently beautiful than these heavenly mountains. 
In their flowery valleys, filled with giant trees, innumerable lakes and 
fairy falls, even the unfeeling traveler must linger with delight, while in 


* Letters to a Friend. Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, 1866-1879. By Joun Murr. 
Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1915. $3.00 net. 


124 Sierra Club Bulletin 


the higher regions of the range the wanderer will long find solitudes and 
mountain peaks unspoiled by man. 

First of all, in spirit, Muir shares these joys with his friend, then re- 
veals his heart in his letters. True friendship ever reaches far beyond 
the lives of those who find it. We feel with him the passion pure for God 
and His creation. Each mountain peak that Muir ascended calls us still 
to worship as in distant years they called their friend and prophet. With 
him we see again the holy morning’s Alpine glow crown Shasta’s dis- 
tant summit, and by his side, in spirit led, our hearts respond in glad 
thanksgiving. 

While we commend these letters of John Muir to the attention of all 
who are his true friends, we suggest that acquaintance with our great- 
est prophet of nature, and that of the land he loved, be further formed 
through his Mountains of California, Our National Parks, The Yosemite, 
and Travels in Alaska. Then will one roam through the valleys and over 
these mountains of God with seeing eye and understanding heart, while, 
perchance, the vision of eternal beauty that was his will become one’s 
own. LE Roy JEFFERS 


“ALASKA Days’ Every lover of nature and of the mountains will find 

WITH lasting enjoyment in this volume of Alaskan travel and 
JoHN Murir’* adventure, and in the account written by John Muir 
entitled Travels in Alaska. Mr. Young first went as a missionary to the 
Indians of Southeastern Alaska in 1878. There he was visited in the sum- 
mer of 1879 by Dr. Sheldon Jackson and other leaders of the Presby- 
terian denomination. With them went John Muir, already famous for 
his articles on the mountains of California. 

Establishing their headquarters at Fort Wrangell, the party chartered 
a steamer to visit the Indian villages and to explore the cafions of the 
Stickeen. They found inspiring scenery between the precipitous walls of 
the river, where beautiful groves of evergreen were carpeted with flow- 
ers, and singing waterfalls filled the air with music. 

Late one afternoon, John Muir, who was always an indefatigable 
walker and mountain climber, started with Mr. Young for a distant peak 
from whose summit they expected to view the sunset. They sauntered 
along botanizing and enjoying the unfolding landscape as they ascended 
the mountain. After crossing a glacier and climbing the cliff to a point 
near the summit, they realized that they must proceed more rapidly if 
they were to complete the ascent. Pressing forward, Muir fairly slid up 
the mountain, while Young followed as fast as he was able. In crossing 
a gulley Young’s footing gave way and he found himself sliding down- 
ward with both shoulders dislocated. He was unable to check himself 
until he actually overhung a thousand-foot precipice. Whistling in order 


; * Alaska Days with John Muir. By S. Hatt Younc. New York: Revell. 1915. 
1.00 net. 


| (eda 


Book Reviews 125 


to encourage his friend, Muir was finally able to reach his side. Hanging 
to the cliff with one hand, with the other he swung Young out over its 
face, and, pulling him in, grasped his collar with his teeth. Then, with 
both hands free to climb, he ascended for ten or twelve feet to compar- 
ative safety. All that night Muir carried and assisted this helpless man 
down through ten long miles of unknown glacier and cafion, reaching 
the steamer in the morning. With this introduction it is little wonder 
that these two became fast friends. 

On another excursion they visited Glacier Bay, naming many of the 
wonderful tumbling rivers of ice which flow into the sea. Muir’s de- 
scription of the voyage among the islands, of the ever present glacier- 
crowned mountains and of the marvelous colors of the floating ice, re- 
veals an appreciation of beauty which has seldom been equalled. 

In 1880 Muir and Young charter a canoe and sail northward, study- 
ing the Indian tribes and speaking at their villages. These were the early 
days of Alaska, and rivers of salmon were found in which there were 
apparently more fish than water. The quest for gold held no allurements 
for Muir, and awakened only pity in his heart when he beheld men 
blind to all but a fortune. Muir’s treasure was of flower, and bird, and 
tree; in them he rejoiced as only a soul that is free from the search for 
outward things knows how. 

A most interesting exploration is made of the fiords of Sum Dum 
Bay, and far in the heart of one of these is found a wonderful valley 
with flower-hung walls rising thousands of feet above the water, while 
a great tumbling glacier hurls its bergs into the peaceful waters. This 
was appropriately named Yosemite Bay. 

Mr. Young’s story of the famous adventure with Stickeen is dramat- 
ically told, but no one in search of adventure should fail to read Muir’s 
own account of his trip over the vast Taylor Bay Glacier. Unlike most 
men, he could not remain indoors during a storm, but regardless of 
darkness or danger, would match his powers against all of nature’s 
forces. In the worst weather, alone, except for Mr. Young’s little dog 
Stickeen, Muir crosses this widely crevassed glacier. Returning at night, 
they loose their way on its surface, and, after jumping an eight-foot 
chasm, find themselves on an island, from which they escape only by 
traversing a frail sliver of ice seventy-five feet in length. Muir often 
seemed protected where other men would have met their fate. 

Mr. Young has given us a vivid, lifelike impression of John Muir, of 
his vitality and abounding enthusiasm, above all of his abiding conscious- 
ness of God as directing all the processes of nature, and delighting in 
the beauty of the life which He is constantly creating. For him the trees 
wave and pray, while the lilies ring their bells for joy. 

John Muir’s place in the literature of our western mountains, trees, 
and flowers is easily foremost. His gospel of beauty and of joy is des- 
tined to become increasingly known as the truth of his message is at- 
tested in the experience of all who follow in his footsteps. 

Le Roy JEFFERS 


126 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“PEAKS AND Mountaineering has its historians, and its men of science, 
PRECIPICES”* its artists and its poets; Guido Rey is one of its poets, al- 
though he writes in prose. Mountaineering, as it is known 
in Europe at least, has also developed specialists in the several branches 
of its technique, and Signor Rey is an eminent authority on his specialty. 
This specialty, the reader of his books will discover, is that phase of 
mountain climbing known colloquially among Sierrans as “rock-work.” 
In the arduous scaling of precipices, demanding more than human na- 
ture can normally supply of fortitude and endeavor, Signor Rey finds a 
consuming joy. His book is an apology for that form of madness which 
drives men to attempt these “impossible” climbs, and so frankly, so ap- 
pealingly and so beautifully does he describe them and their noble ef- 
fects of inspiration and elevation above the level of normal mortal ex- 
perience, that at the end he almost convinces the reader of the reason- 
ableness of these perilous enterprises; he is altogether convincing as to 
the fascination of them. 

Descriptions of ten of the author’s later climbs, literally “peaks and 
precipices,” in the Dolomites and the Savoyan Alps, constitute his book. 
But the combination of the specialist in his particular form of sport with 
the vision of the poet which is the man himself makes his story some- 
thing altogether different from the usual records of mountain climbs. 
The pages fairly glow with the writer’s vibrant personality, which warms 
the reader to an unusual intimacy of thought and feeling. And the man 
himself wins the esteem of mountain lovers. Manly, simple, good-hu- 
mored, unassuming in his narrative, Signor Rey yet loves his mountains 
with an ardent passion which is more than phrases. Contact with them 
gives inspiration and strength; they are “human, wholesome, loyal, un- 
broken, incapable of treachery.” Each precipice and peak is individually 
a friend, the more so for the terrific struggle of dominating it. But Sig- 
nor Rey’s joy in these remarkable climbs is not from success in the 
physical struggle, for all his natural but very modest pleasure in his 
prowess (he had passed his fiftieth year when these later climbs were 
made). He rejoices much more in the spiritual exaltation of the effort 
and of the victory, in the “self-revelation which we attain through the 
savage struggle with the mountains,” in the “arduous fatigue which 
gives health to the body, the wonderful visions that ennoble the intellect, 
the great emotions that mature the soul.” 

It is fortunate that a man so sympathetic as Guido Rey with the 
spiritual lessons of the mountains is so gifted with the power of ex- 
pression. He lavishes upon the objects of his admiration a truly remark- 
able beauty of description. The familiar thrilling details of daring climb- 
ing are in his narrative described with unusual vividness. But still more 
admirable are the veteran climber’s splendid tributes to the peaks he 
loves so well. The fervor and the beauty of his thoughts are poetic. One 

* Peaks and Precipices; Scrambles in the Dolomites and Savoy. By Guipo REy. 


Translated from the Italian by J. E. C. Eaton. New York. Dodd, Mead & Company. 
1915. 238 pages, 76 illustrations. Price, $3.50 net. 


Book Reviews 127 


is reminded of the directness of expression and the wealth of imagery 
of our own John Muir, and feels that, like Muir’s many beautiful chap- 
ters, these of Rey’s, “hymns of praise, proclaiming the ancient virtues 
and the eternal beauties of this earth,” can come only from the depths of 
a great and understanding soul. Mountain lovers will read this book and 
rejoice in it. It is a classic of mountaineering literature. 

The translator has shown himself in intimate sympathy with the au- 
thor and his theme. The book is beautifully printed, illustrated with a 
quantity of excellent plates, and well indexed. Joi ae 


“THE OLp TESTAMENTIN ‘The theme of Professor Badé’s book is stated 
THE LiGHToOF Topay’* in the subtitle, “A Study in Moral Develop- 

ment.” It may seem to some that the author 
is undertaking to expound the obvious—one must concede, it would 
seem, a very considerable “moral development” from the Old Testament 
records of primitive beliefs and social customs, of primitive worship and 
ritual, to the standards of thought and belief of the later books. But even 
if it be conceded that a moral development is involved—nor is this so 
obvious to many, for many do not read the Old Testament from the 
point of view to which this conclusion appears—it is an extremely in- 
teresting and valuable work which Professor Badé has done in laying 
that development clear before the reader. 

Still more valuable is the service which this study renders to the Old 
Testament in seeking to relieve it from a burden which it is not compe- 
tent to bear—the burden of an immense moral authority, to which itself 
it lays no claim, except perhaps for the particular civilization and time 
to which it pertains. Doctrines still insist that the Old Testament shall 
be regarded as divinely authoritative throughout as a guide to morals and 
faith. A faith so founded must be found sooner or later to be incom- 
patible with truth. Professor Badé shows the danger of such teaching to 
our Christian beliefs. But while his analysis and discussion deprives the 
Old Testament of the character which has been ascribed to it by dog- 
mas, it enhances the value of these scriptures for what they really are— 
the record of the development of a nation from the primitive worship of 
nomadic barbarism into spiritual light. As such the Old Testament be- 
comes the more instructive, and even inspiring. 

Particularly valuable and instructive are the author’s chapters, “The 
Moral Character of Jahveh and his Clients in the Early Literature, and 
“The Origin and Moral Significance of the Decalogue.” AT AY 


* The Old Testament in the Light of Today, a Study in Moral Development. By 
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE. Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1915. 
xiv—326 pages. Price, $1.75. 


128 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“THE CoNQUEST OF This beautifully illustrated and attractive volume is 
Mount Coox’’* an interesting record of a woman’s mountaineering 
experiences in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. 
It is primarily a book of adventure, though the frequent descriptions of 
the mountain scenes are sketched with clearness and appreciation. The 
climbs made by Miss Du Faur are exceedingly difficult, involving dan- 
gerous work on glaciers and steep rock faces, and entitle her to a place 
in the front rank of woman mountaineers. Miss Du Faur was the first 
woman to reach the summit of Mount Cook, and the first mountaineer 
to attempt the complete traverse of its three peaks. Many other of her 
climbs were first ascents. All of her climbing was done under the leader- 
ship of the guides Peter and Alexander Graham, to whom she generous- 
ly accords all the recognition they deserve. For the general reader the 
only defect of the book is that the unusual features of New Zealand’s 
mountain world—its tropical vegetation growing so close to the snows, 
its bird life, where parrots are found displaying an interest in recumbent 
mountaineers “altogether too personal for comfort,” are touched upon 
only with tantalizing brevity. Miss Du Faur’s very notable career as a 
mountain climber was inspired by a real love and appreciation of the 
mountains, and all mountaineers will wish her success in her future 
work. M. Ra Bs 


“NATURE AND SCIENCEON The Pacific Coast Committee of the American 
THE PaciFic Coast’ + Association for the Advancement of Science, 

in issuing this “guide book for scientific trav- 
elers in the West,” has performed a valuable service not only for travel- 
ers, but for those of our own people in whom the interest in our out- 
door world is awakening. We have not space here even to catalogue the 
interesting material collected by Joseph Grinnell and the fellow mem- 
bers of his committee in Nature and Science on the Pacific Coast. Three 
historical sketches are followed by articles on meteorology, geology, 
mineralogy, entomology, botany, irrigation, mountaineering, outdoor 
life, etc., all signed by names that give weight and authority. Among 
the contributors are many of our own members—Vernon Kellogg, Alex- 
ander McAdie, Joseph Le Conte, David Starr Jordan, Charles Atwood 
Kofoid, Willis Linn Jepson, William Albert Setchell, Harvey Monroe 
Hall—distinguished authorities, many of them of international repute. 
Maps of the chief Pacific Coast cities, geological and other charts, add 
to the value and attractiveness of this very interesting book. 

M.R. P. 


* The Conquest of Mt. Cook. By Frepa Du Faur. An account of four seasons’ 
mountaineering on the southern Alps of New Zealand. New York, Chas. Scribner 
Sons. London, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. 1915. Pages, 250. Price, $3.50. 


{+ Nature and Science on the Pacific Coast. A guide book for scientific travelers in 
the West. Illustrated with nineteen text figures, twenty-nine half-tone plates and 
Sena maps. Paul Elder & Company, San Francisco. 1915. Pages, 302. Price, 

1.50. 


i+ 


Book Reviews 129 


“Tn THE OREGON Catch an Easterner young enough and he may become 
CountTRY’* more loyal to the West than many a born Westerner. 
Perhaps because he has experienced the “conservative 
pessimism” of the East he is the more likely to become enamoured of 
the “impulsive optimism” of the Pacific Coast. In the Oregon Country 
is a striking but not overdrawn picture of the West that Mr. Putnam 
has grown to love since he first, nearly eight years ago, struck out on the 
trail with the Sierra Club. Though the book deals chiefly with Oregon, 
he ranges over its borders into Washington and California too. From 
the mountaineer’s standpoint the latter part of the book will be found 
most interesting, dealing as it does with the wilderness of the West 
rather than its agricultural or economic development. The last chapter 
is devoted to his summer in the Sierra, including a knapsack journey 
through Yosemite Park and an outing in the Kern with the Sierra Club. 
The book is well written, truthful and entertaining, and shows a real 
love and enthusiasm for the present beauty as well as the hopeful future 
of this country of his adoption. M. R. P: 


“MouNTAIN Expitora- Mr. Alfred H. Brooks, chief of the division of 
TION IN ALASKA” } Alaskan mineral resources of the United States 

Geological Survey, is the author of Number 3 of 
Alpina Americana, published by the American Alpine Club. After an ade- 
quate description of the location and character of the principal mountain 
systems and ranges of Alaska, particularly of their glaciers and glaci- 
ation, Mr. Brooks gives a very interesting but brief account of explora- 
tion and mountaineering there, from the first glimpse of St. Elias re- 
corded by Stellar, naturalist of the Bering Expedition in 1741, to the 
recent much-discussed ascents of Mount McKinley. Much of the explor- 
ing fell to the lot of our indefatigable Geological Survey, especially in 
connection with the International Boundary Survey in 1903. 

The paper is uniform in size with the other two numbers of Alpina 
Americana, “The High Sierra of California,” by Joseph N. Le Conte, 
published in 1907, and “The Canadian Rocky Mountains,” by Charles 
E. Fay, issued in 1911. Like the others of the series, it is magnificently 
illustrated. It is unfortunate, from the point of view of those who es- 
teem these excellent publications on the mountains of our continent, that 
they are issued at such long intervals. AOA. 


*In the Oregon Country. Out-doors in Oregon, Washington and California, to- 
gether with some legendary lore and glimpses of the modern West in the making. 
By Grorce PaLMER PutNAM. With 52 illustrations. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York 
and London. 1915. Pages, 169. Price, $1.75. 


{ Mountain Exploration in Alaska. By Atrrep H. Brooxs. Alpina Americana, 
No. 3. Published by the American Alpine Club, Philadelphia. Baltimore, Williams & 
Wilkins Company. 1915. Price, 85 cents. 


130 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“THE Rocky Mountain Enos A. Mills is one of those refreshing and 
WoNDERLAND’’* satisfying authors who writes, not because he 
wishes to make himself heard, but because he 

has something really worth while to say. His books are all records of 
the observation and experience of many years. His studies of the forests 
and wild animals are particularly interesting. In his descriptions of the 
wild animals he is at his best, for he is not only their observer, but their 
friend, who has grown into intimate knowledge of their lives and habits 
through long association with them. His style is crisp and vigorous, na- 
tural and direct. His latest book, The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, is 
full of interesting matter. Many of its chapters should prove no less ab- 
sorbing to children than to their elders. For Sierra Club members it has 
special value as it describes many features of our newest national park. 


M.R. P. 


Mount McKinitEy The Mount McKinley controversy is reopened by 
AND MouNTAIN Edwin Swift Balch in a very interesting mono- 
CLIMBER’S Proorst graph entitled “Mount McKinley and Mountain 
Climber’s Proofs.” Mr. Balch is himself a noted 
mountaineer and traveler, and his word carries with it the authority of 
experience. He adopts the ingenious device of printing in parallel col- 
umns quotations from the published descriptions of the three claimants 
to the honor of the first ascent of McKinley—Dr. Frederick A. Cook, 
1906; Thomas Lloyd and party, 1910, and Dr. Hudson Stuck, 1913. A 
fourth column includes the description by Belmore Browne of the at- 
tempt made by him and Herschel C. Parker on Mount McKinley in 1912, 
when they reached a point within a few hundred feet of the summit, but 
were driven back by storms. The case for Dr. Cook is strengthened by 
the fact that his account of the climb was published long before that of 
any of the others. In Mr. Balch’s opinion the “facts seem to be that the 
four climbers who say they have been on or nearly on the top of Mount 
McKinley told the truth, as well as they knew how, about their experi- 
ences. That Cook, Lloyd, Brown and Stuck, reporting as they do, though 
in different words, much the same facts and much the same experiences, 
corroborate one another.” The discussion of Dr. Cook’s disputed photo- 
graph of the summit would have been aided by a reproduction of that 
photograph and the alleged parallel by Dr. Browne. The last word has 
not been spoken on the subject, but Mr. Balch’s able presentation of one 
of the most confused and disputed cases of mountaineering history de- 
serves the careful consideration of all who are interested in the first as- 
cent of America’s greatest mountain. Mu ROP: 
* The Rocky Mountain Wonderland. By Enos A. Mitts. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 


Ease and New York. 1915. With illustrations from photographs. Pages, 353. Price, 
5 net. 


¥ Mount McKinley and Mountain Climber’s Proofs. By Epwin Swirt BAtcH, 
Philadelphia, Campion and Company, 1914. Pages 142. 


Book Reviews 131 


“GuIpE Book OF THE The traveler in the Western part of the 
WESTERN UNITED STATES”* United States may behold from the car 

window monuments far more ancient and 
often more picturesque than the ruins of antiquity that are to be found 
in Europe. The mesas of Arizona and the weird rock formations of Wy- 
oming and Utah have histories as full of stirring episodes as many a 
Rhenish castle or Grecian citadel. It takes no special knowledge to un- 
derstand the great geological drama that has been enacted throughout 
our broad land; all that is needed is a sort of geological Baedeker to 
point the way. Realizing the possibilities of such a guide, the United 
States Department of the Interior, through the Geological Survey, has 
begun the publication of just such a series. Four volumes have been is- 
sued during the past year, and it is to be hoped that more are to follow, 
so that in the future they may be as conspicuous on the railroad trains 
of every line as the little red books are in Europe. 

The plan of the series, as stated by the Director of the Geological 
Survey, George Otis Smith, is “to present authoritative information that 
may enable the reader to realize adequately the scenic and material re- 
sources of the region he is traversing, to comprehend correctly the basis 
of its development, and, above all, to appreciate keenly the real value of 
the country he looks upon, not as so many square miles of territory rep- 
resented on the map in a railroad folder by meaningless spaces, but 
rather as land—real estate, if you please—varying widely in present ap- 
pearance because differing largely in its history, and characterized by 
even greater variation in values because possessing diversified natural 
resources.” 

Of the four volumes issued three trace the transcontinental lines of 
the Northern Pacific, the Santa Fé, and the Overland routes, the fourth 
deals with the Shasta Route and Coast Line. The text is indexed by the 
railroad stations and is supplemented by well-chosen illustrations and by 
admirable maps. These maps are one of the chief advantages of the 
books. They show the principal features of the landscape for several 
miles on either side of the route by means of contour lines at intervals 
of 200 feet. Those who have used similar contour maps on outings in the 
high mountains may take particular pleasure in checking off the thin 
brown lines, enjoying at the same time the comfortable upholstery of the 
Pullman. 

We have only one regret to express in connection with these books, 
and that is that they are not easy to find when wanted in a hurry. At 
present the books are obtainable only by writing to the Superintendent of 


* Guide Book of the Western United States. Department of the Interior. United 
States Geological Survey, George Otis Smith, Director. Price, $1.00 per copy. $4.00 
per set. 

Part A. The Northern Pacific Route, with a side trip to Yellowstone Park. By 
Marius CAMPBELL and others. BULLETIN 611, 1915. 

Part B. The Overland Route, with a side trip to Yellowstone Park. By WILLIS 
T. Lez, RatpH W. Stone, Hoyt ’S. GALE and others BULLETIN 612; 1915: 

Part C. The Santa Fé Route, with a side trip to the Grand Cafion of the Color- 
ado. By N. H. Darton and others. BULLETIN 613, 1915. 

in ieee Shasta Route and Coast Line. By J. S. D1LLer and others. BULLE- 
TIN 


E32 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. The price is 
one dollar a copy or four dollars for the set. BP, Pink 


“TRAIL AND The Colorado Mountain Club is to be congratulated on 
TIMBERLINE’* this very original and beautiful first number of its “Re- 
view in Picture.” Except for a short paragraph describ- 
ing each picture printed on the opposite page, and for an organization 
page giving the officers and committees of the club, the entire review is 
given over to splendid photographic reproductions. The good taste 
shown in their selection and their placing on the wide-margined pages 
cannot be too highly praised. Among so many fine pictures it is difficult 
to distinguish, but the very unusual “Inside a Glacial Crevasse” by Geo. 
C. Barnard, and “The Tree Frontier” by Albert H. Haanstad may be 
mentioned as making the strongest personal appeal. ME. Rave: 


“PACIFIC Our members will be interested in the new monthly maga- 
OutTpoors’f zine, Pacific Outdoors, whose initial number was issued 

December, 1915. It is an attractively illustrated number 
with articles of interest alike to sportsmen and mountaineers. The local 
walks of the Sierra Club are to be announced monthly in its columns. 
The following quotation from the leading editorial defines the purpose 
and scope of the magazine: 

“We are going to stand for conservation of wild life; for the proper 
enforcement of those laws for its better protection; for new laws that 
will still better protect such life; for the pleasures to be had in outdoor 
life in fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, fly-casting, trap-shooting, yacht- 
ing, motoring, both on land and sea, and for all clean sports that tend to 
bring out the best in us, to the end that we may improve our physical 
and mental sides and be better for it.” M. R. P. 


The January, 1916, issue of American Forestry contains several arti- 
cles of unusual interest to mountaineers. In particular we would mention 
National Parks as an Asset, by the Honorable Franklin K. Lane; The 
Sequoia National Park, a splendidly illustrated story by Mark Daniels, 
and The Forests of Alaska, by Henry S. Graves. 

* Trail and Timberline. An annual mountaineering review in picture. The Color- 


ado Mountain Club, 1915. George H. Harvey, Jr., secretary, 3120 W. 23rd Ave., 
Denver, Colorado. 


+ Pacific Outdoors. Gro. A. WENTWORTH, editor. Pacific Outdoors Publishing 
Company, 35 Montgomery Street, San Francisco. Issued monthly. Yearly subscrip- 
tion, $1.50; single copy, 15 cents. 


Book Reviews 133 


“Tur MOUNTAINEER” ‘The Mountaineers’ annual publication comes to 
VoLumE VIII* hand as the S1rrRA CLUB BULLETIN goes to press. 
It contains a most interesting article by Francois 
E. Matthes, of the United States Geological Survey, on the methods used 
in mapping the Mount. Rainier region, and in determining the height of 
the mountain by carefully checked vertical angles from known points. 
Other articles of great merit are by G. F. Allen, supervisor of the 
Rainier National Forest, on forest types, and by Professor Edwin J. 
Saunders, of the University of Washington, on the geological history of 
Rainier. The activities of other mountaineering clubs are reviewed in a 
series of communications from the different clubs. The narrative of the 
1915 outing of the Mountaineers stimulates a most cordial feeling of un- 
derstanding with these our brothers and sisters of Puget Sound. 
AHA: 


“THE CANADIAN The new volume of the Canadian Alpine Journal is 
ALPINE JOURNAL} very largely devoted to the Northern Rockies in 
the vicinity of Mount Robson, newly opened to trav- 
el by the completion of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Articles on 
the little known Purcell Range of the Southern Selkirks also appear. 
The records of the two camps established by the Canadian Alpine Club 
in 1913 and the Upper Yoho camp of 1914 are likewise included. It is an 
unusually interesting and well illustrated number. Mi Ro P: 


Two splendidly illustrated reprints from the Geographical Journal of 
March, 1914, and February, 1914, have been presented by the authors to 
the library of the Sierra Club. “Physical Characteristics of the Siachen 
Basin and Glacier System,” by William Hunter Workman, and “The Ex- 
ploration of the Siachen or Rose Glacier, Eastern Karakoran,” by Fanny 
Bullock Workman. Dr. Workman has also presented his English version 
of an article from Zettschnifi fiir Gletscher Kunde. Band VIII, entitled 
“Features of Karakoran Glaciers Connected with Pressure, Especially of 
Affluents.” The thanks of our members are due Dr. and Mrs. Workman 
for their courtesy in sending us these extremely interesting and valuable 
papers. JAY, Rp Pea 


SIERRA CLUB STATIONERY 


The official die of the Sierra Club is now at the store of Paul Elder 
& Co., 239 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, who are prepared to execute 
orders for Club stationery. 

* The Mountaineer, volume VIII. Published by the Mountaineers, Seattle, De- 
cember, 1915. 118 pages. Price, 50 cents. 


+ The Canadian Alpine Journal. Published by the Alpine Club of Canada, head- 
quarters, Banff, Alberta. 1914 and 1915, Vol. VI, pages 263. Price, $1.50. 


Members are urged to deal with our advertisers 


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Paine OF the” be 
Pacific Coast _ oa 


The Pacific Coast is Nature’s Bcpdenns two thousand 
five hundred miles long, of wonderful climate, Hore hy 
wonderful scenes, wonderful products = = 


Tahoe—“The Mile High Lake” in the heart of the 
Sierras. ty 


ows, its glorious waterfalls. To miss Vase 
is to lose a delightful experience. 


trees, impressive in size and symmetry. 
Kings and Kern Rivers Canyons, with Sequoia aud . 


vast and rugged region to beni the sport 3 
and mountaineer. ; | 
Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Trees, and Calter 
nia State Redwood Park— ooo acres of virgin 
forest.) 
Mount Shasta, Mount Whitney, Mount Wils 
Mount Lassen (the only active volcano in th 
United States), the Siskiyous, McLoughlin Peak. 
Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, Mount St, Hel- 
ens, Mount Adams and Mount Rainiers os 
Crater Lake National Park and the Klamath La es 
; country—Oregon’ s marvelous tourist eran ' 
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ALL ARE REACHED VIA LINES OF 


outhern Pach ij 


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eee | Edited for the Club by ae 
UA nae WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 


January, 1917 


Vente Op A MOO WR anal 


Plate CLV. Head of Deer Creek Cafion 1 Fea i 
Tue Sierra CLUB Joseph N. Le Conte ce 


Plates CLVI, CLVII, CLVIIL. 
To THE Memory oF JoHN Muir © 
TEN VOLUMES OF PUBLICATIONS (1892TOIQI7) —_—. Elliot M cAll 


THE War-ZONE FoREST OF THE KERN 
Plates CLIX, CLX. 


THE YOSEMITE Cony—A CHAPTER IN THE NATURAL History OF THE 


YosEMITE NATIONAL PARK as oseph Grinnell and Tracy I. St torer mi ‘15 
Plate CLXI. | | | iceueter alle 


Tue Sacrep MountAIN OF Cura . ha Eunice foe i. 6. 
Plate CLXII. I 1 ey Bees Ce 

THE Kern RIvER OUTING OF 1916 | : Jessie McGilvray Treat 1 

_ Plates CLXIII, CLXIV, CLXV, CLXVI, CLXVII, CLX VIII, CLXIX, 

CLXXII, CLXXIII, CLXXIV, CLXXV; CLXXVI, CLXXVII. 


VIA Duck CREEK 
Plates CLXX, CLXXI. 


STUDIES IN THE SIERRA 
ITI. ANCIENT GLACIERS AND AS a ERE 


INDIAN VILLAGE AND Camp Sires In YOSEMITE VALLEY C. Hart Mer 
cha ORGANIZATION OF THE SIERRA CLUB” ve 


ee) EDITORIALS 
La ea Plates CLXXVIII, CLXXIX. 


REPORTS OF Caraee. tte ier 


a Nores AnD CORRESPONDENCE ; re 
| Plates CLXXX, CLXXXI, CLXXXII, CLXXXIII, CLXXXIV, 


; Narronar Park NOTES 


FORESTRY Notes 
RE y 


! ae) Reviews 


_ Correspondence concerning the’ disirsbiticen A oie o tk 
vitl _ reference to advertising rates and space locatio 
ly, should be addressed to the Secretary of the 
ing, San Francisco, Nea 


ee 50 Cents Per Cors 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLV. 


Qo ee: 


Life 
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HEAD OF DEER CREEK CANON, LOOKING TOWARD 
MIDDLE FORK OF KAWEAH RIVER 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


VOLUME 
TEN 


SAN FRANCISCO 
TANUARY 
1917 


q 


FA 
“ton al Mus 
THE SIERRA CLUB 


By Josepu N. LE Conte 
- 


HE true grandeur of our Sierra Nevada was first opened 

to the world by the discovery of the Yosemite Valley in 
1851. In spite of the difficulties of travel, a great many people 
found their way into this famous valley during the early fifties, 
at a time when access was possible only on horseback and over 
the roughest of trails. It is not surprising then that these hardy 
pioneers soon discovered that the Yosemite was only the gate- 
way to a vast alpine region whose equal was not to be found 
within the boundaries of the United States. Incited by the re- 
ports of early explorers, in the summer of 1863 Professor J. D. 
Whitney, chief of the California Geological Survey, which was 
created by act of legislature in 1860, decided to send an explor- 
ing party into this remote region. The results of this first scien- 
tific expedition were so remarkable that in 1864 a second party 
was sent to explore the basins of the Kings and San Joaquin 
rivers. The results of this early reconnaissance are to be found 


aus 


136 Sierra Club Bulletin 


in volume I of the reports of the Geological Survey of Califor- 
nia, published in 1865. 

To J. D. Whitney, therefore, and his associates, William H. 
Brewer, Clarence King, J. T. Gardner, and Charles F. Hoff- 
mann, belong the credit of first exploring, describing, and map- 
ping in outline this great area of difficult country. 

In 1868 John Muir came to California and immediately made 
his way into the Yosemite Valley, which by this time was re- 
nowned throughout the world. He at once began his travels 
and studies in the high Sierra, and his first contribution to the 
literature of this subject was published in 1871. From then on 
to the time of his death, his writings, more than any one thing, 
have directed the attention of the public to the wonders of the 
Sierra. 

Beginning about 1870, expeditions were formed by enthusi- 
astic mountain-lovers simply for the purpose of exploring and 
enjoying the high Sierra. But these also were but pioneers, 
and each party was obliged to work its own way through inde- 
pendently, making use of the trails of the sheepmen who at a 
very early date began using the rich pasturage of the alpine 
meadows. Practically no detailed information was to be ob- 
tained then in any published accounts. All descriptions so far 
were of a general nature and lacked that accuracy of detail of 
route and trail so necessary to the traveler, 

It finally became evident that some organization was needed 
whereby the experiences and practical results of travel might 
be brought together and preserved for the use of others to fol- 
low. This idea in a general way may have been in the minds of 
some of the very earliest explorers in this field, but if so no 
record of such has been found. The first definite move in this 
direction seems to have been made by Professor J. H. Senger, 
of the University of California, in 1886, and the beginnings are 
shown in a short correspondence between himself and Mr. Den- 
nison, then State Guardian of the Yosemite Valley. Professor 
Senger’s first idea was to establish a library of mountaineering 
literature in the Yosemite Valley, bringing together not only all 
books relating to the California mountains, but collecting all 
published maps, as well as sketch-maps and notes and itinera- 
ries made by travelers. His idea was evidently that Yosemite 


The Sierra Club 137 


would be the natural starting-point from which all trips would 
be made. Later the idea expanded, and by 1890 the proposi- 
tion of forming a club or association was widely discussed, par- 
ticularly among the students and faculty of the University of 
California, and the name ‘Sierra Club” seems to have been 
thought of at that time. Professor Senger discussed the mat- 
ter with many of his friends, notably with Professor William 
D. Armes, of the state university, with Mr, Warren Olney, of 
San Francisco, and with John Muir. I myself realized the im- 
portance of such a club during a trip through the Kings River 
Sierra in 1890. At that time nothing was popularly known of 
the trails in that section, and our party knew nothing from day 
to day of what lay before us. 

The one thing which finally brought matters to a head was the 
creation of the Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national 
parks in October, 1890. The idea here was first conceived by 
Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of the Century Mag- 
azine. He visited Yosemite during the summer of 1889, and 
was persuaded by Mr. Muir to accompany him to the high Si- 
erra region about the headwaters of the Tuolumne and Merced 
rivers. He noticed the sad destruction caused by sheep in the 
meadows and wild-flower gardens, descriptions of which he 
had read in Mr. Muir’s articles, and on his return he urged the 
formation of a great national park which should include this 
upper region, offering to Mr. Muir the use of the Century Mag- 
azine to put before the public a proper description of this and 
other scenic wonders of the Sierra. Right gladly Mr. Muir 
took up the work, and, energetically backed by those who af- 
terward were founders of the Sierra Club, the necessary bills 
were passed through Congress and signed by President Cleve- 
land. 

The formation of the Sierra Club was now no longer a mat- 
ter of doubt. It was decided to abandon the idea of headquar- 
ters in Yosemite Valley, as that was obviously inappropriate to 
the broader idea, and to make the place of business San Fran- 
CiSCo. 

On January 11, 1892, Professor Senger, encouraged by the 
universal interest shown, wrote to Mr. Olney, whose letter in 
reply follows: 


138 Sierra Club Bulletin 


RANCISCO : , 
Pror. HENRY SENGER, SAN Francisco, Jan. 14, 1892 


Dear Sir: Your favor of the 11th was not received until yes- 
terday. 

I should be pleased to confer with you in regard to the forming 
of a Sierra Club. Don’t know that I could take an active part, 
but should be pleased to be present at the birth of the Club. 

Truly yours, 
WARREN OLNEY 


On Saturday, January 16, Professor Senger called at Mr. Ol- 
ney’s office and the matter was discussed, this being the first of 
several such informal discussions. Finally it was decided to 
call a meeting of interested persons for purposes of organiza- 
tion. The following letter from John Muir, dated May 10, 
1892, and reproduced in Plate cLv1, is the earliest I have been 


able to find from him bearing on this subject: 
Mr. Henry SENGER, MarTINEZ, May 10, 1802. 
Dear Sir: I am greatly interested in the formation of an Alpine 
Club, and think with you and Mr. Olney that the time has come 
when such a club should be organized. You may count on me as 
a member and as willing to do all in my power to further the in- 
terests of such a club. I shall be glad to see you at my house near 
Martinez, or to meet you in the city. Mr. Armes of the State 
University is also interested in the organization of such a club, 
and I advise you to correspond with him. 
Yours truly, 
JoHN Muir 


Shortly afterward came a second letter from Mr. Muir, 
which was as follows: 


Pror. SENGER, MarTINEz, May 22. 


Dear Sir: I will gladly attend the meeting on Saturday next at 
Mr. Olney’s office. | 

I suppose it will not be best to have a large number present at 
the first meeting. I should like to have Mr. Thos. Magee invited 
as likely to prove useful and Mr. Pelham Ames. 

Hoping that we will be able to do something for wildness and 


make the mountains glad, I remain j 
Cordially yours, 


JoHN Murr 


This mentions a meeting to be called on “Saturday next,” which 
was Saturday, May 28, one week before the articles of incor- 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLVI. 


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JOHN MUIR’S FIRST LETTER ABOUT THE SIERRA CLUB 


The Sierra Club 139 


poration were signed. At this preliminary meeting the policy 
of the proposed Sierra Club was outlined, and it was left to 
Mr. Olney to draw up the papers necessary for incorporation. 

The next meeting was on Saturday, June 4, 1892, and at this 
the agreement of association, the articles of incorporation, and 
the by-laws were signed. The first board of directors was 
elected and consisted of: 


Joun Murr, President, | 

WarRREN OLNEY, First Vice-President, 

J. C. BRANNER, Second Vice-President, 
WittiaM D. ARMES, Secretary, 

J. H. SENceEr, Corresponding Secretary, 
Mark B. Kerr, Treasurer, 

D. S. JoRDAN, 

W. D. JoHNsSoN, 

R. M. Price. 


It will be noticed that John Muir was the first president, and he 
held that office for twenty-two years, until the time of his death. 

The purposes set forth in, and the wording of, the articles of 
incorporation show a great deal of thought and care in the 
preparation. Throughout the entire twenty-five years of active 
life of the club they have served the purpose admirably. If 
drawn today to serve present needs of our club, they could not 
have been put in better form. Inasmuch as they appear in 
complete form only in Publication No. 1 of the club, which is 
now entirely out of print, I shall quote them in full. 


ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION 


Know all men by these presents: 

That we, the undersigned, a majority of whom are citizens and 
residents of the State of California, have this day voluntarily as- 
sociated ourselves together for the purpose of forming a Corpor- 
ation under the laws of the State of California. And we hereby 
certify as follows, to-wit: 

ip 
That the name of said Corporation shall be the Sierra Cius. 


II. 
That the said Association is made, and the said Corporation is 
formed, not for pecuniary profit. 


140 


Sierra Club Bulletin 


IIT. 

That the purposes for which this Corporation is formed are as 
follows, to-wit: To explore, enjoy and render accessible the 
mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic in- 
formation concerning them; to enlist the support and co-operation 
of the people and government in preserving the forests and other 
natural features of the Sierra Nevada Mountains; to take, ac- 
quire, purchase, hold, sell and convey real and personal property, 
and to mortgage or pledge the same for the purpose of securing 
any indebtedness which the Corporation may incur, and to make 
and enter into any and all obligations, contracts and agreements 
concerning or relating to the business or affairs of the Corpora- 
tion, or the management of its property. 


IV. 

That the place where the principal business of said Corporation 
is to be transacted is the City and County of San Francisco, State 
of California. 

V. 

That the term for which said Corporation is to exist is fifty 

years from and after the date of its incorporation. 


VI. 

That the number of Directors or Trustees of said Corporation 
shall be nine (9), and that the names and residences of the Direc- 
tors or Trustees who are appointed for the first year, to serve un- 
til the election and qualification of their successors, are as follows, 
to-wit: 

Joun Murr, Martinez, Cal. 

WarrEN OLNEY, Oakland, Cal. 

J. H. SenceEr, San Francisco, Cal. 

WILLIAM D. ArMEs, Oakland, Cal. 

Davin S. JorDAN, Palo Alto, Cal. 

R. M. Price, Berkeley, Cal. 

Mark BricKELL Kerr, Golden Gate, Alameda Co., Cal.. 
WiLarp D. JoHnson, Berkeley, Cal. 

JouHN C. BRANNER, Palo Alto, Cal. 


VII. 

That the said Corporation has, and shall have, no capital stock. 
And we further certify and declare: That the above-named Di- 
rectors of the Corporation were duly elected Directors thereof by 
the members of said Corporation, at an election for Directors 
held at 101 Sansome Street, in the City and County of San Fran- 
cisco, State of California, at eleven A.M., on this fourth day of 
June, 1892, and that a majority of members of said Association 


The Sierra Club IAI 


and Corporation were present and voted at said election, and that 
at such election each of said Directors received the votes of a ma- 
jority of the members of the Corporation present; as more fully 
appears from the certificate of the two Tellers of Election here- 
unto annexed and hereby referred to and made part hereof. 

In witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hands and seals 
this fourth day of June, A. D. 1892. 


W. H. Beatty, Joun Murr, 

RALPH C. Harrison, J. H. SENGER, 
GEorGE C. PERKINS, WILLIAM D. ARMES, 
G. B. BaytLey, MarK BricKELL Kerr, 
Joun C. BRANNER, DorvILLeE Lipsy, 
JAMES O. GRIFFIN, CHARLES A. BAILEY, 
Witiarp D. JoHnson, C.D. Rosinson, 
JosIAH KEEP, C. B. BRaDLEy, 
HERMANN Kower, Frep S. PHEBY, 
Husert P. Dyer, CuHar.es G. HARKER, 
W. H. Henry, R. M. Price, 

L. DE F. BARTLETT, WILL DENMAN, 
W.L. Jepson, Jr., WARREN GREGORY. 


WARREN OLNEY. 


The certificate of the Secretary of State of the State of Cali- 
fornia was issued June 17, 1892. It will be noticed in reading 
the above purposes of the club that they show two distinct 
points of view, which seem to reflect the characters of the two 
most active organizers. A club to “explore, enjoy and render 
accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to pub- 
lish authentic information concerning them” was evidently the 
first idea conceived of by Professor Senger, while the purpose 
of “enlisting the support and co-operation of the people and 
the government in preserving the forests and other natural fea- 
tures of the Sierra Nevada Mountains” shows the legal mind of 
Mr. Olney. 

The club began its work in a modest way with a charter 
membership of 182, but from the first it began developing along 
all the lines laid down by its founders. The first publication, 
issued in the summer of 1892, has already been referred to as 
containing the articles of incorporation and by-laws. The first 
BULLETIN appeared January, 1893, and the second in June of 
the same year. These first three publications were of smaller 
size than the present BULLETIN, being only about 5 by 8 inches. 
Beginning January, 1894, the BULLETIN was enlarged to its 


142 Sierra Club Bulletin 


present form. In 1893 also there were published two outline 
maps, one of the Yosemite and the other of the Kings River 
High Sierra, which were the only maps of the high mountains 
at that time showing trails and routes. From the first also the 
club took an active part in the protection of the national parks. 
As early as October, 1892, the club considered, took action 
against, and by its influence defeated the so-called Caminetti 
Bill which proposed to cut down the boundaries of the Yosem- 
ite National Park, and it also protested against certain illegal 
timber-cutting in national parks. Money was also appropri- 
ated for the improvement of trails and marking of routes in 
the Tuolumne Sierra. 

The question of a seal came up at an early date. When first 
organized a simple seal was adopted, showing a pine tree within 
a circular margin, with the words “AlI- 
tiora peto” below. In the spring of 
1894 Mr. Willis Polk designed the pres- 
ent seal, with the Sequoia gigantea in 
the foreground, Half Dome and a typi- 
cal alpine group, Mount Ritter and Ban- 
ner Peak, in the distance. 

It would be quite impossible in the 

The old Sierra Clubseal_ — short space of this article to follow all 
the labors and achievements of the Sierra Club, and besides the 
later work is already well known to a majority of the mem- 
bers; so I merely mention here the most important pieces of 
work that it has carried through or aided in carrying through 
to successful completion. In 1893 the great Sierra Forest Re- 
serves were established; a movement which had always been 
strongly urged and fostered by the founders of the club. In 
the fall of 1895 a large and enthusiastic meeting of the club 
was held,* and notable addresses on the subject of forest pres- 
ervation were made by Professor Le Conte, Mr. Muir, and Pro- 
fessor Dudley. The effect of this was to give the club’s unqual- 
ified indorsement to the policy of forest reserves, and this 
greatly aided in the creation of new reserves soon afterward. 

The next important work was the establishment of the 
Yosemite headquarters in 1898. The summer before it was 


* SrerRA CLus BULLETIN, Vol. I, p. 268. 


33Uu07) JT 'N ‘f{ Aq o104ug 
(8681) AATIVA ALINASOA NI ANID VUNAIS AHL AO SUALUVNOGVAH LSUlA 


IIATO ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANTD VAUNTIS 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. xX. 


LE CONTE MEMORIAL LODGE 
Photo by J. N. Le Conte 


PARSONS MEMORIAL LODGE 
Photo by R. H. Bailey 


PLATE CLVIII. 


i i dd 


The Sierra Club 143 


suggested to the writer by Mr. Abbott Kinney, of Los Angeles, 
then a member of the State Board of Yosemite Commissioners, 
that the club establish a public reading-room and bureau of in- 
formation such as originally contemplated by Professor Sen- 
ger. The matter was brought to the attention of the commis- 
sion, and it was agreed that the state should grant the use of a 
building, to be furnished and equipped by our club, the salary 
of the custodian to be shared equally by the commission and the 
Sierra Club. The old Sinning cottage, opposite the present 
superintendent’s office, was fitted up during the spring of 1808, 
and the club was most fortunate in securing the services of 
Mr. William E. Colby as the first custodian. The headquarters 
were maintained in this way for several years, though with dif- 
ficulty, since after the first three years the State Commission 
was obliged to withdraw its financial support, due to lack of 
funds. Finally, after the death of Professor Joseph Le Conte 
in the valley, in 1901, it was decided to erect a memorial lodge, 
which should also be used as a permanent headquarters. A 
fund of $6000 was raised by subscription, and the beautiful 
stone building with its bronze medallion of Professor Le Conte 
over the fireplace was finished and dedicated in 1904. 

One of the most important developments in the history of 
the club, which came about this time, was the organization of 
the annual outings in 1901. In 1900 Mr. Colby was elected to 
the board of directors, and made secretary, and through his 
efforts and those of Mr. E. T. Parsons the directors author- 
ized the annual outing feature. The first outing was in the Tu- 
olumne Meadows in 1901, the second in the Kings River Cafion, 
and the third on the Kern. Since the beginning, the outings 
have steadily grown in size and perfection of organization, until 
now they stand out as the most popular single feature of the 
club and a model for other mountaineering clubs. 

The most important piece of work in which the club has ever 
engaged was the passage of a bill through the legislature reced- 
ing the Yosemite State Park to the Government, and the subse- 
quent acceptance of it by Congress as a part of the national 
park. Ever since the creation of the Yosemite National Park, 
the state park, originally established June 30, 1864, required 
an entirely needless duplication of administration within the 


144 Sierra Club Bulletin 


boundaries of the larger grant. This recession was vigorously 
opposed by many of the members of the legislature, and by 
some of the press as well, and it is generally conceded that ex- 
cept for the strenuous work done by the Sierra Club the bill, 
carried as it was by so small a margin, would never have gone 
through. The good effects of this combination can now be 
easily recognized. Whereas the state was never able to appro- 
priate over $10,000 per annum, and usually less, Congress gave 
$250,000 last year for the Yosemite National Park, and we are 
asking for $319,000 this year. 

About 1904, members residing in the vicinity of San Francis- 
co suggested the idea of local Sunday walks which could be ar- 
ranged by a committee and announced in advance, thus giving 
those who could not afford the time for the summer outing an 
opportunity to enjoy the beauties of nature in a milder way. 
These first walks were announced in the advertising columns 
of the daily papers each week, but soon this was replaced by 
the regular printed schedule as at present. The local walks 
have proved a great success, and these, together with the out- 


ings, have done much to bring the membership of the club up 


to its present large figure. 

An increasing number of members from southern California 
led to the establishment of the Southern California Section with 
headquarters in Los Angeles in 1905, when the revised by-laws 
were adopted by vote of the club in April of that year. It has 
erected through private subscription the John Muir Lodge in 
the Santa Anita Cafion. 

In 1912 it was called to the attention of the directors of the 
club that the famous Lambert Soda Springs property was for 
sale. In order to prevent its passing into improper hands, Mr. 
Colby promptly took an option on the property, and a year later 
the entire amount of the purchase price was raised by sub- 
scription amongst the club membership. After the death of 
Mr. E. T. Parsons, in 1914, it was decided to erect on the prop- 
erty a suitable stone building, to be known as the Parsons Me- 
morial Lodge. This was accordingly done in 1915, at an ex- 
pense of about $3000. It is now open in charge of a custodian 
each summer. 

One of the recent good deeds of the club has been the sav- 


aia 


The Sierra Club 145 


ing of the remarkable and unique Devil’s Postpile from destruc- 
tion. When an application was filed with the Bureau of For- 
estry for a permit to blast it into the river to form a dam for 
power purposes, the directors took the matter up at once, and 
by personal letters to President Taft succeeded in having both 
the Postpile and the Rainbow Fall made into a national monu- 
ment. 

The Sierra Club conceived the idea of the John Muir Trail, 
for the starting of which the legislature appropriated $10,000 
two years ago. We need an additional appropriation to finish 
it and money to extend it northward to Lake Tahoe, and all 
members of the club should urge the members of the state legis- 
lature to appropriate the $20,000 required for its completion. 
The greatest work which lies before us this winter is the pas- 
sage through Congress of a bill which shall create a Greater Se- 
quoia Park, including the headwaters of the Kern, Kaweah, 
and Kings rivers, and a small portion of those of the San 
Joaquin. 

The club is now in a flourishing condition. It has over 1800 
members, and its income from dues and advertising is some 
$5000 per annum. Its publications fill nine volumes, and these 
contain practically all the results of exploration in the high Si- 
erra during the past twenty-five years, as well as work in other 
mountain regions. Let every one then put his shoulder to the 
wheel, so that, as Mr. Muir says in his letter, ““We will be able 
to do something for wildness and make the mountains glad.” 


TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN MUIR 
By C. Hart MERRIAM 
- 


OHN MUIR was doubtless more widely known and more 

generally loved than any other Californian. He was a famous 
wanderer, and left a trail that is well worth following. It leads 
to the mountains and forests, to health and happiness, and to a 
better appreciation of nature. While he loved the mountains 
and everything in them, his chief interests centered about the 
dynamic forces that shaped their features and the vegetation 
that clothed their slopes. 

But, of all the objects in nature, trees appealed to him most 
strongly. These he knewas no other man has knownthem, They 
were ever-present in his mind and formed an inexhaustible 
theme of conversation. On his walks and in his study he de- 
lighted to talk of their individual peculiarities, and with his pen- 
cil he would make rough but characteristic sketches showing 
the dominant distinctive features of each species. He knew the 
dates of flowering and the differences of the sexes, and could 
tell offhand the time required by the several pines for maturing 
their cones. In nearly every case he could recognize a tree ata 
distance by its general habit, and when specimens were shown 
him he could identify them at a glance by the branches, flowers, 
fruit, or bark. 

To gratify his love of forests and increase his knowledge of 
them he traveled far, studying not only those of the Pacific 
Coast from Alaska and British Columbia to southern California, 
those of the Rocky Mountains from Montana to Arizona, those 
of the Eastern states in both the northern and southern Alle- 
ghanies and in the pine barrens and everglades of Florida, but 
also traversing Russia, Siberia, and India, visiting Australia, 
New Zealand, and the Philippines, and late in life even jour- 
neying to South America to see for himself the great tropical 
forests of the Amazon and the remarkable Araucaria of west- 
ern Patagonia. Has any other human eye seen so many and di- 
verse types of arboreous vegetation, or any other mind learned 
so much of the great forests of the world? 


To the Memory of John Muir 147 


One often hears Muir spoken of as an authority on the ani- 
mal life of the mountains. This is an error. For while he liked 
to see birds and mammals in the wilderness andabouthis camps, 
he rarely troubled himself to learn their proper names and re- 
lationships. Now and then a particular species impressed itself 
sufficiently upon his attention to appear in his writings, and ina 
few instances to form the subject of a special article or chap- 
ter. His accounts of the water-ouzel and Sierra red squirrel— 
which latter he confused with the Douglas squirrel of the coast 
—are real contributions to natural history, abounding in origi- 
nal observations, full of sympathy, and charmingly told. But 
for scientific study of the great army of small birds and mam- 
mals he cared little. Plants, on the other hand, were always dear 
to him; he knew the names of hundreds of species and could 
tell at what altitude and in what situation each was likely to 
be found. 

He had a strong mechanical bent, was fond of machinery, 
quick to grasp principles of mechanics, and was familiar with 
the various applications of power. He loved to study the forces 
of nature, and was one of the first to recognize the part played 
by ice in sculpturing mountains, cafions, and valleys. 

In 1870 or 1871 Muir took my father to Clouds Rest, from 
which lofty outlook he pointed with enthusiasm and conviction 
to the several channels through which deep rivers of ice had 
found their way before uniting to form the glacier that had 
plowed out and shaped Yosemite Valley. And later, when 
traveling together in the upper Tuolumne and Mokelumne re- 
gions, he often surprised me by the extent of his knowledge of 
the depth of the former glaciers and the details of ice action in 
those parts. It is a pity that his early studies of the ancient 
glaciers of the Sierra were not recorded in permanent form, but 
a matter of congratulation that his observations of those of 
Alaska have finally been published.* 

Muir was a great talker, but not a loud talker. And although 
he usually monopolized the conversation, he was listened to 


*See “On the Glaciation of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions visited by the 
United States Steamer ‘Corwin’ in the year 1881.”’ In U.S. Senate documents, 48th 
Congress, 1st session. Vol. 8, No. 204, pp. 135-147. 

“Notes on the Pacific Coast Glaciers.” In Harriman Alaska Expedition. Vol. 1, 
PP. 119-135. 1901. 

“Travels in Alaska.”’? 1915. 


148 Sierra Club Bulletin 


with attention and often with delight. Like most men who 
have spent much of their lives in the mountains, he was an in- 
dependent thinker and had well-digested opinions on a surpris- 
ingly large number of topics. He was argumentative by nature, 
and his Scotch blood showed in the persistence and tenacity 
with which he upheld his point of view. On the other hand, he 
was rarely aggressive or disagreeable. In fact, he was one of 
the most charming companions J have ever known. In addition 
to a kindly and generous nature, he possessed a keen sense of 
humor and was something of a tease. When walking the deck 
of the steamer on the Harriman Alaska Expedition, his most 
constant companion was the eminent geographer, the late Henry 
Gannett. Speaking of their friendship, he explained that when 
he first saw Gannett he was impressed by what he called the 
“preternatural solemnity” of his expression. This, he asserted, 
with a merry look in his eye, had convinced him that Gannett, 
like himself, was fond of humor, and he was not long in learning 
that Gannett, though not a Scotchman, also loved an argument. 
The result was that the two were always happy together. 

Muir abhorred politics, and once, when speaking of a man 
whom he regarded as having fallen from grace, remarked, “This 
playing at politics saps the very foundations of righteousness.” 

As a woodsman he was peculiar, combining an unusual 
knowledge of forest and mountain with a remarkably slender 
fund of what is commonly called woodcraft. For, in spite of 
his having spent a large part of his life in the wilderness, he 
knew less about camping than almost any man I have ever 
camped with. He could choose a sheltered spot for the night, 
was an adept in building a small fire in a safe place, and could 
make an excellent cup of coffee in his tin cup. But of the art 
and conveniences of camping as ordinarily understood he was 
as innocent as a child. His earlier trips in the mountains had 
been made afoot. He had carried no bed or blanket, and in the 
way of food only bread and tea, so that his main concern was 
in finding a protected place, usually a hollow beside a log, where 
he could spend the night with a minimum of discomfort from 
the cold. The heat of a small fire, requiring frequent replenish- 
ment, served instead of the usual sleeping-bag or blankets. 

In after years his visits to the mountains were made with 


To the Memory of John Muir 149 


others who looked after the camping. I shall never forget the 
equipment he brought on his first trip with me into the High 
Sierra. It was in the late fall, when we were likely to meet a 
snow-storm at any time. And in fact two such storms over- 
took us—one in Mokelumne Pass, the other in Mono Pass. Our 
route lay in the high mountains from Lake Tahoe to Bloody 
Cafion. The outfit he brought consisted of the clothes he wore 
and a small leather grip containing a clean shirt, a change of 
underclothing, and some extra socks. In spite of the lateness 
of the season, the high altitude, the icy nights, the almost cer- 
tainty of snow-storms—in spite of all these, he carried not so 
much as a single blanket! 

In reply to my inquiry as to the whereabouts of his bed, he 
replied that he had tramped the mountains for years, but had 
never carried one. I was amazed, but the condition confronting 
us permitted no compromise. I told him, therefore, that, al- 
though he had frequently slept on the ground without covering 
in summer when many years younger, he was too old to do so 
now, particularly at this late season of the year. I told him 
also that I had a good sleeping-bag, just big enough for one, 
with no extra blankets for two, and, further, that it was out of 
the question for me to set out on such a trip with a companion 
who had no bed. Recognizing the justice of my argument, he 
compromised by asking, “Where can I buy a bed in the moun- 
tains?’ This problem was soon solved and the trip was carried 
out as had been planned. It may be added that, although my 
ground-canvas was a large one and did duty for us both, as we 
slept close together, yet the severity of the weather was such 
that he suffered nearly every night from cold. He made no 
complaint, but was always up and had a small fire burning and 
coffee brewing before full daylight. The incident is mentioned 
merely to emphasize a peculiarity of his character—that he 
rarely made any provision beforehand for his own comfort. 

Another marked peculiarity for a woodsman was that he 
never carried a gun or killed game either for sport or meat, pre- 
ferring to eat dry bread. 

He was a light eater and never seemed really hungry. Even 
when tired after a long tramp or arduous horseback ride, he 
would rather talk than eat, and, as many who have camped with 


150 Sierra Club Bulletin 


him know, he often had to be urged to eat in order that the 
camp-dishes might be packed to move on. And more than once 
his companions at the table have quietly taken what was on his 
plate while he, without noticing what had been done, kept right 
on talking. I remember an occasion when a plate of fried trout 
was set before him. It was well in the afternoon, and he had 
had nothing to eat since a six-o’clock breakfast ; he had walked 
many miles and was tired. Nevertheless, he talked continuously 
of the forest and mountains through which he had gone, and 
was utterly oblivious to the fact that his plate was filled and 
emptied three times by his neighbors, while all he had taken 
was a piece of bread and a cup of coffee. I finally told him that 
it was time to go, and that if he would stop and eat I would do 
the talking for a few minutes until he had finished. 

Muir was a worker. He felt that he had a task to perform 
and little time for idling. When in the wilderness he was con- 
tinually making observations and recording them in his jour- 
nals. These were usually, sometimes lavishly, illustrated by 
sketches that served to explain or emphasize the text. When at 
home he was busy looking after his fruit ranch or engaged in 
writing; and, as the years went by, the latter occupation con- 
sumed most of his time. While he did much writing, as shown 
by his books and manuscripts, he never did it easily or with 
pleasure, but from a sense of duty. More than once he spoke to 
me of the difference in this respect between John Burroughs 
and himself. Burroughs, he said, never would write except 
when the mood was on him; then he wrote rapidly, and sent his 
manuscript to the press with little or no revision, while he 
(Muir) made it his business to write every day, whether in the 
mood or not. To him writing was laborious, if not irksome, and 
‘much time was spent in smoothing, balancing, paragraphing, 
and arranging it for the press. He possessed a surprising 
amount of literary acumen, and usually cut out and trimmed 
down much that he had written, saying it was a serious error to 
dwell too long on one detail; that the reader wearied of a single 
theme, and should be led along by frequent changes. He had 
never used a stenographer until a few years before his death. 
When visiting the late E. H. Harriman at his Pelican Bay camp 
on Klamath Lake, Mr. Harriman had urged him to dictate an 


To the Memory of John Mur I51 


outline of his life. This he finally consented to attempt, dictat- 
ing to one of Mr. Harriman’s stenographers. The result formed 
the basis of his autobiography, since published. 

While Muir was a man of marked individuality and pro- 
nounced tastes, and while at one period of his life he was much 
alone, he nevertheless prized congenial companionship and num- 
bered among his friends men eminent in constructive enter- 
prise as well as in art, literature, and science. His most intimate 
friends perhaps, outside his own family, were the educator 
John Swett and the painter William Keith. Keith, like himself, 
was a Scotchman, and the two were great cronies. To hear 
them spar in their native dialect was a real treat. 

How much Muir’s life work was influenced by his family it 
would be hard to say. His wife, who died a few years before he 
did, was a woman of more than ordinary character and ability. 
For years she relieved him of most of the cares of the home 
ranch at Martinez and a thousand and one little things that 
would have worried him or interrupted his work. She was a 
clever and noble woman, but so retiring that she was known to 
only a few. He owed much also to the sympathetic loyalty of his 
two daughters, Helen and Wanda, who, like their mother, were 
devoted to him and the work he was doing. 

Muir’s influence has been a strong factor in the development 
of our national parks and forests and in their utilization as 
camping and recreation grounds, while to the people who could 
not go his writings have brought from the trees and mountains 
an inspiration and message of happiness. 


TEN VOLUMES OF PUBLICATIONS 
1892 TO 1917 
By Etitiott MCALLISTER 


—— 


Ad 


HE activities of the Sierra Club during the past twenty-five 

years have found a faithful record in its publications. Am- 
ple reward follows an examination of those records. In the 
earlier volumes are found narratives of many pioneer trips into 
regions that are now well known to many members of the club. 
The explorations of Theodore S. Solomons, of Robert M. 
Price, of Bolton Coit Brown, and the winter trips of J. E. 
Church, Jr., are all notable in that regard. At that time J. N. 
Le Conte commenced the publication of his valuable maps of 
the High Sierra. The accuracy of these can be appreciated only 
by one who has had occasion to use them. More interesting 
than any of the fine photographs appearing throughout the pub- 
lications are the original sketches of the high mountain regions 
made by Bolton Coit Brown. 

Joseph Le Conte’s Ramblings Through the High Sverra, the 
diary of his trip through the Yosemite in 1870, which had been 
privately printed in 1875, was republished by the club in 1900 
in volume ITI. 

All of these reports and accounts of what awaited the explor- 
er brought about the demand for that splendid undertaking of 
the club, its summer outing. Until 1900 the club had been tell- 
ing its members of the beauties and wonders that awaited them, 
but not until that year had anyone been found willing to under- 
take the responsibility and labor attending upon organization 
and control of an outing for all members that desired to attend. 
At that time, however, the Outing Committee, composed of J. 
N. Le Conte, E. T. Parsons, A. I. Street, and William E. Colby, 
accepted this work, and in 1901 conducted the first outing into 
the Tuolumne Meadows and from that point into the High 
Sierra. 

From the outset these summer outings were recognized as 


" 


Ten Volumes of Publications 153 


one of the primary activities of the club, and after the neces- 
sary experience acquired during the first, second, and third sea- 
sons they have been of increasing success. The leaders of the 
club in these outings have taken less-experienced members up 
every notable mountain peak from Mount Rainier in the north 
to Mount Whitney in the south; more particularly the region 
from the Lyell group east of Yosemite and south to Mount 
Whitney has been “explored, enjoyed, and rendered accessible,” 
to quote from the articles of incorporation, and “authentic in- 
formation published” in a way to compel the respect and co- 
operation of the state and federal authorities. 

Each of the outings had its faithful historian. The first one, 
into Tuolumne Meadows in 1901, was described by Edward 
Taylor Parsons. In these meadows fourteen years later the 
memorial lodge to him was dedicated by his grateful and ap- 
preciative fellow-members. These descriptions of the outings, 
together with the other articles by individuals, have furnished 
such a large amount of interesting matter and picture the life 
of the club in the High Sierra so well that no less a person than 
the distinguished mountain-climber Sir Martin Conway writes 
the club under date of April, 1912: 

The Sierra Club seems to me to preserve much of the old spirit 
which was in Alpine climbers in the days when climbing was a 
fresh thing. I like to think of your camping parties in the great 
forest valleys and along their vast far-seeing slopes. I like to 
think of the great trout found in the streams you have stocked. I 
like to think of all the good you are doing and trying to do in for- 
est conservation. 
The above is from a man whose record in the Bolivian Andes 
was Mount Aconcagua (23,090 feet). 

Edward Whymper enjoyed these publications and expressed 
this appreciation in the substantial bequest to the club of £50. 

The late William Russell Dudley, from the beginning of our 
publications until his death,in 1911, kept us constantly informed 
in his carefully edited Forestry Notes. For over sixteen years 
he patiently recorded and published in Forestry Notes any oc- 
currence pertinent to forestry, reservations, national parks, and 
kindred subjects. The indebtedness of the club to him for this 
work is very great. These files always will be a useful refer- 
ence for anyone interested in the subject. 


154 Sierra Club Bulletin 


The articles on the geological conditions of our mountains, 
such as the domes and their structure, lake ramparts, glacial 
erosion, may be mentioned among those contributed by men 
well known in that special work. More particularly might be 
mentioned the articles on the birds of the mountains and the re- 
markable photographs connected therewith. Birds of the High 
Mountains, by Kellogg, numerous articles by Bade, and a very 
remarkable photograph of the water-ouzel at page 245, volume 
VI, are worthy of special note. 

The reader searching for information on the cone-bearing 
trees or on the flora of the Yosemite Valley will find authorita- 
tive accounts, and throughout all the volumes many have ex- 
pressed their appreciation in poetry or in prose of the wonders 
to be found throughout our Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

The work of the Sierra Club having been firmly established 
under the distinguished leadership of John Muir, will not fail 
now that he is gone, but will continue to broaden its scope and 
to increase its influence. 


ia 


THE WAR-ZONE FOREST OF THE KERN 


By WALTER MULFoORD 
CI 


HE Chagoopa Plateau, with its Sky-Parlor Meadow, its 

Moraine Lake, its forest of subalpine pines, and its rock- 
ribbed ring of impressive peaks—what a joy it was! Sunrise 
over Mount Whitney and the main crest of the Sierra; sunset 
behind the Great Western Divide, outlined sharply but not 
harshly across the lake; the climb heavenward to the top of 
Kaweah ; the descent to the beautiful cafion of the Big Arroyo; 
the brilliant moonlight, making lodgepole and foxtail more im- 
pressive and hiding for a time the scars of the grim fight waged 
by these hardy pines against frost and wind, drought and beetle 
—to those of us who were there nothing further is needed to 
recall happy memories of a camp-site richly endowed with 
charm and interest and comfort. Some of us went on long side- 
trips. Some of us, responsive to the influence of high life, in- 
dulged in that wild camp cabaret. Some of us even tried to get 
lost on that confusing plateau. Finally, all of us passed on, 
more or less thoughtlessly, to other parts of the wonderland. 

More or less thoughtlessly! If anyone had asked us whether 
we would wish the beauty of that high plateau to be permanent, 
there could have been but one answer. If we had been asked 
further whether it would still be beautiful without the forest, 
there would have come an equally emphatic reply. Treeless 
wastes are fascinating—or repellent. They are often inspiring 
in their bigness, in their evidence of great power behind and 
beyond. But they are rarely beautiful. And they are never 
good places in which to live or camp. Unconsciously we knew 
that we owed the beauty and comfort of our Chagoopa camp 
primarily to the forest. Did we stop to wonder whether the 
forest would be there always? 

Perhaps we did not notice the signs of social instability in this 
community of Chagoopa Forest. Most of the citizens are old 
folks—several centuries old, although only from one to three 
feet in diameter. Very many of them are far past their prime, 


156 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and their “spike-tops,”* most of which are due to old age or in- 
sect attack, show that soon there will be many vacant places in 
the big family. This must be the case in all communities of 
trees and people. But the significant thing here is that there are 
very few youths and almost no children on nearly all of the 
plateau. And the infirmities of the old folks are likely to in- 
crease more than proportionately to their advancing age, as the 
death of neighbors deprives them of the mutual protection so 
sorely needed in exposed localities. In the forest world, Cha- 
goopa Town is doomed unless more young trees start in the 
next half-century. 

Nature is wasteful in Chagoopa Forest. Long searches for 
seedlings were practically fruitless on most parts of the plateau. 
Young trees were abundant only in a few places. Yet careful 
counts in one small grove showed an average of 450,000 lodge- 
pole-pine seedlings per acre—more than ten per square foot! 
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of these must die before the 
thousandth tree can come to maturity, for mere lack of grow- 
ing space. Thirty-story, densely thronged tenements in one part 
of town; thousands of vacant homes with light and air on other 
streets! There are perhaps six thousand acres on the plateau. 
There are about six acres in this area of closely packed seed- 
lings. If Nature had spread out on one thousand acres the 
seedlings she has crowded on one acre, there would be an aver- 
age of about 450 seedlings per acre over the entire plateau. This 
would be an admirable basis for the continuance of the com- 
munity. But Nature rarely does things that way. She has never 
studied scientific management as man has studied it for the 
bricklayer. 

Chagoopa Plateau is not an exceptional locality as regards 
uncertainty for the future. On that wonderful day’s trip from 
Crabtree Meadow to Tyndall Creek we were almost constantly 
in a war zone. Now and again we were in the first line of 
trenches itself, where the last tree outposts are struggling to 
hold timber-line where it is. For a time we were in the uncon- 
tested territory of the treeless waste, where the forest can never 
enter unless the climate changes. But on that entire day’s trip 
we were never in the undisputed domain of the forest. The 


* “Spike-top”’ means that the upper portion of the tree-crown is dead. 


The War-Zone Forest of the Kern 157 


forest is one of Nature’s children. She has other children, and 
she lets them struggle with one another with all the strength and 
skill at their command. There is a firing-line and a wide war 
zone in all our high altitudes, where wind and frost shout 
“Back!” and the stubborn trees cry “Forward!” Through the 
centuries the battle-line surges back and forth—forward into 
the waste with discouraging slowness, often backward into the 
forest with disheartening suddenness. Nature leaves the victory 
to the stronger forces, and the laurel wreath does not always go 
to the side which civilized man desires and needs to see win. 

Nature is notoriously wasteful, not only in her treatment of 
these disputed borderlands of the forest realm, but in all forests, 
even those in which the results of her marvelous handiwork are 
most awe-inspiring. Here she places too many trees; there, too 
few. She almost invariably allows the most desirable trees to be 
more or less displaced by others which are poorer from the 
standpoint of their usefulness to man. Her trees do not grow 
nearly so fast as when she takes man’s skill into partnership. 
The difference in time required to produce merchantable trees 
in timber-producing forests, as between Nature alone and Nat- 
ure plus constructive man, is so great as to be measured in dec- 
ades rather than years. Nature’s forest was well able to meet 
the slight needs of savage man. Civilized man, with his vastly 
greater demands on the forest, must help Nature to mend her 
ways, else the forest fails. 

It is now economically possible for man to assist Nature 
greatly in the middle-altitude forests of the Sierra—that is, in 
the great timber-producing zone. Aid of the highest importance 
is being given in many ways in this belt, thanks to the national 
forests and the national parks. In the higher zone in which 
Chagoopa Forest and the Crabtree-Tyndall region are located, 
we in the United States cannot afford at present to help directly 
the timber-line forest in its fight. Such help has been given in 
the Alps and Pyrenees by tree-planting and engineering works, 
to the great advantage of the valleys below. But our govern- 
mental agencies can and are giving powerful indirect help by 
restricting man as a destructive animal. Chagoopa Forest is in 
a more precarious condition now than is likely to have been the 
case before the white man came, because until recently fires 


158 Sierra Club Bulletin 


which he started* and animals which he introduced roamed at 
will, while trespassers cut trees without warrant. But its future 
is more assured than it was twelve years ago, because fire, graz- 
ing, and trespass are now controlled. The present scarcity of 
seedlings is not necessarily discouraging. In situations so ex- 
posed, it may happen that young trees will start in considerable 
numbers only at infrequent intervals, when there happens to 
come a good seed-year followed by weather conditions favor- 
able to the germination of the seed and the first few years’ de- 
velopment of the delicate seedlings. This combination of cir- 
cumstances may not have occurred since the organization of the 
National Forest in 1905. Even granting that planting is imprac- 
ticable in that locality, there is still hope for Chagoopa Town. 
The hope centers in the continuance of the forester’s care of 
the region. There are powerful selfish interests still at work 
quietly trying to undermine and finally break down the whole 
structure of governmental forest administration, which has 
been so painfully built up. The forest has all it can do along its 
frontier to hold back its unavoidable foes. If to its natural 
enemies we add man-made ones, the war-zone forest cannot 
stand against the onslaught. Within certain limits, man as well 
as Nature has a hand in determining where timber-line shall be. 
At least, we can see to it that there is no unholy anti-forest alli- 
ance between destructive man and the other (less ruinous?) 
forces of Nature. We wish you well, Chagoopa Forest! 


* Lightning starts many fires; man starts more. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLIX, 


“There is a firing-line... 


. . . anda wide war-zone in all our high altitudes” 


TIMBER-LINE AND ADJACENT FOREST (FOXTAIL PINE) BETWEEN EAST 
FORK OF KERN RIVER AND TYNDALL CREEK 


Altitude, upper photograph, 11,200 feet; lower photograph, 11,100 feet 
Photos by Walter Mulford 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLX. 


W HITE-BARK PINE, NEAR JOHN MUIR TRAIL, SHEPARD CREEK CANON 
(Altitude, 10,800 feet) 
Photo by Walter Mulford 


THE YOSEMITE CONY—A CHAPTER IN 
fue NATURAL HISTORY OF THE YOSEMITE 
NATIONAL PARK 


By JosepH GRINNELL AND Tracy I. STORER 
> 


(Contribution from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the University of 
California) 

HE cold granite peaks and rock-walled glacial valleys of 

the higher Sierra Nevada of California are inhabited by 
comparatively few mammals and birds. The species which do 
live there throughout the year are, by structure and habits, well 
adapted to withstand the vicissitudes of life in a boreal region. 
On the whole, it seems as if these high mountain residents have 
come to fill the least desirable niches in the economy of nature, 
those niches for which there is but little contest. Among the 
mammals belonging to this category in the Yosemite National 
Park there is none more deserving of particular attention than 
the cony. 

The cony is remotely related to the rabbits, but in both struc- 
ture and habits it differs widely from those better-known ani- 
mals. The cony is small,rarely exceeding seven inches in length 
of body, and it is of comparatively chubby build (figs. 1 and 2). 
The head is short and bluntly tapered, while the neck is scarce- 
ly distinguishable. The eyes are small, but the ears are large 
and rounded, and this combination gives the animal a peculiar- 
ly knowing expression. The fore and hind legs are short and of 
about equal length, while the tail is so reduced as not to be seen 
except by examination of a specimen in hand. The clothing of 
hair is thick and fluffy. The general coloration is grayish white, 
but to this in late summer and fall there is added, as a result of 
molt, a pale brown tint. At any season this coloration is doubt- 
less exceedingly valuable to the animal in rendering it incon- 
spicuous; even under the best of light conditions the observer 
finds difficulty in catching sight of a cony except when it moves. 

Conies, otherwise known as pikas, rock-rabbits, or little chief 
hares, are found in the mountainous districts of Russia, Asia, 


160 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and northern North America. Each mountain system seems to 
have one or more kinds of these animals, and this is notably 
true of the mountains of California. In the Warner Mountains 
of Modoc County there is a distinct species, the Warner Moun- 
tain cony (Ochotona taylori), and on the Sierra-Cascade range 
from Mount Shasta to Mount Whitney there are no less than 
three slightly different forms. The northernmost of these, the 
gray-headed cony (Ochotona schisticeps schisticeps), is found 


\ 
Wagga 


\ 
va 


Fics. 1-3. TyPp1cAL ATTITUDES OF THE Cony 


1 and 2. On observation-post. 3. ““Bleating.”? (About one-fourth life-size 
Redrawn from field sketches made by Charles Lewis Camp) 


from Mount Shasta south to the vicinity of Lake Tahoe; the 
southernmost one, the Mount Whitney cony (Ochotona schisti- 
ceps albatus), occurs in the vicinity of the peak for which it is 
named ; while the third, the Yosemite cony, occupies the higher 
portions of the Yosemite National Park and adjacent territory. 
This last form was discovered by the field parties of the Cali- 
fornia Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in 1915, when engaged 
in making a zoological survey of the Park. It has been named 
Ochotona schisticeps muiri, in remembrance of that most gifted 
of Sierran naturalists, John Muir. 


The Yosemite Cony 161 


The Yosemite cony is an alpine species, found only in the 
higher parts of the mountains above the fir belt, in the zone 
occupied by the alpine hemlock, white-bark pine, heather, and 
cassiope. Even within this narrow area it does not live every- 
where, but is restricted to a single habitat, heaps or taluses of 
broken granite. Altitudinally, the cony is found, in the Yo- 
semite National Park, as low as 7700 feet, near Glen Aulin, on 
the Tuolumne River; upward it ranges to about 12,000 feet, as 
on the slopes of Mount Dana, and to the very summit of Par- 
sons Peak, 12,120 feet. But within this restricted area the cony 
is found in almost every glacial moraine and talus-heap. In 
one typical rock-slide, at the head of Lyell Cafion, our estimates 
indicated a population of at least one cony per 750 square yards. 
This would mean a population of about six per acre in suitable 
slide-rock. The range of an individual is short, probably rarely 
exceeding the boundaries of the rock-slide which the animal in- 
habits. While a cony will go some distance among rocks for 
food materials, it will not venture more than two or three yards 
beyond the limits of shelter. 

The summer traveler in the mountains 1s first apprised of the 
presence of conies by hearing one of the animals utter its far- 
off-sounding “‘bleat.” In fact, this note, or call, is such a valuable 
introductory aid that even the trained field observer finds that 
the only practicable means of locating the animals is to wait in 
a suitable locality and listen intently until one of them utters its 
call and then to scrutinize the area whence the sound came 
until its maker is discerned. This call is a moderately loud two- 
or three-syllabled utterance, and has a nasal intonation, The 
quality of the note is such as to suggest the clinking together of 
flakes of granite. It has been variously rendered by our field 
observers. One writes it, yink, yink; another, ke-ack’, ke-ack’, or 
ke-ack’, ke-ack’, ke-ic'-ky; andanother, e-chak’, e-chak’, chee-ick’, 
chee-ick’, chee-ick’-y. Sometimes the call is uttered but once; 
again it may be repeated for ten or fifteen seconds, at first 
rapidly, then more slowly, as if the cony’s breath was being 
gradually exhausted. The animal accompanies its calls with 
certain movements which seem essential to their production 
(figure 3). The whole body is jerked violently forward, as if 
considerable exertion were necessary to expel the air from the 


162 Sierra Club Bulletin 


lungs, and at the same time the ears are twitched upward, so 
that in face view their outlines catch the observer’s eye. 

For several months of each year snow covers everything 
within the range of the cony. The various species of animals 
which dwell there meet the resulting food scarcity in a number 
of different ways. Most of the birds emigrate, the deer and 
coyote descend to lower altitudes, the marmot hibernates, the 
gopher constructs tunnels through the snow, and the white- 
tailed jack-rabbit turns white and develops “snow-shoes” on its 
feet so that it can forage above the snow. But the cony has 
still another method of meeting the situation. 

During the late summer and early autumn the cony is busy at 
all hours of the day gathering materials to serve as food while it 
is imprisoned among the rocks beneath the snow. It cuts and 
stores away grasses and sedges and other plants which grow in 
the vicinity of its home. These are carried into the rock-slides, 
and stored in a dry, well-drained, shady yet airy place, sheltered 
above from snow and rain, and free from the danger of running 
water below—an ideal barn from the standpoint of a farmer. 
This treatment is such as to preserve unfaded the natural col- 
ors of the dried plants, and the fragrance is that of well-cured 
hay free from mold. One such “hay-pile” seen by the senior 
author on Warren Peak, Mono County, September 26, 1915, 
was situated under a huge flat rock and comprised about half a 
cubic yard of material. Samples from a similar but smaller pile 
included twigs and needles of the lodgepole pine, sprigs of 
“ocean spray” (Holodiscus discolor dumosa), two or more al- 
pine species of sedge (Carex) ,with their characteristically rough 
stems of triangular cross-section, a grass (Poa), and an epilo- 
bium. The nearest sedge was twenty-five feet down-hill in a 
wet place, while the nearest holodiscus was at least seventy-five 
feet up the steep slope adjacent. Currant and red-elderberry 
bushes grew nearer than any of the other plants named, but 
neither had been touched, showing that the cony exercises some 
selection in the choice of its food materials. 

When foraging the cony secures as large an amount of cut 
greens as can be held crosswise in its mouth and then carries 
the bundle to the “barn.” Often stems of considerable length 
are transported in this manner, and, as the animal moves about, 


{soll 


STERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLXI, 


A CONY AT THE MARGIN OF ITS ROCK-SLIDE HOME 
Photo by H. S. Swarth 


A TYPICAL OBSERVATION-POST OF THE CONY 
Photo by T. I. Storer 


The Yosemite Cony 163 


the ends of these stems trail along beside or behind him. Many 
of the pieces found in the hay-piles were over a foot in length, 
and one piece of cut sedge measured forty-five inches in length; 
but this latter had been folded several times. A hay-pile seen 
near the head of the McClure fork of the Merced River con- 
tained nearly a bushel of material, and, judging from the fact 
that six adult-sized conies and one juvenile were trapped at this 
pile, it may be that hay-piles are community or at least family 
affairs. 

While not foraging and not occupied beneath the surface of 
the slide, the cony sits hunched up, usually with its back higher 
than its head, in some protected place under a large overhang- 
ing rock. The post usually selected is the crest of a backward- 
slanting rock where the animal can enjoy a wide angle of view 
and yet be in a position, when danger threatens, to dart back 
into the shelter of the slide. These perches, or observation- 
posts, are marked by accumulations of droppings of an oblately 
spherical shape, like those of a rabbit but much smaller, and by 
whitish stains due to the action of the liquid excrement on the 
granite. When a cony comes to “attention” on an observation- 
post the head is often raised, the nose wiggled, and the feet 
“shuffled,” all suggestive of mannerisms of a rabbit; but the 
movements of the head are much quicker. The hobbling gait 
reminds one somewhat of the hopping of a brush-rabbit. The 
cony moves rapidly and with apparent ease almost everywhere 
in a slide, even over very steep and smooth rock surfaces. We 
have never seen one of these animals assume the erect posture 
which is common to rabbits. 

The cony shares its rock-slide home with the bushy-tailed 
wood-rat (Neotoma cinerea cinerea) and the Sierra marmot 
(Marmota flaviventris sierrae), but we have learned nothing to 
indicate that these two large rodents molest the cony in any way. 
In the matter of enemies, there are only three carnivorous ani- 
mals which dwell in the same situations as the cony and which 
we have reason to believe may prey upon it. These are the 
Sierra pine-marten (Martes caurina sierrae) and the least and 
mountain weasels (Mustela muricus and Mustela arizgonensis). 
At Vogelsang Lake, before sunrise of August 31, 1915, two 
conies were heard “bleating” vociferously as they ran excitedly 


164 Sierra Club Bulletin 


here and there among the rocks. Investigation showed the 
cause of the disturbance to be a least weasel. From the dis- 
turbance which these conies made, it was inferred that they had 
recognized the weasel as an enemy and were doing their best to 
spread the alarm among their neighbors. It is improbable that 
birds of prey, hawks and owls, levy much toll, because of the 
protected situation in which the cony lives; and there are no 
large snakes to search out and devour the animals, as would be 
the case if the latter lived at lower altitudes. 

Conies seem to be most active during the early morning and 
evening hours; but they evince more or less activity at all times 
of the day, and they have been heard “bleating” on moonlight 
nights. They seem to enjoy coming out and running about or 
sitting on their observation-posts just as the afternoon shadows 
have begun to creep over the rock-slides. Sometimes they will 
sit quietly for considerable periods of time, and the observer 
must do likewise if he expects to catch sight of them. 

As yet information concerning the breeding habits of the Yo- 
semite cony is rather meager. We know that three or four 
young are produced at a time. The breeding season would seem 
to be rather extended, as in mid-July, 1915, young two-thirds to 
three-fourths grown were already abroad, while a number of 
the females had not yet given birth to their young. The young 
conies are notably precocious, and, like rabbits, begin to forage 
independently by the time they are only one-fourth to one-third 
grown. 

To the critical reader the account here given will seem super- 
ficial and fragmentary, but it contains all we were able to find 
out during the few weeks spent by us in the home of the cony. 
A fascinating field for additional discovery lies at the disposal 
of those persons more fortunate than we who are able to visit 
the High Sierra year after year. The Sierra Club member who 
is not intent merely upon establishing a record in miles of trail 
covered will find in the painstaking study of the habits of the 
cony, as also of many another animal of the high mountains, 
enough to afford enjoyable and productive recreation for 
many summers. 


Berkeley, California, October ro, 1916 


THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF CHINA 
By EunIcE TIETJENS 


- 


O CLIMB Tai Shan, the Most Sacred Mountain of China, 
is to store up a memory which no succeeding event can 
blur, nor can any western pride of accomplishment thereafter 
ever quite banish the oriental certainty that man is as the white 
breath of oxen in winter, and the little shadow that goeth be- 
fore the sun. Other mountains, when one has climbed many, 
tend to grow indistinct inthe memory. Their shapes blend and 
blur confusedly. But Tai Shan, in memory as in reality, is part 
of no chain of lesser mountains. It stands alone, surrounded by 
a little cluster of foothills, set down as arbitrarily as a child’s 
toy mountain in the great brown plain of the Middle Kingdom. 
And in memory it will always seem that heaven is very near its 
summit. | 
For Tai Shan is the oldest place of continuous worship in the 
world. Its beauty is not so much the sheer, breath-taking beauty 
of nature as the piteous beauty of the eternal hope and aspira- 
tion in the soul of man. When we first find Tai Shan, in the 
dawn of one of the oldest histories of mankind, its origin as a 
place of worship is already legendary. In the days of Confu- 
cius, who lived five hundred years before Christ, men were al- 
ready telling one another that since the birth of time heaven 
had been worshiped from the summit of the Most Sacred 
Mountain, and today thousands of their descendants in flapping 
coats of dark-green silk climb its rocky gorge each year, their 
women beside them borne in chairs or toiling in agony on their 
tiny tortured feet. Religions have come, flourished, and de- 
cayed, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, but still 
heaven is worshiped from the cloudy summit of Tai Shan. 
There is something very beautiful and simple about the old 
Chinese conception which has remained till today in the wor- 
ship on Tai Shan and in the Altar of Heaven in Peking. .““Heav- 
en” is quite impersonal, the great source of all blessing and of 
all malediction, the beginning and the end. But this pure form 


166 Sierra Club Bulletin 


is inevitably mixed with local superstitions and vagaries. Tai 
Shan has a god, of course. His name seems to be simply that of 
the mountain itself, Tai Shan. He is the rain-god, and, oddly 
enough to a western mind, the god of the stability of the earth’s 
surface. But his daughter, the Goddess Pi-hsia-yuan-ch’un, 
Princess of Colored Clouds, is now more important than he. 
She is a Buddhist deity, the thousand-handed goddess of the 
dawn, and she has two acolytes, the “Goddess of Family In- 
crease’ and the “Goddess of Good Sight.” It is to the latter 
that the Chinese women pray to prevent the dreaded ophthal- 
mic blindness in their children. 

The beautiful temple with the golden roofs which crowns the 
summit—the rock which by nature was the highest point juts 
up in the center of a small courtyard—is dedicated to this god- 
dess, and it is typical of the mixture of religions in China that, 
while the temple itself is Buddhist, the priests who serve in it 
today are Taoist. This temple is a modern affair, hardly two 
hundred years old, but some sort of an altar has been there for 
many centuries. The temple is now open only one day in the 
year, for the spring festival, and on that day the steep steps 
swarm with thousands of pilgrims of all stations in life. Many 
emperors have been among them, and the humblest is not for- 
bidden. 

From the standpoint of an experienced mountain-climber the 
ascent itself is insignificant, the height of the summit above the 
plain being hardly more than forty-five hundred feet, and the 
actual height between five and six thousand feet. Information 
of precision is very hard to find in China, but everyone is agreed 
that the distance along the trail is forty-two l1, about fourteen 
miles. 

This trail is really a small highway, about ten feet wide dur- 
ing the entire distance,and decorously paved. The latter part of 
the way, however, one is glad to walk on it, as it is cut out of 
the solid rock and climbs otherwise very difficult places. It con- 
tains six thousand steps. 

The foundation of the rock seems to be blue granite, which 
predominates largely, broken by ledges of white and pink 
quartz. But there are many colors among the stones that are 
built into the steps and line the trail. There are green stones 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. xX. : PLATE CLXII, 


Station on the way up Tai Shan 


TAI SHAN, THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF CHINA 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. xX. PLATE CLXIII. 


A GIANT FOXTAIL PINE ON SLOPE OF RED SPUR 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 


The Sacred Mountain of China 167 


that look like malachite, bright purple stones, red stones, and 
brown stones. Many of them seem to be varieties of granite and 
are very hard, for the steps, which are very old, are hardly 
worn at all. 

The vegetation consists mainly of a few scraggly evergreens 
and Japanesy pines, although on the lower reaches there are 
little cultivated patches, only a few feet square, where the beg- 
gars who live on the steep slopes raise vegetables and a little 
grain. 

The usual way to go up Tai Shan is to start from Taian Fu, 
a town of about 30,000 people, and go up in bearer-chairs, little 
wicker seats swung between two poles and carried on the shoul- 
ders of two smiling, grunting, dirty coolies. Each chair has 
four men, two to carry and two who rest. A coolie receives for 
such a day’s work the whole sum of sixty cents “mex,” a little 
over a quarter. 

The peculiar charm of a trip up Tai Shan lies in the combi- 
nation of the pleasure of climbing for its own sake with the fas- 
cination of the Orient. After you have passed the arched gate- 
way that begins the trail you pass an old, half-ruined temple, 
where you are shown a dried man, infinitely old and withered, 
ninety-four years old he was when he died, who sits in silk and 
solemnity in the temple courtyard. All the way along you pass 
at intervals similar temples, perched in crannies in the rock, 
where dwell Buddhist nuns with shaved heads, or little tea- 
houses with strange names. “Tiger Lying Hall” was, I remem- 
ber, the place where we ate our lunch. Part way up you pass a 
gateway inscribed “Horse Return Precipice,” where presum- 
ably you part with your steed, though we saw nothing resem- 
bling a horse on the way. The temples also have charming 
names, ‘‘First Heaven Gate,” “(Half Heaven Gate,” and, at the 
top of the steep rocky gorge which the trail follows all the lat- 
ter part of the way, “South Heaven Gate.” 

The sides of the gorge are carved at frequent intervals with 
characters and inscriptions, in commemoration of pilgrimages 
made by a contemporary of Cleopatra, or a pious emperor of 
the Middle Ages, or even a wealthy silk merchant of today. 
“Where there is prayer there is answer,” “Piety,” and other re- 
ligious sentiments are everywhere. One inscription reads: 


168 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“Confucius took this route.’ Another, of four characters, 
means literally, “Good, Emperor, Wind, Flows,” and illustrates 
well the stenographic character of the Chinese language, for it 
means “A good emperor goes up like wind and flows down like 
water.” This is in commemoration of a successful trip by 
some long-dead potentate. 

Near the top is a precipice over which devotees used to throw 
themselves in a religious ecstasy to the rocks below. So great 
was the loss of life that the authorities have guarded the place 
with a high wall. 

The climb itself is very gradual and not at all difficult till 
you reach the last stretch before the “South Heaven Gate” at 
the top of the rocky gorge. Here the steps are very high and 
very narrow, and travelers are wont to rest frequently. And 
here an amusing incident occurred to me. I had hired a chair in 
proper style, but I had not ridden in it at all on the way up, to 
the delight of my coolies, who thought me nothing less than 
half-witted to walk when I might have swung at ease. At this 
last stretch they had gone ahead of me and were waiting on the 
stairs. As I came up they all fell to clapping their hands and 
giving nasal grunts that sound like “haw” and mean “good.” 
They smiled and flattered till I was forced to laugh, for I knew 
that, while part of it was surprise that a foreign lady could 
walk so far, the greater part of it was fear lest at the last min- 
ute I should show a white feather and climb into the chair. But 
I plodded on alone, and they applauded joyously. | 

After the “South Heaven Gate” the path tops the rocky gorge 
and turns out over a wide plateau, on which at a little distance 
stands the temple of the summit. 

It is very clean and windy here. Below you on every side 
stretches the flat brown plain, like the floor of earth. In the 
foreground are green-flecked foothills and, beside you in this 
airy space, the sloping gold-tiled temple roofs. A black bird, like 
a crow, flies and circles over the blue abyss, and another bird 
calls from somewhere with a song like our bob-white. 

Besides the temple, in the infinite spaciousness and peace 
where the great winds are, stands a broken and crumbling mon- 
ument. Carved on it are the words, “On this spot once Confu- 
ciusstoodand feltthesmallnessoftheworldbelow.” And though 


The Sacred Mountain of China 169 


the body of Confucius has lain these twenty-five hundred years 
in Chu Fu, his spirit stands today, eternally, on the summit of 
Tai Shan and looks out from the footstool of heaven over the 
smallness of man and his world. 


THE KERN RIVER OUTING OF 1916 


By Jesse McGitvray TREAT 
- 


HE weeks and months of anticipation were at an end, for 
the first of July had come at last, and we were actually 
started for Kern River Cafion. The Fates had decreed from 
the first moment that this should be the best outing ever taken 
by the Sierra Club. High fog, heaven-sent, made the much 
dreaded tramp through the foothills to Nelson’s a delight. In- 
spired by that incomparable elation that comes when we can 
live each moment for the sheer joy of it, and measure our days 
only by our unrestrained pleasure and incessant delight, we 
swung up the trail, radiant. The path led up a closely covered 
foothill cafion, wooded with chaparral and occasional fine trees, 
now and then crossing rushing creeks which later poured into 
the South Fork of the Tule. An early luncheon close beside 
the stream, a drowsy half-hour stretched out in the shade listen- 
ing to the ceaseless chatter of the swirling water, and then, re- 
freshed, we pushed on to Nelson’s. At this first camp all the old 
Sierrans graciously offered advice and assistance to the new- 
comers and the genial good-fellowship, which prevails through- 
out the outing, was at once manifest. Toward evening a rift in 
the fog gave us some idea of the beauty of the surrounding 
hills, and a rosy sunset glow promised a sunny morrow. This 
second day will be remembered by all forest-lovers, for our way 
was through superb sequoia groves on both sides of the Tule- 
Kern Divide. Fine specimens of sugar pine, yellow pine, and 
fir added variety. Then we followed down Freeman’s Creek to 
Lloyd’s Meadows, where we pitched our camp. Those who 
fortunately arrived early had the joy of a swim and developed 
great dexterity in catching the lemons which floated down- 
stream from the soda-spring above, using them for manicure or 
shampoo, as fancy or necessity dictated. : 
Out of this meadow we climbed, a thousand feet, to drop 
down again to the ford of the Little Kern, where we all antici- 
pated much amusement. Some waded across, the swift current 


SUISSOY] “WY 2oUaIMe'T Aq 010g 
ANVI NAAN WILLIT 


“AIXTO €ALVI1d *X “IOA ‘NILAT1ING ANTO VUATIS 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLXV. 


A REST ON THE DESCENT OF SAWTOOTH 
Photo by James Rennie 


The Kern River Outing of 1916 17d 


and rocky bed of the stream making it an uncertain pleasure; 
others were ferried across by a most obliging member, who 
made countless trips with two animals; while on the opposite 
bank were gathered those who had arrived earlier and were dry- 
ing out. “Gabriel,” our most picturesque donkey, was almost 
drowned in the stream, and his rescue added a thrill of excite- 
ment. 

Wednesday a delightful six-mile tramp over the Kernbut 
brought us to Little Kern Lake, where we were to camp for 
several days. The real trip had begun; we had at last reached 
the Kern, our variable companion for several weeks to come. 
We should know its every mood, and part with it reluctantly. 
The fishermen here forgot their disappointment that this was 
the closed season for golden trout in their endeavors to catch 
the more familiar varieties. Lunch parties with trout cooked in 
the ashes or on a hot rock or in the less picturesque frying-pan 
were not infrequent. Excellent swimming in Little Kern Lake 
made the small sandy beach a gay and busy place every after- 
noon. 

These days of lazy pleasure were soon over, and we jour- 
neyed up the cafion past Lower Funston Meadow to the point 
where the Big Arroyo tumbles down in white cascades to meet 
the Kern. This trip was a varied eleven miles between the 
precipitous walls of the cafion. The trail led now across talus 
slopes, now over grassy, sparkling meadows, then across swift- 
running torrents. Each day we became more adept at crossing 
foaming, noisy streams on slippery logs, but the one over Rattle- 
snake Creek was a wet and undulating sapling—a test of self- 
control and coordination. The Big Arroyo camp was almost 
surrounded by two rivers, and the Big Arroyo unkindly rose at 
such a rapid rate after sundown that a hasty evacuation of 
some of the most charming camp-sites was necessary. 

On Sunday we zigzagged up a very steep slope toward the 
Chagoopa Plateau, frequently stopping for breath and to enjoy 
the ever-changing prospect down the Kern Cajion, so colorful 
with living shadows. Pushing on through a splendid forest, we 
suddenly came out into Sky-Parlor Meadow, too glorious a 
spectacle to describe or to forget, a wide-spread amphitheater, 
carpeted with flower-sprinkled green, encircled by dark pines 


172 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and crowned by solemn, jagged peaks and glacial cirques, not- 
ably Sawtooth, Needham, and the many-hued Kaweah group. 
Impossible as it seemed to leave this enchanting spot, our next 
camp, Moraine Lake, was near, and we promised ourselves the 
joy of coming often during our week’s sojourn. 

Moraine Lake is an ideal camp-site. Dense forest fringes the 
margin of this glacial basin. A clear, bubbling spring, icy 
cold, supplied delicious drinking-water, and, despite snow-hung 
mountains mirrored in the lake and the almost 10,000 feet of 
altitude, swimming was more than possible—it was enjoyable. 
This idyllic spot is centrally located for countless trips varying 
in degrees of strenuousness to suit any inclination. 

Then follow you, wherever hie 

The traveling mountains of the sky. 

Or let the streams in civil mode 

Direct your choice upon a road. 
An evening walk to the edge of the ridge gave one a glorious 
comprehensive panorama from Mount Whitney, in the main 
crest beyond the Kaweahs, along a sharply broken sky-line of 
granite peaks in the Great Western Divide, to the unnamed 
snow-clad cirques just across the gorge. From the almost per- 
pendicular walls of the Big Arroyo one seemed to be perched on 
the top of the world. A faint boom from the river far below 
throbbed in the evening stillness. As the long purple shadows 
filled this magnificent valley we hastened back to our forest- 
hidden camp, elusive even by day. 


Here were six days brimful of pleasure. One hundred and 


forty intrepid ones climbed Kaweah Peak; knapsack parties 
journeyed off in all directions, some to Lost Cafion, Columbine 
Lake, and Sawtooth, some to Mount Needham; and toward the 
end of the week ardent hikers with bed and board on their backs 
journeyed up the Big Arroyo and across the Kern-Kaweah Di- 
vide, descending through the wonderful Kern-Kaweah Cafion 
to join the main party again at Junction Meadows. For those 
not so energetic there was still much to be done—fishing parties 
down at the Big Arroyo, dreamy days at Sky-Parlor Meadow, 
and swimming and fishing in Moraine Lake. History has it that 
once upon a time a mighty 814-pound trout was caught there; 
but although many saw three gigantic beauties, neither secret 


The Kern River Outing of 1916 173 


sorcery, hypnotism, nor fancy flies could lure them to impale 
themselves on any deadly hook. 

As each day was more wonderful, so each night the spell of 
the camp-fire drew us closer into the magic circle. “Lost and 
found” were distributed with appropriate remarks, the trips de- 
scribed in terms of Colby or Tappaan miles; and then came a 
wide diversity of entertainment—interesting talks on birds, 
trees, glaciers, Alaska; singing of solos or tout ensemble ; haunt- 
ing melodies of flute and violin, peculiarly suited to these sur- 
roundings. 

The annual Sierra Club Vaudeville given here in the forest 
theater was a high-class performance which brought out much 
talent—“Street Scenes in Venice,” beautifully staged, was in- 
terrupted somewhat by temperamental “Gabriel’’; music, skits, 
monologues, and even Shakespeare dla mode, were greeted with 
generous applause. Another day the bulletin-board announced 
that a bandana exhibition would take place, and all were urged 
to enter gaudy squares in this unique competition. Things of 
beauty were produced from grimy dunnage-bags—hand-woven 
brocades, block-printed silks, and oriental scarfs of much in- 
terest. The last evening found the commissary metamorphosed 
and we dined sumptuously and well at “Café Moraine,” served 
by familiar faces rising above unfamiliar garments. The men 
had raided the women’s camp and now appeared in flowered 
kimono, highland kilt, or prim shirt-waist. 

A wealth of stirring memories is associated with this camp— 
the mysteriously fascinating eclipse of the moon, a “by request” 
violin concert on the sloping hillside near the spring, a vivid 
electrical storm over the upper Kern region—so it was with 
genuine regret that we left the Chagoopa Plateau to return to 
our former camp-site in Lower Funston Meadow for one night 
and then push on eleven miles to Junction Meadows. 

This day we crossed the mighty Kern itself and proceeded to 
the upper end of the cafion, whose grandeur was enhanced by 
mighty sculptured walls and forbidding cliffs, culminating in 
minarets and domes, rushing streams, pouring at intervals from 
some side cafion, and occasional mistlike waterfalls, “like down- 
ward smoke, slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn.” Junction 
Meadows, where the Kern, Kern-Kaweah, and East Fork meet, 


174 Sierra Club Bulletin 


had been ravaged by a terrible tornado since the club camped 
there in 1912 and splendid trees were everywhere lying prone. 
The knapsackers returned, thrilled by the rare beauty of the 
upper Kern-Kaweah, and, animated by their glowing descrip- 
tion, many decided to explore for themselves. It seemed as if 
some whim of creative force had hidden in this remote cafion 
at least one perfect form of every kind of mountain scenery, as 
a reward for those who persevere. 

On Wednesday morning two hundred left for the Crabtree 
Meadows base camp to ascend Mount Whitney the following 
day. One hundred and seventy-five reached the summit, the 
largest party of mountaineers ever registered there. Those of 
us who remained below anxiously watched the angry clouds 
pile up in the direction of Mount Whitney on Thursday. A 
dark sky threatened rain, but only a few scattered drops fell at 
noon; the clouds soon dispersed, and these spatters were the 
only shower of the trip. 

A long, steep pull out of Junction Meadows to the ridge, 
although exhilarating, brought with it a certain sorrow that here 
we must part with our many-mooded companion,the Kern. We 
consoled ourselves with the ever-changing panorama as we 
struggled on and up toward the crest. A glorious prospect was 
here presented. Peaks of the High Sierra, especially Mount 
Whitney, seemed broad, gently sloping masses, while Red Spur 
and the Kaweahs, now seen from the north, looked unapproach- 
able and awe-inspiring. The Whitney climbers straggled across 
the upland meadows, each group content at times to nestle 
down among protecting rocks and scan the marvelous beauty 
radiating on all sides. 

A desultory content had entered into the solils of most of us, 
with Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States, 
conquered ; but at the Tyndall Creek camp those insatiable ones 
who must explore found Mount Tyndall and Mount Williamson 
challenging them to their best efforts. In the evening at the 
camp-fire all of us scrambled up Williamson’s chimney, blis- 
tered our hands on the hot rocks, and pulled ourselves through 
the small “window” to the apex—vicariously. 

Off early in the gray of Sunday morning, the crisp coldness of 
the air most stimulating, we were conscious that this day was 


PLATE CLXVI. 


iy VOL.) &. 


TI} 


RRA CLUB BULLI 


[E 


Ss 


Nine sone: 


sae. 


esses eetneinane Ast: 


POR 


Zo 7 


MORAINE LAKE 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 


roqny "TJ J917e@ MA Aq o10Ng 
PUNOIZIIOJ UL SO[PIIN I9[99 NF 


AUNLIHM LNOOW WOT HLNOS DNIMOOT ‘VUAUNAIS AHL AO LSAYO AHL 


“IIAXTO ALVTd *X ‘TOA ‘NILATING ANTO VUNAIS 


The Kern River Outing of 1916 175 


to bring the climax of the outing. Swinging up a gradual rise 
toward Shepard’s Pass, we paused often to admire the wild 
majestic beauty of the Great Western Divide—Table Mountain, 
with its mesa-like summit, Thunder Mountain, dark and sulky, 
then farther southward that unique shaft of granite, Milestone. 
Suddenly, rounding a rocky crag, we were almost overwhelmed 
by the glorious spectacle before us—dazzling snow-fields with 
the trail descending in zigzags across their gleaming surface on 
toward a retreating cafion whose walls were hung with pur- 
ple shadows. Farther down this rugged gorge opened out into 
Owens Valley, a shimmering desert, whose farther margin 
merged into the foothills of the Inyo Mountains, broken and 
undulating. Slowly we clambered down this slippery way to a 
pyramid of rocks which bore this significant message, written 
on a slip of paper: “Sierra Club, turn here and work toward 
the plateau covered with trees.” Now the route became rock- 
work. Scrambling and jumping from boulder to boulder, we 
eventually reached the storm-beaten stunted pines cowering on 
the upper edge of the timber-line. Here we found ourselves on 
the recently completed portion of the John Muir Trail, one of 
the most worthy results of the Sierra Club’s concerted efforts. 
At such an easy grade is the trail built that the ascent to the 
highest point, Junction Pass (13,200 feet), was surprisingly 
comfortable. This route from the Kern River basin over 
Shepard’s and Junction passes into the Kings River watershed 
is through one of the most impressive and utterly wild regions 
of the High Sierra. 

At the summit of the pass, where all were to await informa- 
tion concerning the safety of the pack-train before advancing 
farther, we snuggled down among wind-breaking rocks and with 
the satisfaction that comes after such a climb serenely enjoyed 
the elemental wonder of it all. Spread before us in splendid di- 
versity were alpine lakes, sparkling streams, glacial slopes, som- 
ber cafions, precipitous crags, grassy meadows, wind-swept for- 
ests, and silent peaks. On the left Mount Stanford loomed bold- 
ly, while to the right was a sharply serrated ridge culminating at 
intervals in peaks—Mount Keith, a few hundred feet higher 
than the pass, Mount Bradley, and finally University Peak. 
Above timber-line one is submitted to direct actinic rays and 


176 Sierra Club Bulletin 


kindly shade is hard to find. But out of the sun the wind was 
too cold, and the consumption of much variously flavored 
snow had made exercise desirable. When word came that the 
pack-train had crossed the first snow-fields and we could pro- 
ceed to Vidette Meadows at our pleasure, small groups at once 
began to descend over a flinty trail toward the lovely lakes in 
Center Basin. 

Encircling Center Peak, now towering high above us, we came 
upon an unnamed glacial lake, colorful and perfect. Mirrored in 
its waters were bluest sky, fleecy clouds, and snowy peak; its 
edges were beds of mossy green, flower-scattered. With East 
Vidette to beckon us, we pushed down toward our next camp- 
ing-place, but each time we stopped to take our bearings that 
deceptive landmark seemed just as far away. In the late after- 
noon we arrived at the junction of Vidette and Bubbs creeks. 
A long and varied day was drawing to a close. Seventeen of 
the most wonderful miles ever traveled had been accomplished, 
and reluctantly we felt darkness creep upon us, as “by punc- 
tual eve the stars were lit.” . 

But this Vidette camp at night was one of rarest beauty—here 
there was the silence of the High Sierra meadows uninterrupted 
save by an undertone from the smoothly flowing stream, “the 
floor of heaven . . . thick inlaid with patines of bright gold,” 
and outlined against this glittering curtain towered that majes- 
tic pyramid, East Vidette. 

From this location knapsack parties went to Mount Brewer 
or Rae Lake. The main camp became a scene of bustling ac- 
tivity ; the weighing of food and stowing it in small bags; the 
sorting and packing and resorting of the “thirty-five pounds” ; 
the trying-on of “packs” of food and bed, and attempting to 
persuade oneself that this unwieldy excrescence is a bundle of 
joy—all these occupations were everywhere in evidence. The 
much-heralded beauty of Rae Lake accounted for this restless 
uncertainty among us, and even the avowedly indolent were 
strongly tempted to try this one knapsack trip. Rumors of the 
difficulty of the trip varied widely. Some admitted Glenn Pass 
to be a stubborn climb through talus and heavy snow, while 
others promised a comfortable yet thrilling trip, possible to 
anyone who had survived so far. Fully fifty finally went, and 


The Kern River Outing of 1916 177 


all of them confided to the “stay-at-homes” later that it had 
been worth the effort. 

Good fishing in Bubbs Creek, East Creek, and Lake Char- 
lotte; the opportunity to explore the upper reaches of Vidette 
Creek, with its well-concealed lakes; the walk down Bubbs 
Creek to the falls, or farther to the wooded ravine from which 
East Creek pours forth and where a fine view of Mount Brew- 
er was to be had—these jaunts were compensation for the in- 
timidated. 

Thursday we moved camp a short distance to Sunset Lake, 
one of the chain of sparkling sapphire pools which lie at the 
base of Kearsarge Pinnacles. Many were off early to visit Lake 
Charlotte on the way, a delightful place to spend the day, with 
good fishing, and for those who went merely to “fry them in 
the pan” there was the additional interest of greeting the knap- 
sack parties from Rae Lake and being the first appreciative au- 
dience. Reluctant we were to leave this heavenly spot, for to- 
morrow afternoon would find us in Independence, back among 
watermelons and white folks. : 

The last night in the mountains our commissary was estab- 
lished on a narrow neck of land between two lakes, and long 
before summons to dinner sounded there was “standing room 
only.” After each knapsack trip, despite the glowing tales of 
scorched rice and superabundance of fish, the returned adven- 
turers are always conspicuously first to dinner, and with heap- 
ing plate and brimming cup immediately go to the end of the 
line, in order to waste no time between first and second help- 
ings. The evening air here was rather chill, and as the sunset 
glow faded from the tips of the Pinnacles all of us showed a 
decided preference for the camp-fire. It was a fitting climax to 
these characteristic gatherings that we should hear a chapter 
from John Muir’s Florida diary, as yet unpublished. Little did 
we realize that on the morrow some of us would follow his ex- 
ample and find a comfortablecamping-place in a cemetery. Then 
we sang “High, high, high,” and hied ourselves to our sleep- 
ing-bags. Throughout the women’s camp the fires sprang to 
life, reminding one of the old illustrations of Dante’s master- 
piece, each ledge with its flame dancing and changing and 
throwing mysterious shadow-figures. How grateful were these 


178 Sierra Club Bulletin 


glowing embers when at 4:30 the rising call sounded and we 
found ice in our water-buckets for the first time on the trip! 
With numb fingers we tied our dunnage-bags and rolled them 
down-hill for the last weigh-in. 

Although we were early on the trail to Kearsarge Pass, sil- 
houettes of earlier climbers were already outlined against the 
sky. From this famous pass another comprehensive panorama 
made us loath to be enroute. The desert lay in misty haze, Di- 
rectly below us was Pothole Lake, still frozen over; behind us, 
whence we came, was a marvelous wonderland of faintly 
flushed peaks, hung with snow and partly hidden alpine lakes. 
The discomforting assurance of an 8000-foot drop in our fif- 
teen-mile tramp, and half of this distance across sand and sage, 
forced us to proceed downward. Passing by Pothole and Heart 
lakes, we came into Onion Valley, whose name belies it, for it 
was more truly a natural hanging garden where all mountain 
flowers bloomed in profusion. Especially fine was the delphini- 
um, or giant larkspur. Following Pine Creek, we finally came 
to Independence, which eluded us as long as possible, and our 
weariness was forgotten in the reviving effect of fresh fruits 
and ice-cream. Our invasion on all food supplies will doubtless 
be remembered, and we hope the “‘preparedness” of the Ladies’ 
Aid Society was amply rewarded. A day and a night on the 
train and on a Sunday morning we were back again among the 
worries and conveniences of every-day life. This month in the 
mountains is a singularly rich experience which “strengthens 
one’s appreciation of the beautiful world out-of-doors and puts 
one in tune with the Infinite.” 


PLOFINIT 19312 Aq OF0Ug 
yoo1y piedeys wojy sseg uo ounf suryoeroiddy 


TIVUL MINW NHOf AHL NO 


“ITIAXTD ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATTNG ANIO vaUgIS 


PLATE CLXIX. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


EAST VIDETTE, FROM THE FACE OF KEARSARGE PINNACLES 


1€ 


Photo by James Renn 


VIA DEER CREEK 
By C. Netson HACKETT 


- 


EITHER with fir nor cedar, with tamarack nor juniper 

does my story begin. No native branch do I lift up that 
ever the Sierra knew. I extol instead the Citrus aurantium, 
whose golden fruit made pleasant all our journey from the Big 
Arroyo to Bearpaw Meadow, though partaken of but once, and 
it divided. How sweet were the influences shed by that incep- 
tive orange you of the cult will readily believe when I relate to 
you the facts. 

We were seated in a saddle of the Great Western Divide, the 
headwaters of the Big Arroyo on one side and the source of 
Deer Creek on the other. Below us in one of the last clumps of 
trees we had lighted our camp-fire the night before, and there 
we had slept in its smoke through the chill night and had eaten 
thirst-provoking porridge and bacon that morning. Ray Bailey’s 
party, with which we had come from Moraine Lake, around 
the base of the Kaweahs and down into the glorious Arroyo the 
previous day, was just disappearing on its way to the Kern- 
Kaweah Cafion. At that moment Walter Huber, my sole com- 
panion, loosed his pack and produced therefrom, with all the 
dramatic surprise of an ex-silk-hat-enter-Mr. Rabbit, a marvel- 
ous orange. Since that moment its donor has been to me a 
canonized saint. The aureole is round his blessed pate and the 
symbolic citrus in his hand shows still in memory huge as the 
blue-ribboned ones in the convex jars at a county fair. 

The sun was at our backs as we began a descent which was 
to lower us with neither instancy nor ease from a height of 
10,600 to 7000 feet. In the beginning it was almost all snow, 
and all that was not snow was talus. There was a tiny pond, all 
frozen, where Deer Creek begins, and then a larger lakelet, with 
winter’s seal upon it, too, though cracked and broken. With 
every step the cafion widened, the bare cliffs lifted their brows 
more awesomely. Suddenly we stepped out onto the brink of 
the bottomless pit. Black and wet and sheer are the cliffs by 


180 Sierra Club Bulletin 


which mere man must clamber down sixteen hundred feet to 
the third lake of Deer Creek. This is the chief difficulty be- 
tween the Kern and the Giant Forest, and the trail-builder will 
have his task. 

My pack was small, but I felt as if I were trying to carry a 
wardrobe trunk down a winding stair without damaging the 
plaster. For some time one of us had been going ahead and re- 
ceiving the two packs which the other handed down to him, 
when it occurred to me that it would be feasible to let my pack 
slide ahead of me for ten or fifteen feet. A wild mountain sheep 
could not have sprung from my grasp with a more lifelike leap 
—one bound to leave the ledge, another to clear the cliff, and 
out it spun into the blue,and then down, down. . . . At the base 
of the cliffs a little stream ran out between high banks of snow. 
There, on a rock in the midst, like a wet cormorant.sunning, I 
found my much-cursed pack an hour later. 

Gerhart Hauptmann, speaking of mysteries in secret socie- 
ties, says, “Even children possessing a secret in common swell 
with a sense of importance.” To overcome this childish feeling 
is difficult in remembering the lake we now approached, which 
is one of nature’s most precious revelations to what can be the 
merest handful of men. The arcana of all societies, from an- 
cient Eleusis to a modern Skull and Crossbones, seem paltry by 
comparison. With a great apostle, I can say, “Behold, I show 
you a mystery.” Down five hundred feet and more, over cliffs 
which make dawn late, half a dozen cascades shake their silver 
ribbons. Groups of stately pines stand on the margin of the 
lake. From its northern edge rise granite cliffs of marvelous 
sculpturing. At its northwest end its green and blue waters 
flow out in a slow and limpid stream through a magnificent 
forest. Every puddle in Italy, every pond in New England— 
even the waterless hollows of the moon—have their names, but 
this glorious lake lies flashing in the summer sun, unnamed, 
almost unknown. 

From this lake (Lake San Graal I think I shall call it until a 
more authoritative christening) there is no royal highway down 
Deer Creek. We tried the cliffs to the right, failed, moved a 
short distance through brake-fern higher than our heads, then 
through a wildwood tangle, crossed the creek on a log where the 


Via Deer Creek 181 


final “r’’ of “Deer” is on the Government map, tried the cliffs 
of the south side, and then finally made for a place down-stream 
some three-quarters of a mile, where the creek again ran into a 
forest and gave promise that the jungle there would cease. In 
the meantime it was a hand-to-branch encounter. Underfoot 
was tippy talus concealed largely by vines. Manzanita did the 
low tackling, while elder and deer-brush slashed at our faces in 
front or at our packs from behind. Nor did the sun forget to 
concentrate his rays on our perspiring foreheads. 

Our destination was Bearpaw Meadow, where we expected 
to meet two fellow-Sierrans who were coming in from the 
Giant Forest to join the main party. We might now have fol- 
lowed on down the cafion to Wet Meadow and climbed up to 
Bearpaw by trail. Preferring, however, to keep grade, we fol- 
lowed up the right bank of the Kaweah River. From Lone Pine 
Meadow down to its confluence with Deer Creek this branch of 
the Kaweah is almost one long cascade. We spent the after- 
noon climbing up ledges or burrowing through brush without 
finding a place at which the stream could be forded. But when 
we surmounted the eight-thousand-foot contour we came out 
into a wide swale and there gingerly crossed the river on a snow 
bridge just below the point where it bends to the east. At once 
we hit the trail from Lone Pine to Bearpaw. Kipling speaks of 
“the trail that is always new,” but in a sense the trail is also 
always old. That late afternoon, certainly, after our contest 
with the wilderness, the trail seemed something ancient and 
familiar and full of comfort. We were glad to set our feet in 
the way that other human feet had trod. | 

Like the hanging gardens of Babylon is Bearpaw Meadow—a 
part of the slope of the mountain, 1500 to 2000 feet above the 
Kaweah River. Its long grassy slope, filled with aspens and 
wild flowers, is watered by little streams that flow across it 
down the mountainside. Our expected friends did not meet us, 
and we broke our hardtack in disappointment. 

I remember no more glorious pageant than we witnessed 
from Bearpaw that evening. Down Kaweah Cafion and far on 
to the west we saw the hot San Joaquin Valley, covered with a 
dark haze, the sunset sky above it splendid with a tarnished but 
royal crimson, “the excess of glory obscured,” like Satan new- 


182 Sierra Club Bulletin 


fallen from Paradise. To the eastward rose the ridges of the 
Great Western Divide over which we had come. A silvery mist 
veiled their bases and caused the snowy peaks above to tower 
with sublimated loftiness. 

The warmer days and richer soil of the western side of the 
range have had a magnifying effect on the flora. Coming back 
to Lone Pine the next morning, we noted the huge trees of that 
great overripe forest and, wherever there was a soggy green, 
the blossoms of the shooting-stars, or cyclamens. 

Our object in recrossing the Great Western Divide was Junc- 
tion Meadows. We did not therefore attempt to return by way 
of Deer Creek, but chose Triple Divide and the Kern-Kaweah 
Cafion instead. The waterfall that brings down a tributary to 
Lone Pine Creek, and the splendid cascade a little farther up on 
Lone Pine itself, should be starred. We passed Tamarack Lake 
on the north. A steep climb and we came into a great open 
theater filled with acres of snow and surrounded by seemingly 
impregnable walls. Due east across it we went and up over the 
black cliffs, which on near approach showed considerable plant 
life. Wekept near the little stream that comes down from Lion 
Lake. Long ridges of granite boulders, arranged like Prussian 
trenches, so that each seemed to be, but was not, the last, had 
to be crossed before we reached Lion Lake with its subterra- 
nean outlet. High above it we kept, crossed a 12,000-foot pass, 
swung around a shoulder of loose cinderlike shale, and came 
upon Glacier Lake at the head of Cloudy Cafion. We kept on 
eastward and upward, over a long hummock-filled snow-field, 
and exulted at last to stand on the pass beside Triple Divide 
Peak. We were now above the Kern-Kaweah, and the rest 
seemed certain and easy. But still there remained snow and 
rocks, and rocks and snow. Finally, getting down to the river 
proved a problem, and only after considerable time lost in vain 
attempts did we find a ledge and a talus-pile that took us to the 
bottom. As we floundered down the Kern-Kaweah through the 
snow and icy slush, our appreciation of its glories was a little 
dimmed by weariness. 

We camped that night within a couple of miles of the main 
party, darkness having shut down on us. We cooked no supper. 
We unrolled our beds in the very trail. A fire at our feet was 


Joqny, "JT Joye Aq ojoyg 
OAOUUIV DIG AO GVAH AHL LV ‘NISVE ANVTANIN 


"XX10 ALVId "X “IOA ‘NILATING AAO vuugis 


“IXXTO ALVId 


raqny "Ty J91i[e@ MA Aq oj0Yyg 
NONV)O WHAT ONTXVON AO CVAH 


*X “TOA ‘NILATING €NTO VANAIS 


Via Deer Creek 183 


all our labor. So much snow and rock work and the difficulty 
of two passes over 12,000 feet each had caused a weariness that 
induced sleep instantly. 

Now, although the downy couch of the city had supplanted 
the rocky cradle of the wilderness, the poppy-crowned goddess 
approaches with a greater deliberation. In that interval there 
sometimes flashes on my mind something seen on that trip to 
Bearpaw, and especially on Deer Creek. And if I dream, it is 
not of a great highway from New York to San Francisco, won- 
derful as that would be, but of a mere trail instead. It runs by 
way of Deer Creek, and its pilgrims saunter upward from the 
solemnity of the Giant Forest to the grandeur of the Big 
Arroyo. 


STUDIES IN ‘THE SIP R Rae: 
By JoHN Murr 


* 
NO. III. ANCIENT GLACIERS AND THEIR PATHWAYS 


HOUGH the gigantic glaciers of the Sierra are dead, their 

history is indelibly recorded in characters of rock, moun- 
tain, cafion, and forest; and, although other hieroglyphics are 
being incessantly engraved over these, “line upon line,” the 
glacial characters are so enormously emphasized that they rise 
free and unconfused in sublime relief, through every after in- 
scription, whether of the torrent, the avalanche, or the restless 
heaving atmosphere. 

In order to give the reader definite conceptions of the mag- 
nitude and aspect of these ancient ice-rivers, I will briefly out- 
line those which were most concerned in the formation of Yo- 
semite Valley and its cafion branches. We have seen (in the 
previous paper )f that Yosemite received the simultaneous thrust 
of the Yosemite Creek, Hoffmann, Tenaya, South Lyell, and 
Illilouette glaciers. These welded themselves together into one 
huge trunk, which swept down through the valley, receiving 
small affluents in its course from Pohono, Sentinel, and Indian 
cafions, and those on both sides of El Capitan Rock. At this pe- 
riod most of the upper portions of the walls of the valley were 
bare; but during its earliest history, the wide mouths of these 
several glaciers formed an almost uninterrupted covering of 
ice, All the ancient glaciers of the Sierra fluctuated in depth 
and width, and in degree of individuality, down to the latest 
glacial days. It must, therefore, be distinctly borne in mind that 
the following sketches of these upper Merced glaciers relate 
only to their separate condition, and to that phase of their sep- 
arate condition which they presented toward the close of the 
period when Yosemite and its branches were works nearly ac- 
complished. 


* Reprinted from the Overland Monthly of July, 1874. This is the third of a 
series of seven studies in pone: Mr. Muir developed his theories of the geology of 
the Sierra.—Editor. 

+ Reprinted in SIERRA eee Buttetin, Vol. X, No. 1, January, 1916. 


Studies in the Sierra 185 


YOSEMITE CREEK GLACIER 


The broad, many-fountained glacier to which the basin of 
Yosemite Creek belonged, was about fourteen miles in length 
by four in width, and in many places was not less than a thou- 
sand feet in depth. Its principal tributaries issued from lofty 
amphitheatres laid well back among the northern spurs of the 
Hoffmann range. These at first pursued a westerly course; 
then, uniting with each other and absorbing a series of small 
affluents from the Tuolumne divide, the trunk thus formed 
swept round to the south in a magnificent curve, and poured its 
ice into Yosemite in cascades two miles wide. This broad gla- 
cier formed a kind of wrinkled ice-cloud. As it grew older, it 
became more regular and riverlike; encircling peaks overshad- 
owed its upper fountains, rock islets rose at intervals among 
its shallowing currents, and its bright sculptured banks, no- 
where overflowed, extended in massive simplicity all the way 
to its mouth. As the ice-winter drew near a close, the main 
trunk, becoming torpid, at length wholly disappeared in the sun, 
and a waiting multitude of plants and animals entered the new 
valley to inhabit the mansions prepared for them. In the mean- 
time the chief tributaries, creeping slowly back into the shelter 
of their fountain shadows, continued to live and work indepen- 
dently, spreading moraine soil for gardens, scooping basins for 
lakelets, and leisurely completing the sculpture of their foun- 
tains. These also have at last vanished, and the whole basin is 
now full of light. Forests flourish luxuriantly over all its broad 
moraines, lakes and meadows nestle among its domes, and a 
thousand flowery gardens are outspread along its streams. 


HOFFMANN GLACIER 


The short, swift-flowing Hoffmann Glacier offered a striking 
contrast to the Yosemite Creek, in the energy and directness of 
its movements, and the general tone and tendencies of its life. 
The erosive energy of the latter was diffused over a succession 
of low boulderlike domes. Hoffmann Glacier, on the contrary, 
moved straight to its mark, making a descent of 5000 feet in 
about five miles, steadily deepening and contracting its current, 
and finally thrusting itself against the upper portion of Yosem- 
ite in the form of a wedge of solid ice, six miles in length by 


186 Sierra Club Bulletin 


four in width. The concentrated action of this energetic glacier, 
combined with that of the Tenaya, accomplished the greater 
portion of the work of the disinterment and sculpture of the 
great Half Dome, North Dome, and the adjacent rocks. Its 
fountains, ranged along the southern slopes of the main Hoff- 
mann ridge, gave birth to a series of flat, wing-shaped tribu- 
taries, separated from one another by picturesque walls built of 
massive blocks, bedded and jointed like masonry. The story of 
its death is not unlike that of the Yosemite Creek, though the 
declivity of its channel and equal exposure to sun-heat prevent- 
ed any considerable portion from passing through a torpid con- 
dition. It was first burned off on its lower course; then, creep- 
ing slowly back, lingered a while at the base of its mountains to 
finish their sculpture, and encircle them with a zone of moraine 
soil for gardens and forests. 

The gray slopes of Mount Hoffmann are singularly barren in 
aspect, yet the traveler who is so fortunate as to ascend them 
will find himself in the very loveliest gardens of theSierra. The 
lower banks and slopes of the basin are plushed with chaparral 
rich in berries and bloom—a favorite resort for bears; while 
the middle region is planted with the most superb forest of sil- 
ver-fir I ever beheld. Nowhere are the cold footsteps of ice 
more warmly covered with light and life. 


TENAYA GLACIER 


The rugged, strong-limbed Tenaya Glacier was about twelve 
miles long, and from half a mile to two and a half miles wide. 
Its depth varied from near 500 to 2000 feet, according as its 
current was outspread in many channels or compressed in one. 
Instead of drawing its supplies directly from the summit foun- 
tains, it formed one of the principal outlets of the Tuolumne 
mer de glace, issuing at once from this noble source, a full- 
grown glacier two miles wide and more than a thousand feet 
deep. It flowed in a general southwesterly direction, entering 
Yosemite at the head, between Half and North domes. In set- 
ting out on its life-work it moved slowly, spending its strength 
in ascending the Tuolumne divide, and in eroding a series of 
parallel sub-channels leading over into the broad, shallow basin 
of Lake Tenaya. Hence, after uniting its main current, which 


Studies m the Sierra 187 


had been partially separated in crossing the divide, and receiv- 
ing a swift-flowing affluent from the fountains of Cathedral 
Peak, it set forth again with renewed vigor, pouring its mas- 
sive floods over the southwestern rim of the basin in a series of 
splendid cascades; then, crushing heavily against the ridge of 
Clouds Rest, curved toward the west, quickened its pace, focal- 
ized its wavering currents, and bore down upon Yosemite with 
its whole concentrated energy. Toward the end of the ice-peri- 
od, and while the upper tributaries of its Hoffmann companion 
continued to grind rock-meal for coming forests, the whole 
body of Tenaya became torpid, withering simultaneously from 
end to end, instead of dying gradually from the foot upward. 
Its upper portion separated into long parallel strips extending 
between the Tenaya basin and Tuolumne mer de glace. These, 
together with the shallow ice-clouds of the lake-basin, melted 
rapidly, exposing broad areas of rolling rock-waves and glossy 
pavements, on whose channelless surface water ran everywhere 
wild and free. There are no very extensive morainal accumu- 
lations of any sort in the basin. The largest occur on the divide, 
near the Big Tuolumne Meadows, and on the sloping ground 
northwest of Lake Tenaya.* 

For a distance of six miles from its mouth the pathway of this 
noble glacier is a simple trough from 2000 to 3000 feet deep, 
countersunk in the solid granite, with sides inclined at angles 
with the horizon of from thirty to fifty degrees. Above this its 
grand simplicity is interrupted by huge moutonéed ridges ex- 
tending in the general direction of its length over into the basin 
of Lake Tenaya. Passing these, and crossing the bright glacial 
pavements that border the lake, we find another series of ridges, 
from 500 to 1200 feet in height, extending over the divide to 
the ancient Tuolumneice-fountain. Their bare moutonéed forms 
and polished surfaces indicate that they were overswept, exist- 
ing at first as mere boulders beneath the mighty glacier that 

* Because the main trunk died almost simultaneously throughout its whole ex- 
tent, we, of course, find no terminal moraines curved across its channels; nor, since 
its banks were in most places too steeply inclined for their disposition, do we find 
much cf the two laterals. One of the first Tenaya glacierets was developed in the 
shadow of Yosemite Half Dome. Others were formed along the bases of Coliseum 
Peak, and the long, precipitous walls extending from near Lake Tenaya to the Big 
Tuolumne Meadows. The latter, on account of the uniformity and continuity of 
their protecting shadows, formed moraines of considerable length and regularity, 


see are liable to be mistaken fcr portions of the left lateral moraine of the main 
glacier. 


188 Sierra Club Bulletin 


flowed in one unbroken current between Cathedral Peak and 
the southeast shoulder of the Hoffmann range. 


NEVADA, OR SOUTH LYELL GLACIER 


The South Lyell Glacier was less influential than the last, 
but longer and more symmetrical, and the only one of the Mer- 
ced system whose sources extended directly to the main sum- 
mits on the axis of the chain. Its numerous ice-wombs, now 
mostly barren, range side by side in three distinct series at an 
elevation above sea-level of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet. The 
first series on the right side of the basin extends from the Mat- 
terhorn to Cathedral Peak in a northwesterly direction a dis- 
tance of about twelve miles. The second series extends in the 
same direction along the left side of the basin in the summits of 
the Merced group, and is about six miles in length. The third is 
about nine miles long, and extends along the head of the basin 
in a direction at right angles to that of the others, and unites 
with them at their southeastern extremities. The three ranges 
of summits in which these fountains are laid, and the long con- 
tinuous ridge of Clouds Rest, enclose a rectangular basin, leav- 
ing an outlet near the southwest corner opposite its principal 
névé fountains, situated in the dark jagged peaks of the Lyell 
group. The main central trunk, lavishly fed by these numerous 
fountains, was from 1000 to 1400 feet in depth, from three- 
fourths of a mile to a mile and a half in width, and about fif- 
teen miles in length, It first flowed in a northwesterly direction 
for a few miles, then curving toward the left, pursued a west- 
erly course, and poured its shattered cascading currents down 
into Yosemite between Half Dome and Mount Starr King. 
Could we have visited Yosemite toward the close of the gla- 


cial period, we should have found its ice-cascades vastly more. 


glorious than their tiny water representatives of the present 
hour. One of the most sublime of these was formed by that por- 
tion of the South Lyell current which descended the broad, 
rounded shoulder of Half Dome. The whole glacier resembled 
an oak with a gnarled swelling base and wide-spreading branch- 
es. Its banks, a few miles above Yosemite, were adorned with 
groups of picturesque rocks of every conceivable form and 
mode of combination, among which glided swift-descending af- 


Studies in the Sierra 189 


fluents, mottled with black slates from the summits, and gray 
granite blocks from ridges and headlands. One of the most in- 
teresting facts relating to the early history of this glacier is, 
that the lofty cathedral spur forming the northeast boundary of 
its basin was broken through and overflowed by deep ice-cur- 
rents from the Tuolumne region. The scored and polished gaps 
eroded by them in their passage across the summit of the spur, 
trend with admirable steadiness in a northeasterly and south- 
westerly direction ; a fact of great importance, considered in its 
bearings upon questions relating to the universal ice-sheet. 
Traces of a similar overflow from the northeast occur on the 
edges of the basins of all the Yosemite glaciers. 

The principal moraines of the basin occur in short, irregular 
sections scattered along the sides of the valleys, or spread in 
rough beds in level portions of their bottoms, without manifest- 
ing subordination to any system whatever. This fragmentary 
condition is due to interruptions caused by portions of the sides 
of the valleys being too precipitous for moraine matter to rest 
upon and to breakings and down-washings of torrents and ava- 
lanches of winter snow. The obscurity resulting from these 
causes is further augmented by forests and underbrush, mak- 
ing a patient study of details indispensable to the recognition of 
their unity and simple grandeur. The south lateral moraine of 
the lower portion of the trunk may be traced about five miles, 
from the mouth of the north tributary of Mount Clark to the 
cafion of I\lilouette, though simplicity of structure has in most 
places been prevented by the nature of the ground and by the 
action of a narrow margin glacier which descended against it 
with variable pressure from cool, shadowy slopes above. The 
corresponding section of the right lateral, extending from the 
mouth of Cathedral tributary to Half Dome, is far more per- 
fect in structure, because of the evenness of the ground, and 
because the ice-wing which curved against Clouds Rest and 
descended against it was fully exposed to the sun, and was, 
therefore, melted long before the main trunk, allowing the lat- 
ter to complete the formation of this section of its moraine un- 
disturbed. Some conception of its size and general character 
may be obtained by following the Clouds Rest and Yosemite 
trail, which crosses it obliquely, leading past several cross-sec- 


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PLATE CLXXII. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


AT THE FOOT OF KEARSARGE PINNACLES 


Photo by Philip S. Carlton 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLXXIII. 


POTHOLE LAKE AND UNIVERSITY PEAK 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 


Studies mm the Sierra IQI 


tions made by small streams. A few slate boulders from the 
Lyell group may be seen, but the main mass of the moraine is 
composed of ordinary granite and porphyry, the latter having 
been derived from Feldspar and Cathedral valleys. 

The elevation of the top of the moraine near Cathedral trib- 
utary is about 8100 feet; near Half Dome, 7600. It rests upon 
the side of the valley at angles varying from fifteen to twenty- 
five degrees, and in many places is straight and uniform as a 
railroad embankment. The greatest depth of the glacier be- 
tween Clouds Rest and Mount Starr King, measuring from the 
highest points of its lateral moraines, was 1300 feet. The re- 
currence of ridges and terraces on its sides indicate oscillations 
in the level of the glacier, probably caused by clusters of cooler 
or snowier seasons which no doubt diversified the great glacial 
winter, just as clusters of sunny or stormy days occasion fluc- 
tuations in the level of the streams and prevent monotony in 
our annual winters. When the depth of the South Lyell Glacier 
diminished to about 500 feet, it became torpid, on account of 
the retardation caused by the roughness and crookedness of its 
channel. But though it henceforth made no farther advance of 
its whole length, it possessed feeble vitality—in small sections, 
of exceptional slope or depth, maintaining a squirming and 
swedging motion, while it lay dying like a wounded serpent. 
The numerous fountain wombs continued fruitful long after 
the lower valleys were developed and vitalized with sun-heat. 
These gave rise to an imposing series of short residual glaciers, 
extending around three sides of the quadrangle basin, a dis- 
tance of twenty-four miles. Most of them have but recently 
succumbed to the demands of the changing seasons, dying in 
turn, as determined by elevation, size, and exposure. A few 
still linger in the loftiest and most comprehensive shadows, ac- 
tively engaged upon the last hieroglyphics which will complete 
the history of the South Lyell Glacier, forming one of the no- 
blest and most symmetrical sheets of ice manuscripts in the 
whole Sierra. 

ILLILOUETTE 
The broad, shallow glacier that inhabited the basin of Illilou- 
ette more resembled a lake than a river, being nearly half as 
wide as it was long. Its greatest length was about ten miles, 


192 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and its depth perhaps nowhere much exceeded 700 feet. Its 
chief fountains were ranged along the western side of the Mer- 
ced spur at an elevation of about 10,000 feet. These gave birth 
to magnificent affluents, flowing in a westerly direction for sev- 
eral miles, in full independence, and uniting near the center of 
the basin. The principal trunk curved northward, grinding 
heavily against the lofty wall forming its left bank, and finally 
poured its ice into Yosemite by the South Cafion between Gla- 
cier Point and Mount Starr King. All the phenomena relating 
to glacial action in this basin are remarkably simple and order- 
ly, on account of the sheltered positions occupied by its princi- 
pal fountains with reference to the unifying effects of ice-cur- 
rents from the main summits of the chain. A fine general view, 
displaying the principal moraines sweeping out into the middle 
of the basin from Black, Red, Gray, and Clark mountains may 
be obtained from the eastern base of the cone of Starr King. 
The right lateral of the tributary which took its rise between 
Red and Black mountains is a magnificent piece of ice-work. 
Near the upper end, where it is joined to the shoulder of Red 
Mountain, it is 250 feet in height, and displays three well- 
marked terraces. From the first to the second of these, the ver- 
tical descent is eighty-five feet, and inclination of the surface 
fifteen degrees; from the second to the third, ninety-five feet, 
and inclination twenty-five degrees; and from the third to 
the bottom of the channel, seventy feet, made at an angle of 
nineteen degrees. The smoothness of the uppermost terrace 
shows that it is considerably more ancient than the others, 
many of the blocks of which it was composed having crumbled 
to sand. 

A few miles farther down, the moraine has an average slope 
in front of about twenty-seven degrees, and an elevation above 
the bottom of the channel of six hundred and sixty-six feet. 
More than half of the side of the channel from the top is cov- 
ered with moraine matter, and overgrown with a dense growth 
of chaparral, composed of manzanita, cherry, and castanopsis. 
Blocks of rose-colored granite, many of them very large, occur 
at intervals all the way from the western base of Mount Clark 
to Starr King, indicating exactly the course pursued by the ice 
when the north divide of the basin was overflowed, Mount 


Studies in the Sierra 193 


Clark being the only source whence they could possibly have 
been derived. 

Near the middle of the basin, just where the regular mo- 
raines flatten out and disappear, there is outspread a smooth 
gravel slope, planted with the olive-green Arctostaphylos glau- 
ca so as to appear in the distance as a delightful meadow. Sec- 
tions cut by streams show it to be composed of the same ma- 
terial as the moraines, but finer and more water-worn. The 
main channel, which is narrow at this point, appears to have 
been dammed up with ice and terminal moraines, thus giving 
rise to a central lake, at the bottom of which moraine matter 
was re-ground and subsequently spread and leveled by the im- 
petuous action of its outbreaking waters. The southern bound- 
ary of the basin is a strikingly perfect wall, extending sheer and 
unbroken from Black Mountain* to Buena Vista Peak, casting 
a long, cool shadow all through the summer for the protection 
of fountain snow. The northern rim presents a beautiful suc- 
cession of smooth undulations, rising here and there to a dome, 
their pale gray sides dotted with junipers and silver-leafed 
pines, and separated by dark, feathery base-fringes of fir. 

The ice-plows of Illilouette, ranged side by side in orderly 
gangs, have furrowed its rocks with admirable uniformity, pro- 
ducing irrigating channels for a brood of wild streams, and 
abundance of deep, rich soils, adapted to every requirement of 
garden and grove. No other section of the Yosemite uplands 
is in so high a state of glacial cultivation. Its clustering domes, 
sheer walls, and lofty towering peaks, however majestic in 
themselves, are only border adornments, submissively subordi- 
nate to their sublime garden center. The basins of Yosemite 
Creek, Tenaya, and South Lyell are pages of sculptured rocks 
embellished with gardens. The IIlilouette basin is one grand 
garden embellished with rocks. 

Nature manifests her love for the number five in her glaciers, 
as well as in the petals of the flowers which she plants in their 
pathways. These five Yosemite glaciers we have been sketch- 
ing are as directly related to one another, and for as defi- 
nite an object, as are the organs of a plant. After uniting in 


* This mountain occurs next south of Red Mountain, and must not be confound- 
ed with the Black Mountain six miles farther south. 


194 Sierra Club Bulletin 


the valley, and expending the down-thrusting power with which 
they were endowed by virtue of the declivity of their channels, 
the trunk flowed up out of the valley without yielding much 
compliance to the crooked and comparatively small river cafion 
extending in a general westerly direction from the foot of the 
main valley. In effecting its exit a considerable ascent was 
made, traces of which are to be seen in the upward slope of the 
worn, rounded extremities of the valley walls. Down this 
glacier-constructed grade descend both the Coulterville and 
Mariposa trails; and we might further observe in this connec- 
tion that, because the ice-sheet near the period of transition 
to distinct glaciers flowed southwesterly, the south lips of all 
Yosemites trending east and west, other conditions being equal, 
are more heavily eroded, making the construction of trails on 
that side easier. The first trail, therefore, that was made into 
Yosemite, was of course made down over the south lip. The 
only trail entering the Tuolumne Yosemite descends the south 
lip, and so also does the only trail leading into the Kings River 
Yosemite. A large majority of deer and bear and Indian trails 
likewise descend the south lips of Yosemites. Soextensivelyare 
the movements of men and animals controlled by the previous 
movements of certain snow-crystals combined as glaciers. 

The direction pursued by the Yosemite trunk, after escaping 
from the valley, is unmistakably indicated by its immense lat- 
eral moraines extending from its lips in a west-southwesterly 
direction. The right moraine was disturbed by the large tribu- 
tary of Cascade Creek, and is extremely complicated in struc- 
ture. The left is simple until it comes under the influence of 
tributaries from the southeast, and both are further obscured by 
forests which flourish upon their mixed soil,and by the washing 
of rains and melting snows, and the weathering of their boul- 
ders, making a smooth, sandy, unmorainelike surface. It is, 
therefore, the less to be wondered at that the nature of these 
moraines, whichrepresent so important a part of the chips hewn 
from the valley in the course of its formation, should not have 
been sooner recognized. Similarly situated moraiwmes extend 
from the lips of every Yosemite wherever the ground admits of 
their deposition and retention. In Hetch-Hetchy and other 
smaller and younger Yosemites of the upper Merced, the as- 


7 


Studies in the Sierra 195 


cending strie which measure the angle of ascent made by the 
bottom of their glaciers in their outflow are still clearly visible. 
Fig. 1 is the horizontal sec- _— 
tion of the end of a Yosem- | 
ite valley, showing the ordi- 
nary boat-shaped edge, and 
lateral moraines (M M) ex- 
tending from the lips. The 
morainesand arrows indicate 
the course pursued by the 
outflowing ice. Fig. 2 repre- 
sents the right lip of Yosem- 
ite, situated on the upper 
Merced below the confluence 
of Cathedral tributary. The 
whole lip is polished and stri- Fic. 1. 
ated. The arrows indicate the direction of the stvi@, which 
measure the angle of ascent made by the outflowing ice. 


Fic. 2. 

In the presentation of these studies, we have proceeded thus 
far with the assumption that all the valleys of the region are 
valleys of erosion, and that glaciers were the principal eroding 
agents ; because the intelligible discussion of these propositions 
requires some knowledge of the physiognomy and general con- 
figuration of the region, as well as of the history of its ancient 
glaciers. Our space is here available only for very brief out- 
lines of a portion of the argument, which will be gradually de- 
veloped in subsequent articles. 


196 Sierra Club Bulletin 


That fossils were created as they occur in the rocks, is an 
ancient doctrine, now so little believed that geologists are spared 
the pains of proving that nature ever deals in fragmentary crea- 
tions of any sort. All of our valleys are clearly fragmentary 
in some degree. Fig. 3 is a section across Yosemite Valley from 


Fic. 3 
Indian Cafion, which displays the stumps of slabs and columns 
of which the granite is here composed. Now, the complements 
of these broken rocks must have occupied all, or part, or more 
than all of the two portions of the valley, A C D and BE F. 
The bottom, A B, is covered with drift, but we may assume 
that if it were laid bare we would find it made up of the ends of 
slabs and columns like the sides, which filled the space A CE B; 
because in all valleys where the bottom is naked, the broken 
stumps do appear, showing that this valley was not formed by a 
fold in the mountain surface, or by a splitting asunder, or by 


Fic. 4. 
subsidence, but by a breaking up and translation of rocks which 
occupied its place; or, in other words, by erosion. 


Studies in the Sierra 197 


Fig. 4 is a section across the lower portion of the valley of 
Illilouette south of Mount Starr King. In this case the bottom 
is naked, and the dotted reconstructed portions of the huge 
granite folds A B C D have evidently been eroded.* Even the 
smoothly curved trough of two rock-waves which afford sec- 
tions like Fig. 5 can not be regarded as a valley originating in a 


on? 


A, “4447 Tr, 
J arene a Fit aa A Vif VAL: TTA uf VV 7”. 4, 
ee —_ vi iL 1 Ui 


J/ 


SS a ie = 
Cele thee 71S oe 4 


Gin Ay LLL: 
cea ad “rT sa LL 


Fic. 5. 


fold of the surface, for we have shown in the first paper of this 
series that domes or extended waves, with a concentric struc- 
ture like A C, may exist as concretionary or crystalline masses 
beneath the surface of granite possessing an entirely different 
structure or no determinate structure whatever, as in B. 

The chief valley-eroding agents are water and ice. Each has 
been vaguely considered the more influential by different ob- 
servers, although the phenomena to which they give rise are im- 
mensely different. These workmen are known by their chips, 
and only glacier chips form moraines which correspond in kind 
and quantity to the size of the valleys and condition of their 
surfaces. Also their structure unfolds the secret of their 
origin. The constant and inseparable relations of trend, size, 
and form which these Sierra valleys sustain to the ice-fountains 
in which they all head, as well as their grooved and broken 
sides, proclaim the eroding force to be ice. We have shown in 
the second paper} that the trend of Yosemite valleys is always a 
direct resultant of the forces of their ancient glaciers, modified 


* Water never erodes a wide U-shaped valley in granite, but always a narrow 
gorge like E F, in Fig. 4. 


{ Reprinted in S1zrra CLtus BuLteTIn, Vol. X, No. 1, January 1916. 


198 Sierra Club Bulletin 


by obvious peculiarities of physical structure of their rocks. 
The same is true of all valleys in this region. We give one ex- 
ample, the upper Tuolumne Valley, which is about eight miles 
long, and from 2000 to 3000 feet deep, and trends in a generally 
northerly direction. If we go to its head on the base of Mount 
Lyell, and follow it down, we find that after trending steadily 
about two miles it makes a bend of a few degrees to the Jeft (A, 
Fig.6). Looking for the cause, we perceive a depression on the 


p 
o 4 
peuee eee Tebwaay roa 


eS, 
Sor 


Fic. 6.—ILLUSTRATING BEND OF UPPER TUOLUMNE VALLEY 


opposite or right wall; ascending to it, we find the depression to 
be the mouth of a tributary valley which leads to a crater- 
shaped ice-fountain (B) which gave rise to the tributary gla- 
cier that, in thrusting itself into the valley trunk, caused the 
bend we are studying. After maintaining the new trend thus 
acquired for a distance of about a mile and a half, the huge val- 
ley swerves lithely to the right at C. Looking for the cause, we 
find another tributary ice-grooved valley coming in on the left, 
which like the first conducts back to an ice-womb (D) which 
gave birth to a glacier that in uniting with the trunk pushed it 
aside as far as its force, modified by the direction, smoothness, 
and declivity of its channel, enabled it to do. Below this, the 
noble valley is again pushed round in a curve to the left by a 
series of small tributaries which, of course, enter on the right, 
and with each change in trend there is always a corresponding 
change in width or depth, or in both. No valley changes its 
direction without becoming larger. On nearing the Big Mead- 
ows it is swept entirely round to the west by huge glaciers, rep- 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLXXIV,. 


UP BIG ARROYO, FROM RIM ABOVE MORAINE LAKE 
Photo by Everett Shepardson 


“AXXTO ALVId 


Jaqny "T 1931/8 MA Aq 004g 
uouey piedsys jo peoy 3e play-MousS SUIPUsOSaq, 


TIVUL MINW NHOL AHL NO 


*X “IOA 


‘ 


NILATING @ 


NTO vaaaIs 


Studies in the Sierra 199 


resented by the large arrows, which descended from the flanks 
of Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Ord, and others to the south. For thirty 
miles farther, we find everywhere displayed the same delicate 
yielding to glacial law, showing that, throughout the whole pe- 
riod of its formation, the huge granite valley was lithe as a ser- 
pent, and winced tenderly to the touch of every tributary. So 
simple and sublime is the dynamics of the ancient glaciers. 

Every valley in the region gives understandable evidence of 
having been equally obedient and sensitive to glacial force, and 
to no other. The erosive energy of ice is almost universally 
underrated, because we know so little about it. Water is our 
constant companion, but we cannot dwell with ice. Water is 
far more human than ice, and also far more outspoken. If gla- 
ciers, like roaring torrents, were endowed with voices commen- 
surate with their strength, we would be slow to question any 
ascription of power that has yet been bestowed upon them. 
With reference to size, we have seen that the greater the ice- 
fountains the greater the resulting valleys; but no such direct 
and simple proportion exists between areas drained by water 
streams and the valleys in which they flow. Thus, the basin of 
Tenaya is not one-fourth the size of the South Lyell, although 
its cation 1s much larger. Indeed, many cafions have no streams 
at all, whose topographical circumstances are also such as dem- 
onstrate the impossibility of their ever having had any. This 
state of things could not exist if the water streams which suc- 
ceeded the glaciers could follow in their tracks, but the mode 
and extent of the compliance which glaciers yield to the topog- 
raphy of a mountainside, is very different from that yielded by 
water streams; both follow the lines of greatest declivity, but 
the former in a far more general way. Thus, the greater por- 
tion of the ice-current which eroded Tenaya Cafion flowed over 
the divide from the Tuolumne region, making an ascent of over 
500 feet. Water streams, of course, could not follow; hence 
the dry channels, and the disparity, to which we have called at- 
tention, between Tenaya Cafion and its basin. 

Anyone who has attentively observed the habits and gestures 
of the upper Sierra streams, could not fail to perceive that they 
are young, and but little acquainted with the mountains; rush- 
ing wildly down steep inclines, whirling in pools, sleeping in 


200 Sierra Club Bulletin 


lakes, often halting with an embarrassed air and turning back, 
groping their way as best they can, moving most lightly just 
where the glaciers bore down most heavily. With glaciers as a 
key the secrets of every valley are unlocked. Streams of ice 
explain all the phenomena; streams of water do not explain 
any ; neither do subsidences, fissures, or pressure plications. 

Wehave shown in the previous paper that post-glacial streams 
have not eroded the 500,000th part of the upper Merced canons. 
The deepest water gorges with which we are acquainted are be- 
tween the upper and lower Yosemite falls, and in the Tenaya 
Cafion about four miles above Mirror Lake. These are from 
twenty to a hundred feet deep, and are easily distinguished 
from ice-eroded gorges by their narrowness and the ruggedness 
of their washed and pot-holed sides. 

The gorge of Niagara River, below the falls, is perhaps the 
grandest known example of a valley eroded by water in com- 
pact rock ; yet, comparing equal lengths, the glacier-eroded val- 
ley of Yosemite is a hundred times as large, reckoning the aver- 
age width of the former goo feet, and depth 200. But the ero- 
sion of Yosemite Valley, besides being a hundred times greater, 
was accomplished in hard granite, while the Niagara was in 
shales and limestones. Moreover, Niagara cafion, as it now ex- 
ists, expresses nearly the whole amount of erosion effected by 
the river ; but the present Yosemite is by no means an adequate 
expression of the whole quantity of glacial erosion effected 
there since the beginning of the glacial epoch, or even from 
that point in the period when its principal features began to be 
developed, because the walls were being cut down on the top 
simultaneously with the deepening of its bottom. We may fair- 
ly ascribe the formation of the Niagara gorge to its river, be- 
cause we find it at the upper end engaged in the work of its fur- 
ther extension toward Lake Erie; and for the same reason we 
may regard glaciers as the workmen that excavated Yosemite, 
for at the heads of some of its branches we find small glaciers 
engaged in the same kind of excavation. Merced cafons may 
be compared to mortises in the ends of which we still find the 
chisels that cut them, though now rusted and worn out. If Ni- 
agara River should vanish, or be represented only by a small 
brook, the evidence of the erosion of its gorge would still re- 


Studies in the Sierra 201 


main in a thousand water-worn monuments upon its walls. Nor, 
since Yosemite glaciers have been burned off by the sun, is the 
proof less conclusive that in their greater extension they exca- 
vated Yosemite, for, both in shape and sculpture, every Yo- 
semite rock is a glacial monument. 

When we walk the pathways of Yosemite glaciers and 
contemplate their separate works—the mountains they have 
shaped, the cafions they have furrowed, the rocks they have 
worn, and broken, and scattered in moraines—on reaching Yo- 
semite, instead of being overwhelmed as at first with its uncom- 
pared magnitude, we ask, Js this all? wondering that so mighty 
a concentration of energy did not find yet grander expression. 


INDIAN VILLAGE AND CAMP SITES IN 
YOSEMITE VALLEY 


By C. Hart MERRIAM 


+ 


OR ages before its discovery by white men Yosemite Val- 

ley was inhabited by Indians. Owing to its isolated posi- 
tion and the abundance of mountain trout, quail, grouse, deer, 
bear, and other game animals, and of acorns, manzanita-berries, 
and other vegetable foods, it supported a large population. This 
is attested not only by the statements of the Indians themselves, 
but also by the surprisingly large number of villages whose lo- 
cations have been determined. These were of three kinds: (1) 
permanent villages, occupied the year round, though somewhat 
depleted in winter; (2) summer villages, occupied from May 
to October, after which the inhabitants moved down into the 
milder climate of Merced Cafion, where there was little or no 
snow; and (3) seasonal camps for hunting and fishing. The 
camps were definitely located and each was regularly occupied 
at a particular season. 

It has not always been possible to distinguish between village- 
sites and camp-sites, but, taken collectively, I have been able, 
with the help of resident Indians, to locate and name no less 
than thirty-seven. All of these were in the valley proper, and 
at least six were occupied as late as 1898. To the list I have 
added sixteen located in the cafion of the Merced from the Cas- 
cades to Ferguson Station, six miles below El Portal, making 
in all fifty-three villages and camps in a distance of about twen- 
ty-two miles; and doubtless there were others which my in- 
formants had forgotten. | 

All of these people belonged to the Ahwaneéche or Ahwah’- 
nee Mew'-wah,a subtribe closely akin to the neighboring Chow- 
chil’-la Mew'-wah of Chowchilla Cafion. Their language is the 

* This article was written in 1910, during which year I was able to complete the 
list of villages from the head of Yosemite Valley to Ferguson Station on the Mer- 
ced, about six miles below El Portal. I had previously obtained and published the 
villages from Horseshoe Bend down the Merced as far as the territory of the tribe 
extended, and was anxious to fill the gap between Soo-nod-koo-loon at Ferguson and 


Se-saw’-che at Horseshoe Bend. Not having been able to do this, it seems hardly 
worth while to defer publication longer. 


Indian Village and Camp Sitesin Yosemite Valley 203 


southernmost of the three dialects of the once great Mé-wuk 
family—a family comprising a group of closely related tribes 
occupying the western foothills and lower slopes of the Sierra 
Nevada from Cosumnes River south to Fresno Creek. 


ORIGIN OF THE NAME YOSEMITE 


In this connection it is interesting to recall how the name Yo- 
semite originated. In the early spring of 1851 the valley was 
invaded by an Indian-chasing expedition. The word Yosemite, 
said to be the name of the native Indian tribe, was proposed by 
Dr. L. H. Bunnell, a member of the expedition, and accepted 
by the others while still in the valley.* During the early fifties 
there was some controversy between Bunnell and Hutchings as 
to whether the proper form was Yo-sem’-i-te or Yo-ham'-1-te 
(or Yo-hem’'-i-te). Hutchings was right, Yo-ham’-i-te being 
the name of the band inhabiting a large and important village 
on the south bank of Merced River at the place now occupied 
by Sentinel Hotel and its cottages. These Indians hunted the 
grizzly bear, whose name—Oo-ho0-ma-te or O-ham’'-1-te—gave 
origin to their own. The tribe next north of the valley called 
the grizzly Oo-sod-ma-te, which doubtless accounts for the eu- 
phonious form given by Bunnell and now universally accepted. 


PECULIAR CLASSIFICATION OF THE VILLAGES 


The villages and camps were sharply divided into two catego- 
ries—those north of Merced River and those south of it. This 
division has a far deeper and more ancient significance than 
that indicated by the mere position of the villages with respect 
to the river, for it goes back to the underlying totemic beliefs 
that form an important part of the religion of this primitive 
people. 

If one of the survivors is questioned as to the location of 
the villages, he in replying constantly makes use of the terms 
imside and outside as denoting one or the other side of the val- 
ley ; and if the inquiry is pressed a little farther it soon devel- 
ops that there is a grizzly-bear side and a coyote side, a land 
side (Too-no0d-kah), and a water side (Kik-kod-ah). This per- 
plexing state of affairs leads to the interesting discovery that 


* 


L. H. Bunnell, “How the Yo-Semite Valley was Discovered and Named.’’ 
Hutchings California Magazine, pp. 498-504, San Francisco, May, 1859. 


204 Sierra Club Bulletin 


after all there are only two sides, but that each of them has 
four names: that the north side, inside, grizzly-bear side, and 
land side are one and the same—namely, the side north of Mer- 
ced River ; while the south side, outside, coyote side, and water 
side are only so many different names for the side south of 
Merced River. 

The names most commonly used by the Indians themselves 
for the two sides are Oo-hod-md-tat ko-té-wahk (or Oo-hod- 
ma-te ha-wda'-ah), the grizzly-bear side, and Ah-h@-leet ko-to- 
wahk (or Ah-ha'-le ha-wa-ah), the coyote side—from Oo-hoo- 
ma-te, the bear, and Ah-h@-le, the coyote, respectively. 

It is not difficult to see how Oo-hod-ma-te, the bear, an im- 
portant personage among the early animal-people, might be 
chosen to represent the land animals; but why Ah-hd-le, the 
coyote, should stand for the water-people is not so obvious. For 
the explanation one must look far back into the mythology of 
these Indians, in which it appears that before there were any 
real people in the world Ah-hd-le, the coyote-man, one of the 
early divinities of the animal-people, came over the ocean from 
beyond the sea—for which reason he is ‘ranked with the water- 
people. 

Returning to our more immediate subject, the village and 
camp sites of Yosemite Valley, it is now easier to understand 
the grouping employed by the Indians. Indians are naturally 
methodical, and it is their custom to classify objects and places, 
and in speaking of them to begin at a fixed point and proceed in 
orderly sequence. Thus, in seeking the names of animals 
and plants and of geographic locations, I have several times 
provoked the undisguised disgust of my informant by not 
putting my questions in what he or she deemed the proper 
sequence. 

In enumerating the village and camp sites of Yosemite Val- 
ley the Indians begin at the upper (or east) end of the north 
side—the grizzly-bear side—and proceed westerly to Til-til’- 
ken-ny at the lower end of the valley, and then cross the Mer- 
ced to the south side—the coyote side—and return easterly to 
the upper end. 

Following this sequence, the names and locations of the vil- 
lages and camps are as follows: 


Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley 205 


ON THE NORTH (OR GRIZZLY-BEAR ) SIDE—00-HOO-MA-TAT KO-TO-WAHK 


1. Hoo-ké-hahtch’-ke.—Situated at the extreme upper end of the valley 
between Merced River and Tenaya Creek, and just below the mouth of 
Tenaya Cafion. A summer village inhabited up to about twenty years 
ago. 


2. Hol’-low’, or Lah’-koé6-hah.—Indian cave, immediately under Wash- 
ington Column at the mouth of Tenaya Cafion; a low, broad, and deep 
recess under a huge rock. Said to have been occupied as a winter shel- 
ter, and also when attacked by the Mono Lake Piutes. The overhanging 
rock is black from the smoke of ages, and far back in the cave large 
quantities of acorn-shells have been found. The word Lah-kod-hah, often 
applied to Indian Cave, is a call meaning “come out.” a 


3. Wis’-kah-lah.—A large summer camp on a northward bend of Mer- 
ced River, a little west of Royal Arches. Western part of site now oc- 
cupied by a small settlement known as Kinneyville. 


4. Y6-watch-ke (sometimes nicknamed Mah-chd-to, meaning “edge” or 
“border,” because of its position on the border of the valley).—Large 
village at mouth of Indian Cafion; still occupied. The slightly sloping 
gravel and sand “fan” on which this village is situated is the warmest 
place in Yosemite Valley, having a southwesterly exposure and receiv- 
ing a maximum of midday and afternoon sunshine. Several species of 
shrubs belonging to the Upper Sonoran zone—the one next below the 
Transition zone, in which Yosemite Valley lies—thrive on this hot sandy 
plain among and outside of the scattered ponderosa pines and black 
oaks. These are Ceanothus divaricatus, Rhus trilobata, Lupinus ornatus, 
Eriodictyon glutinosum, Pentstemon breviflorus. 


5. Ah-wah’-ne—Village on Black Oak Flat, extending from site of 
Galen Clark’s grave easterly nearly to Yd-watch-ke. As in the case of 
most of the villages, the village name was applied also to a definite tract 
of land belonging to it. This area, in the case of Ah-wah’-ne, was a 
piece of level ground of considerable size, beginning on the west along 
a north and south line passing through Sentinel Hotel and reaching 
easterly nearly to the mouth of Indian Cafion. The cemetery was on 
this tract, as was also the barn formerly belonging to J. B. Cooke. This 
being the largest tract of open level ground in the valley, the name Ah- 
wah’-ne came to be applied by outside Indians to the whole valley. 


6. Koom-i-ne, or Kom-i-ne——The largest and most important village 
in the valley, situated on the north side of the delta of Yosemite Creek 
just below Yosemite Fall (Ah-wah’-ning chi-luk-ah-hu, slurred to Ché- 
luk), and extending southwesterly at the base of the talus-slope under 
the towering cliffs for about three-quarters of a mile, reaching almost or 
quite to Three Brothers (Haw’-hawk). Old Chief Tenaya had a large 
earth-covered ceremonial-house (hang-e) by a big oak tree in this vil- 
lage. The Government soldiers stationed in the valley took possession 


206 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of the site and established their camp there in 1907, forcing the Indians 
out. (Occupied by Indians during all my earlier visits.) 


7. Wah-hé-gah—Small village about half a mile west-southwest of 
Koom-i-ne, on or near edge of meadow. 


8. Soo-sem’-moo-lah.—Village at northwest end of old Folsom bridge 
(now the ford), less than half ‘a mile south of Rocky Point. 


9. Hah-ki-ah—Large village only a short distance (less than one- 
eighth mile) below Soo-sem’-moo-lah, and likewise south of Three 
Brothers (Haw’-hawk). A roundhouse, or hang-e, was located here, not 
far from old Folsom bridge. The three villages, Wah-hd-gah, Soo-sem’- 
oo-lah, and Hah-ki-ah, were inhabited up to about twenty years ago. 


10. Kom’-pom-pd-sah, or Pom’-pom-pd-sah.—Small village only a little 
below Hah-ki-ah, and also south of Three Brothers, or under the talus 
slope of the cafion immediately west of Three Brothers. 


11. Aw’-o-koi-e—Small village below and slightly east of the tall pine 
growing in a notch on the broad south face of El Capitan. The native 
Indian name of the gigantic rock cliff which we call El Capitan is To- 
to-kon oo-lah, from To-td-kon, the eeu Crane, a chief of the First 
People. 


12. He-lé-jah (the mountain lion).—Small village under ‘El Capitan 
a little west of Aw’-o-koi-e. 


13. Ha-eng’-ah.—Small village under El] Capitan, and only a little west 
of He-lé-jah. 


14. Yu-d-chah.—Still another village under El Capitan, and only a 
short distance west of Ha-eng’-ah. 


15. Hep-hep’-oo-ma.—Village where present Big Oak Flat road forks 
to leave the main road, south of the steep cafion which forms the west 
wall of El Capitan, and near west end of the big El Capitan Meadows 
(To-t6-kon 06-lal’ i-e-hu). The five villages, Aw’-o-kot-e, He-lé-jah, Ha- 


eng’-ah, Yu-d-chah, and Hep-hep’-oo-ma, were summer villages occupied | 


from April to late October or early November. 


16. Ti-e-té-mah.—Village only a short distance below Hep-hep’-oo- 
ma, and close to El Capitan bridge. 


17. Ho-k6-nah.—Small village a little below Ti-e-té-mah, and near site 
of old (shack) house. 


18. Wé-itum-taw.—Village by a small meadow a short distance below 
Ho-ko-nah, and east of Black Spring. 


19. Poot-poo-toon, or Put-put-toon.—Village in rocky place on north 
side of present road at Black Spring, from which it takes its name. 


20. Ah-wah’-mah.—Lowermost (westernmost) village in Yosemite Val- 
ley, a short distance below Black Spring and above Til-til’-ken-ny, 
where the mail-carrier’s cabin is located. 


Ad[UlLy Jotzoq Aq oJoYg 
VaMAdd LNOOW 


‘TAXXTO ALVITd *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANID VUUNTIS 


PLATE CLXXVII. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


THE KINGS-KERN DIVIDE AND KEARSARGE PINNACLES FROM MOUNT GOULD 


Photo by Walter L. Huber 


hh 


Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley 207 


VILLAGES ON THE SOUTH OR COYOTE SIDE—AH-HA-LEET KO-TO-WAHK 


21. Sap-pah’-sam-mah.—Lowermost (most westerly) village or camp 
on south side of the valley, about half a mile east of Pohono Meadows. 


22. Lem-mé-hitch’-ke-—Small village or camp on east side of Pohono 
(or Bridal Veil) Creek, just below a very large rock. 


23. Hop’-té-ne.—Small village or camp at base of westernmost of the 
lofty cliffs known as Cathedral Rocks, and close to south end of El 
Capitan bridge across Merced River. 


24. Wé-sum-meh’.—Small village or camp at base of Cathedral Spires 
near the river, with a small meadow below; not far above Hop’-té-ne. 


25. Kis’-se, or Kis’-se-uh.—Large village near the river, nearly opposite 
Hah-ki-ah. Kis’-se was the westernmost of the large villages on the 
south side. From it easterly they occurred at frequent intervals. 


26. Chd-chd-kal-lah.—Large village just below old Folsom bridge 
(ford). Formerly a sweat-house (chap-pod) here. 


27. Ham’-moo-ah.—Village on Ford road, nearly opposite Three 
Brothers (Wah-hah’-kah). 


28. Loi-ah.—Large village in open pine forest below Sentinel Rock 
(on ground now occupied by Camp Ahwahnee) and reaching down to- 
ward river. Occupied during my earlier visits to the valley. 


29. Hod-koo-mé-ko-tah.—Village a little above Galen Clark’s house; 
looked out easterly over big meadow. Occupied during my earlier 
visits. (Hoo-koo-me is the great horned owl.) 


30. Haw-kaw-kod-e-tah (Ho-kok'-kwe-lah, Haw-kaw’-koi*).—Large 
and important village on Merced River, where Sentinel Hotel and cot- 
tages now stand. Home of the band called Yo-ham’-i-te (or Yo-hem’- 
1-te), for whom the valley was named. The old woman Callipena was a 
Yo-hawm'-i-te. 


31. Ho-low.—Village on or near Merced River where the schoolhouse 
used to stand. 


32. Wah’-tahk’-itch-ke.—Village on edge of meadow on south bend of 
Merced River near forks of road west of Le Conte Memorial. The wild 
pea (wah-tah’-kah) grows here. 


33. Too-yui-yu-yu.—Large village on south bend of Merced River due 
north of Le Conte Memorial and close to the bridge between Le Conte . 
Memorial (or Camp Curry) and Kinneyville. 


34. Too-lah’-kah’-mah—Village or camp on open ground now occu- 
pied by orchard on east side of meadow north of Camp Curry. 


*Named from How-kaw’-met-te, or How-wah-met-te, a rocky place. 


208 Sierra Club Bulletin 


35. Um’-ma-taw.—Large village on present wagon-road between Camp 
Curry and Happy Isles; was some > distance from the river; water was 
fetched from a spring. 


36. Ap’-poo-meh.—Camp on Merced River below Vernal Fall. 


37.—Kah-win’-na-bah’.—Large summer camp in Little Yosemite, whose 
name it bears. 


VILLAGES IN MERCED CANON BELOW YOSEMITE VALLEY 


There were no villages in the narrow Merced Cafion between the low- 
er end of Yosemite Valley and the Cascades, where there were a few 
houses called Yi-yan’. This name also covered the ground from Cascade 
Creek to the junction of the Coulterville road. 

The next village on the north side was at the terminus of the new 
railroad at El Portal (a distance of eight or nine miles), where the vil- 
lages began and continued down-stream. Most of these were perma- 
nent, but they were far larger in winter.than in summer, receiving ma- 
terial additions from Yosemite when cold weather set in. 


Sit’-ke-no6-al-lah.—Place and few houses on the sorth side of Merced 
River a little above (east of) El Portal; now Indian Wilson’s place. 


Kep-pek’-oo-lah.—Place and small settlement on the south side of Mer- 
ced River just above El Portal; now occupied by a white man. Named 
from the abundance of kep-pek’, the brake fern (Pteris aquilina), the 
rootstocks of which the Indians use for the black design in their baskets. 


Kah-wah’-koo-lah.—Place and small seztlement on the south side of 
Merced River half a mile below Sit’-ke-nod-al-lah and nearly opposite 
El Portal stable. 


Sal-lah’-to.—Large village on flat now occupied by the railroad termi- 
nus at El Portal. The place at the mouth of Crane Creek at El Portal 
is called Sas’-o0-lah; formerly a few houses where the hotel stable now 
is. 

Po-ko-né.—Village on the north side of the Merced a quarter of a 
mile: west of El Portal. The flat gravel and pebble bench extending 
along the north side of the Merced for an eighth of a mile just below 
E] Portal was known by the same name. 


Choo-pi-tah, or Cho6-pi-do.—Large village on the north side of Mer- 
ced Cafion one or one and a half miles below El Portal, at the place 
called Rancheria Flat (immediately west of the present Hite Mine ma 
northeast of the bend of the river). 


To-yo’ng-am’.—Small village on top of a small pointed hill on the 
north side of the Merced at the bend of the river just below Hite Mine 
(really surrounded by Cho6-pi-tah, being situated in the middle of the 
flat; may have been only a roundhouse). 


Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley 209 


So6-wut-oo-lah’—Large and important village on large oak-forested 
flat on the north side of the Merced, now Switch Flat (railroad switch), 
just west of Hogback Ridge, which separates it from Chod-pi-tah. Used 
to be a roundhouse (hang-e) here. 


Oi-k6-bah.—Very small old village at mouth of Moss Cajfion, north 
side of the Merced; not room for many houses. 


Ktl’-mit-ten.—Big village on flat on the north side a the Merced just 
above the Government bridge. 


Mo6-lah-buk’-sa-bah’—Village on the north side of the Merced just 
below and close to the Government bridge. 


Haw'-too-too.—Village on the north side of the Merced. Old cabin 
there now, opposite the present Indian ranch where Big Nancy and 
others live. 


Muh-ché-kah-n6.—Old village on the south side of the Merced, at 
present occupied by Big Nancy, Callipena, and Lucy Ann. 


Wah’ng’-oo-hah.—Village on small flat on the north side of Merced 
Cafion, a little above the mill at Ferguson Mine. 


Soo-no6-koo-loon’.—Village on the north side of Merced Cajfion, at 
present Ferguson Station, six miles below El Portal. 


<a 


SIERRA CLUB 


Founded 1892 
402 Mitts Burtpinc, San Francisco, CaLiFoRNIA 
Annual Dues: $3.00, (first year $5.00) 


Ti THE PURPOSES OF THE CLUB ARE: 
0 explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific 
Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them, to enlist the sup- 
port and co-operation of the people and the Government in preserving the 
forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada. 
> 
JoHN Murr, President 1892 to 1914 


OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES FOR THE YEAR 1016-17 
BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


JosrpH N.' Le Conte, Berkeley 20.000 o5uoc ok ae os se ee President 
VERNON L. Ketzoce, Stanford University ).3\'3. 29.2 eee Vice-President 
Marion RANDALL Parsons, Berkeley. 20.2000. 0.00.2 ae Treasurer 
WILLIAM E.) CoLpy, ‘San}Franciscos i. nese ae ee eee Secretary 


WILtiiAM F. BapE, Berkeley Atpert H. ALLEN, Berkeley 
WaLTER L. Huser, San Francisco RosBert M. Price, Reno, Nevada 
Crair S. TAPPAAN, Los Angeles 
HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS 
JAMES Bryce, London, England 
Henry S. Graves, Washington, D. C. 

RoserT UNDERWoopD JoHNSON, New York City 
Davip STARR JORDAN, Stanford University 
J. Horace McFartanp, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 
ALEXANDER G. McAnteg, Harvard University 
Enos A. Mitts, Estes Park, Colorado 
STEPHEN T. MaTHER, Washington, D. C. 

COM MITTEES 
Outing Committee: Wi1LLIAM E. Cotsy (Chairman and Manager), CLAIR 

S. Tappaan (Assistant Manager), JosepH N. Lr Conte. 

Committee on Local Walks: Frep R. ParKer (Chairman), WILLIAM T. 
GoLpsBorouGH, A. E. NEUENBERG, LESLIE GARDNER, DOZIER FINLEY. 

Committee on Le Conte and Parsons Memorial Lodges: Marion RAN- 
DALL Parsons (Chairman), RoBert M. Price, JosepH N. LE Conte. 

Auditing Committee: Wi1LL1AM F. BaprE (Chairman), WALTER L. HUBER, 
ALBERT H. ALLEN. 

Librarian: NELL R. TAGGARD. 

Southern California Section Executive Committee: CHARLES J. Fox 
(Chairman), Putt S. Bernays (Secretary, 318 West Third Street, 
Los Angeles), BENJAMIN W. FENTON (Treasurer), H. E. Battery, 
Mrs. HENry Braun, Ernest Dawson, HoMERr P. Ears, GEORGE A. 
WHITE. $ 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 
Published annually for the members 
EDITORIAL BOARD 


WiItLiaM FP. Bape e.io. cebu oc ca a ee Editor 
MiB TA ME CORBY Weil en eral me Notes and Correspondence 
MARION, |RANDALL (PARSONS) 0005 0 De a Oa ae a eR Book Reviews 
WALTER IL. FLUBER <). 365 yoga ee Forestry Notes 


ALBERT H. ALLEN, FRANCIS P. FARQUHAR, 
WILLIAM T. GoLpsBoROUGH, JosEPH N. LE ConrTeE, 
Exitiott MCALLISTER 


a 
t 


EDITORIALS 
- 


A Quarter OF The year 1917 marks a quarter of a century in the life of 
A CENTURY OF the Sierra Club. It is natural that we should pause at 
SERVICE this time and look back over these twenty-five years of 

existence to determine whether or not the organizers of 
the club were justified in creating it. The club’s record during these 
years is ample justification for their faith. It has filled a need and ac- 
complished a purpose which places the reason for its existence beyond 
all possible question. Growing appreciation of the incomparable natural 
scenery on this coast and the necessity for its preservation and safe- 
guarding created a demand for some public-spirited body which would 
unselfishly and fearlessly stand in the breach until such time as the pub- 
lic conscience should be awakened to its real value. 

The club’s stand in resisting encroachments on the national parks; in 
favoring the creation of the early forest reservations; in reducing to 
reasonable numbers the cattle and sheep which at one time overran the 
entire Sierra, and in excluding them entirely from certain scenic areas 
of exceptional interest; in the recession of the Yosemite Valley to the 
Federal Government; in advocating the great principle that national 
parks should be inviolate, which was involved in the attempt to save the 
Hetch-Hetchy Valley; in favoring the creation of additional national 
parks, and its stand on other similar questions, have been in the face of 
powerful opposition and bitter criticism, and while it has not met with 
success in every instance, it has compelled the respect of its opponents, 
who have eventually been forced to admit that the fight was made in 
each instance in absolute good faith and with the honest conviction that 
the object sought to be accomplished was for the greatest public good. 

As an advocate of the gospel of “out-of-doors” and in fostering the 
spirit of the true mountaineer, the club has also added much to its 
prestige. 

The club’s prime object is service; its activities in taking its members 
into the mountains each summer, and in-the publication of information, 
have all been for the purpose of awakening an intelligent interest in the 
greater work it is striving to accomplish. 

The future gives promise of equally great opportunity for continued 
service. While we have been deprived of the temporal leadership of that 
noble mountain-lover who presided over the destinies of the club for the 
greater part of its twenty-five years of existence—our beloved John 
Muir—we still have the inspiration of his message, and his words live 
with us as if spoken anew each day. As we journey to the mountains 
year after year, his spirit is there to give us renewed courage to meet 
the problems and carry on the great work that has fallen to our lot. We 
may well accept as our standard the supreme faith he expressed in these 


212 Sierra Club Bulletin 


words: “We may lose this particular fight, but truth and right must pre- 
vail at last. Anyhow we must be true to ourselves and the Lord.” 
W.E. C. 


NATIONAL In another portion of the BULLETIN we have given a synop- 
PARK sis of the Progress Report made by Hon. Stephen T. Mather, 
Procress Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, who has charge of 
the national parks, and also extracts from the annual report 
of Mr. Robert B. Marshall, Superintendent of National Parks. These re- 
ports speak for themselves and indicate that the splendid work inaugu- 
rated by Mr. Mather has been carried on with increasing results during 
the past year. The creation of a national park service which places the 
parks on a firm foundation for the first time in their history, greater effi- 
ciency in administration, increased appropriations, as well as the broad- 
gauge way in which all the park problems are being handled, give every 
evidence of the wise foresight which has been displayed by this new park 
administration. The development of the parks is in a measure wasted 
energy unless a proper interest is awakened in the American public, and 
this can only be done through the medium of appropriate literature and 
press notices. Mr. Mather has fully recognized this fact, and more ar- 
ticles and illustrations of the parks have appeared in the newspapers and 
other publications during the past year than ever before. Already the 
increase in travel is especially noticeable, taking the Yosemite National 
Park as an example. The fact that the visitors during the year 1916 
equaled, and even slightly exceeded, the extraordinary travel of 1915, 
which could be largely attributed to the Exposition in San Francisco, is 
most encouraging. Mr. Mather is entirely correct in attributing a large 
portion of the increase in travel to the fact that the parks are being 
opened up to motor travel, and he is doubtless justified in assuming that 
this travel will soon equal and finally far exceed travel from any other 
source. His endeavor to improve existing roads and build new roads 
will meet this growing demand. We note, however, with regret the at- 
tempt on the part of some of the leaders in motor travel to have the pres- 
ent automobile fee abolished. By advocating this they are defeating their 
own ends. Those of us who have had experience in the endeavor to se- 
cure appropriations from Congress for park purposes realize the impos- 
sibility of obtaining appropriations adequate to meet all the growing 
needs of these parks. Certain improvements demand considerable ex- 
penditures, and it is only fair that, for the present at least, the motorists 
who make use of these expensive highways through the parks should, by 
paying the comparatively small fee imposed, aid in the building and up- 
keep of these roads over which they travel and which exist almost ex- 
clusively for their use. 
We note with profound satisfaction the steps which are being taken to 
create an adequate force of trained park rangers. These rangers will 
necessarily have to possess qualifications similar in many respects to the 


Editorials 213 


national forest rangers, and the Government should see that the positions 
offer sufficient inducement to justify qualified men in making it their life- 
work. There is a splendid field opening here for young men who desire 
to devote themselves to attractive out-of-door life. 

The American public owes Mr. Mather, with the able assistance of Mr. 
Marshall, a great debt of gratitude in bringing about the purchase of | 
some of the finest stands of sequoia in the Giant Forest, which is a part 
of the Sequoia National Park. The preservation of these big trees was 
the prime motive in the creation of this park, and it was a public mis- 
fortune that some of the finest of these forest giants should have been . 
held in private ownership. Congress appropriated $50,000, and the Na- 
tional Geographic Society gave evidence of its splendid public spirit by 
appropriating the balance of $20,000 out of its own treasury, and thus 
completing the amount necessary to buy the more important of these 
private holdings which have recently been transferred to the Federal 
Government. 

In telling of all these accomplishments it is only fair to give credit 
also to Mr. Horace M. Albright, who, while he has been working in a 
less prominent capacity as Mr. Mather’s secretary, has yet contributed 
a large share toward these successful results. 

It is highly probable that the appropriation of over $300,000 asked for 
Yosemite improvements for the coming year will be granted by Congress, 
but there is little hope of securing the enlargement of the Sequoia Na- 
tional Park or the creation of the Grand Cafion National Park during 
this short session of Congress. W. EC: 


WELcoME News It is with profound pleasure that we announce the re- 
CoNCERNING Our cent marriage of our worthy Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Wil- 
Eprtor-1n-CuH1eEF liam F. Badé, to Elizabeth Marston, of San Diego. Both 
of these delightful people are so well known to most 

of the members of our club that they will join with us in rejoicing over 
this happy event. 

This is Dr. Badé’s sabbatical year, and he and his bride will not return 
to Berkeley until the latter part of the summer. 

Dr. Badé wishes that full credit be given to the remaining members of 
the Editorial Board for the publication of the BULLETIN during his ab- 
sence. WEL C 


Joun Murr Anyone who has traveled over the completed portions of 
TRAIL the John Muir Trail can not fail to recognize the importance 

of this work in developing and making accessible the high 
Sierra, and also to become convinced that there could not be a more ap- 
propriate memorial to the life and work of John Muir. The club has 
prepared and presented to the present California legislature a bill appro- 
priating $30,000 for the purpose of completing this trail and building and 


214 Sierra Club Bulletin 


improving important lateral trails leading into it. The importance of 
the work which has been illustrated by the trail already built justifies 
asking for this amount, and if each member of the club will urge the 
legislators to appropriate this amount it will be done without question. 
We must express our great appreciation of the assistance which has been 
rendered by Mr. W. F. McClure, State Engineer, who has control of 
this fund, and also the able assistance of the officials of the Forest Ser- 
vice who have carried on the actual construction work. W.E. C. 


EASTERN In spite of all that has been written about the national parks, 
PARKS vs. it was rather amusingly evident at the recent National Parks 
WESTERN Conference in Washington that one question is not yet clear 
to the general public in the eastern states—why the west 
should be so disproportionately favored. One speaker even urged that the 
parks in the future be established nearer the centers of civilization, hav- 
ing never heard, apparently, of Mahomet’s historic dilemma. More than 
one speaker, indeed, showed that a clearer definition is needed between 
a recreational park like the Interstate Palisades Park (an open space es- 
tablished primarily for health and recreational purposes for a particular 
center of population, where scenic attractions are the secondary consid- 
eration) and a national park, whose situation is wholly determined by its 
unusual natural beauty. The former is of interest only to an individual 
city or state, the latter to the nation and world at large. In the present 
stage of national park development only hopeless confusion could arise 
out of any attempt to place parks of such local interest under national 
control. M.R. P. 


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REPORTS OF COMMITTEES 
i 
Report ON LE ConTE MEMorIAL LODGE 


The lodge was officially opened on the evening of May 15 by a pro- 
gram which consisted of music, recitations, and an address by Mr. Foote, 
of Los Angeles, who told of some experiences with General Villa in 
Mexico. About two hundred crowded into the lodge. The lodge was 
open until the first of October, four months and a half. For one month 
and a half after the expiration of the regular custodian’s work the lodge 
was in charge of Mr. W. A. Bourne, a new member of the club. 

The number of the people visiting the valley this year far exceeded 
that of any previous year. The registration therefore was very large. 
From May 15 to August 15 the registration was 4069; during Mr. 
Bourne’s stay 514 were added. The total registration was 4583. 

Several times during the summer groups of people gathered in the 
lodge and the custodian gave short addresses upon “Joseph Le Conte,” 
“John Muir,” and “The Work of the Sierra Club.” Very great interest 
in the work of the club was constantly shown. Notices concerning the 
lodge were posted in all the camps. Mr. Curry frequently told his guests 
of the lodge; he also furnished, without charge, all the wood that was 
needed. 

For the first time this summer books were loaned for use outside of 
the building. Several shelves were reserved and all others were loaned, 
a deposit being taken to cover the cost of the book. Not a single book 
was lost, and a great many visitors expressed their appreciation of this 
kindness through the club’s treasury and by the gifts of friends. 

There is great need for a new herbarium. Many visitors expressed 
disappointment that the collection of birds there last year had been re- 
moved. The photograph albums are worn out and must be replaced. Al- 
bums of the Tuolumne country and the Kings and Kern river cafions 
are especially desirable. Also a larger sign with more detailed informa- 
tion about the lodge should be placed down by the main road. Novels, 
and especially books of nature, that friends of the club wish to give to 
the library will always be greatly appreciated and widely used. There 
should be two good strong writing-tables placed in the lodge by next 
summer. 

The sale of maps amounted to $5.50; the sale of BULLETINS amounted 
to $8.00; gift received from Mrs. Adams, Salt Lake City, $1.00. Total, 
$14.50. Frep W. Morrison, Custodian 

J. N. LE Conte, Chairman, 

R. M. Price, 

Marion RANDALL PARSONS, 
Committee 


216 Sierra Club Bulletin 


RESULT OF ELECTION IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SECTION 


Executive Commuttee 
(To serve two years commencing November 15, 1916) 


Mr: Chas. J; Fox, Los, Angeles... ..1... sciee ses isin ene Chairman 
Mr. Phil. S. Bernays, Los (Angeles: . i) i). » vice cle Secretary 
Mr: Benj., W. Fenton, Pasadena )..2....- )seee eee eee eee Treasurer 


Mr. H. E. Bailey, Los Angeles 

Mrs. Henry Braun, Glendale 

Mr. Homer P. Earle, South Pasadena 
Mr. Ernest Dawson, Los Angeles 

Mr. Everett S. Shepardson, Los Angeles* 
Dr. Geo. A. White, Santa Barbara 


* Died December, 1916. 


REPORT OF THE TREASURER FOR THE YEAR ENDED May 6, 1916 


To the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club: 
The accounts of the Sierra Club for the year ended May 6, 1916, are 
set forth in the following schedules, which are respectfully submitted for 


your approval. Marion RANDALL PARSONS, 


Treasurer 


RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES YEAR ENDED MAY 6, 1916 


Receipts 
Dues tromymemibers ay ee ees Ra vane $4,475.00 
Rent from Stb-lease! OF TOOM 2:5 sie cls ak ore ae ott ieie erste aes 180.00 
Advertisements) in) BULLETING (2). 0 0) ee keene 345.50 
SaleiCMBULEETING ley iioss Sic cate iss Asis jelcceLeace Wee eRe 41.46 
Saleiotumapsvand (pinsy nk ce aa lee eave aenatas 43.00 
Interest on vbankaccountsy ai. crit is eh oe et ae 34.33 
Sundry/small wecetpts) 2.2 vie il os hak etek ie ea 2.06 
Totals TECeIpes 3 lee oa ea ee ae a $5121.35 
Expenditures 
Rent of room— 402 Mills Building............2...... $ 720.00 
Salary ‘of assistant: \o/).)ocs cise cis ls cee eye ee 720.00 
Stationery and circulars). )if\6 (b)) A 220.15 
POStaweiinree s Sd iia eae Saved ale Ci Se 352.30 
Nelephone: and telegraph: 23.09... 0.. ae 81.11 
Office supplies. i. eos a er ee 72.25 
Library and photographs) .\66./ 60 e ee 33.10 
Publishing 1916 BULLETIN ..0.)06 0400. eee 1,807.47 
Delivering Appalachia ..306 6.0) 0 ee 140.10 
Le Conte: Lodge vi 66 oS ee 128.58 


= 


Reports of Committees 207 


ME IE ee i ile a Gal alin bles $ 249.36 
Bemeern California Section)... 2. 6.600. ee ace ee es 250.00 
A UOOS INAPAZINC oo e's. ewe cc tle ceeded cadens 50.00 
MC TEE Tee ici) sale ss clais a Wielo warda cd dieie s winiele''s a 45.50 
Merve ANd) CQUIPMENE ool. ke ee ee eae 102.00 
CORO UCT CLUDS ee ike sled a dees 13.00 
Nee nee ea Ne a lelae a 5.560 
MAS SISban Ce NO TUE hea 15.45 
Peeing stall Expenses... ee le le elle ee nee 25.68 
Par eM MCMCIHE eS ihe Rs Wea Ne Ca ele dls Vinee Dick $5,040.61 
mcess Of receipts over expenditures’ .......0.02.. 50. e cee wee eee $ 80.74 
Mearaaa Manid-——-May.1, LOLS 22.6 es ves ew de sede een cee wencueees 1,955.81 
meeon dand—May 6, 19010 ......0..ccec sees ctasetevteccuees $2,036.55 
Made up as follows: 
LS SOE COSA AES USS SUSAR a $- 25.00 
Pomese NN cutrOma nV Ane (cule eee edule ge wk wie 1,461.53 
Savings Union Bank & Trust:Co.............. 343.19 
Becunitweoavines Bank ioctl ke ce es 206.83 
AN Ree ee aw ale oS $2,036.55 


Sierra Club Permanent Fund 


PEO e AV TI TOUS occ icc ccc c esc oe cece eet eacuncs $1,514.90 

ae ee seca lc stalala (aie wield e's bas ee 8's 60.02 

Balance—May 6, 1916, in Security Savings Bank.............. $1,574.92 
Whymper Fund 

AT TOUS ae he ea bicls aie elev soles aiaie $ 239.48 

Re ea el NO ey ae ew ateial be 9.66 

Balance—May 6, 1916, in Savings Union Bank & Trust Co..... $ 249.14 


REPORT OF 1916 OUTING 


The standard of excellence of recent annual outings has been so high 
that each year the Outing Committee has been apprehensive that it would 
not be able to live up to its past record. However, the opinion was 
unanimously expressed, at the close of the 1916 outing into the Kern and 
Kings River regions, that the trip was the finest that the club had ever 
undertaken. 

The party left the train at Springville and camped the first night near 
Smith & Wilson’s summer resort in a beautiful pine forest. The next 


218 Sierra Club Bulletin 


day the party crossed the divide above the Tule and entered the Kern 
River watershed, camping at Lloyd Meadow. The next day the party 
crossed the Little Kern and camped in Trout Meadow. Little Kern Lake 
was reached on the day following, where two days were spent. Camp 
was then moved to the mouth of the Big Arroyo, and on the day follow- 
ing to Moraine Lake and Chagoopa Plateau. Here a stay of nearly a 
week was made. The opinion formed on the previous trip of the club to 
this region was confirmed, and this was generally conceded to be one of 
the finest camping spots that the club has ever had in the mountains. The 
shelter of the thick forest about the lake and opportunity for swimming, 
as well as the many trips to near-by points of interest, all added to its 
attractiveness. Several knapsack parties visited Lost Cafion, climbed 
Sawtooth, crossed into Five-Lake Basin, and camped at the head of the 
Big Arroyo, crossing the divide into the Kern-Kaweah, and thence re- 
joined the main camp at Junction Meadow on the Kern River, the main 
party having in the interim moved camp to the latter point. Quite a 
few members climbed Milestone. Almost the entire party visited Crab- 
tree Meadows at the base of Mount Whitney (14,502 feet), and 175 made 
the ascent, which is the largest number that has visited the summit in a 
single day. This probably sets a record for a mountain of this height. 
Mount Tyndall and Mount Williamson were also climbed by several 
members of the party. 

The great feature of the trip was the safe passage of the entire party, 
including baggage and pack animals, over the recently completed section 
of the John Muir Trail. Heretofore it has been necessary in order to 
reach the Kings River Basin from the Kern River, or vice versa, to travel 
around by way of Giant Forest or cross the Sierra and drop down into 
Independence, making an arduous detour of several days. The party 
left its camp in Tyndall Meadow at an altitude of about 11,000 feet and 
crossed Shepard Pass, which is on the crest of the Sierra at the divide 
between Shepard and Tyndall creeks. Dropping down from Shepard 
Pass a little over 1000 feet, the trail turns northwesterly, following up 
the northerly branch of Shepard Creek, and again crosses the main crest 
of the Sierra at an altitude of about 13,300 feet at Junction Pass, this 
pass being between Junction Peak and Mount Keith. The pass itself is 
a broad level area partaking of the nature of a plateau, and the trail fol- 
lows out to the north on a divide between two branches of Center Basin, 
and finally descends into Center Basin itself and thence on down Bubbs 
Creek to Vidette Meadows, where the club camped that night. While 
this made a rather long day, the entire party arrived safely in camp that 
night after one of the most thrilling experiences of any of the outings. 
To take a party of this size, with all its camping equipment, over a pass 
that exceeds 13,000 feet in altitude, is an accomplishment the club can 
well be proud of. Four days were spent at Vidette Meadows while mem- 
bers of the party knapsacked to Rae Lake and also to Mount Brewer and 
vicinity. Before crossing Kearsarge Pass a camp was made for a single 
night at Kearsarge Lakes underneath the Kearsarge Pinnacles, and this 


ioe 


== 
—a 


— 


So 
SSeS ee 


Reports of Committees 219 


wonderful experience will long remain in the memory of members of the 
party. The next day Independence was reached, where the night was 
spent, and the members of the party returned to their respective destina- 
tions in Los Angeles and San Francisco by special train. 

The music furnished by Signor and Madame de Grassi, Mr. Louis 
Newbauer, Miss Anna B. Ludlow, and Miss Mizpah Jackson, as well as © 
that so generously contributed by many others, made the camp-fires of 
this outing more than ordinarily enjoyable. The club is also greatly in- 
debted to one of its members, Mr. J. E. Eibeschutz, of Independence, who 
generously rendered assistance in many ways. 

The outing planned for the summer of July, 1917, is one of the most 
ambitious that the club has ever contemplated. The plan of the trip, as 
previously announced in the preliminary circular, will be reversed. The 
party will start from Huntington Lake and travel by way of Hot Springs, 
Vermilion Valley, Blaney Meadows, and Evolution Basin on the South 
Fork of the San Joaquin, will cross Muir Pass over the recently con- 
structed portion of the John Muir Trail, and will enter the headwaters 
of the Middle Fork of the Kings River. Camp will be made in this won- 
derful cafion in the vicinity of Grouse Valley, from which the wild and 
rugged Palisade country can easily be reached, and the party will then 
travel on down the newly constructed trail, which the club has assisted 
in building, to Simpson Meadows, then on to Tehipite Valley, and will 
return to the railroad by way of Shaver Lake. This trip will give an op- 
portunity for visiting a magnificent region of the Sierra that has here- 
tofore been known to but a few of the members of the club who have 
been pioneers. The recent trail-building has made this region sufficiently 
accessible so that the entire outing party will for the first time have the 
opportunity to enjoy its wonders this summer. Written application should 


be made at an early date. Wo. E. Coisy, Chairman, 


J. N. Le Conte, 
CLair S. TAPPAAN, 
Outing Committee 


SECRETARY'S ANNUAL REPORT 
MAY I, IQI5, TO MAY 6, 1916 


To the Members of the Sierra Club: 

The splendid progress made in national park affairs during the past 
year was continued under the able direction of Mr. Stephen T. Mather 
and the Superintendent of National Parks, Mr. Robert B. Marshall. 
Both Mr. Mather and Mr. Marshall have been for many years members 
of the Sierra Club, so that the club can take just pride in what they have 
accomplished. Work on the John Muir Trail is progressing, and before 
long the trail will be open to travel from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. 
This great work has already attracted nation-wide attention, and will do 
more to open up the high Sierra region than could be done in any other 


220 Sierra Club Bulletin 


way. The membership of the club showed some material falling off 
during the past year, owing to financial conditions, and also to the fact 
that a larger number than usual was dropped for non-payment of dues. 
The total membership on May I, 1916, is 1796. There were 187 new 
members added during the year, and 270 names were removed from the 
list by reason of death, resignation, and non-payment of dues, leaving a 
net loss of 83 for the year. We have good reason to believe that the 
coming year will bring about a marked increase in the membership. We 
trust that each member will assist in securing new members when the 
annual blanks are sent out for recommendations. Respectfully, 
Wn. E. Cotsy, 
Secretary 


NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 
Edited by WiLL1Am E. CoLsy 
+ 


THE JoHN Murr TRaIL 


With the remainder of the appropriation of $10,000 made in 1915 by the 
State of California, construction work was prosecuted on the John Muir 
Trail throughout the field season of 1916. 

Progress within the Sequoia National Forest is well shown by Super- 
visor Wynne’s report to the State Engineer, much of which is here 
quoted: 

REPORT ON JOHN MUIR TRAIL WORK FOR SEASON OF IQ16 
SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST 


The work for the season of 1916 was largely concentrated on the 
Sierra National Forest, using the remainder of the $10,000 un- 
spent in 1915. A decision to handle the project in this way was 
reached at a conference in San Francisco early in the year, and 
this decision was afterwards approved by State Engineer Wilbur 
F. McClure. The work on the Sequoia National Forest was sim- 
ply to be the completion of the work at Junction Pass and carry- 
ing the trail down Center Basin and as far toward Bullfrog Lake 
as funds would permit. 

The Sierra Club used this route in its outing, and, in addition, 
there is much public interest in Junction Pass and numerous 
parties made the crossing during the summer. The pass has an 
elevation of 13,400 feet, being one of the highest on a main- 
traveled route in the Sierra. Several high peaks can be readily 
reached from it, notably Mount Keith and Junction Peak. From 
the Shepard-Tyndall Pass, Mount Williamson is but a moderately 
hard trip. It is only 117 feet lower than Mount Whitney, but its 
ascent requires more skillful mountaineering. 

The work for 1915 ended about fifty feet beyond Junction Pass, 
on the Center Basin side, in a very bad mass of broken rock. 
Knowing that travel would be very heavy, it was planned to start 
work during the early part of June. Extraordinarily heavy snow 
made it impossible even to get into the area until June 27, and real 
crew work could not be done before July 4. Considerable trouble 
on the early work was occasioned by snow-blindness, and men 
were very hard to get and keep. Great credit is due to Thomas 
Adamson, the foreman, for continuing the work, even when single- 
handed. A little later conditions were better. 

The trail is now completed in Class-A shape as far as Center 
Basin. It will take two or three seasons of settling in the talus 
and slides before the tread.is permanently fixed, and money should 
be allotted for this purpose each year. 

Costs were as follows: 


Pe SSO MUN \aiaP spo) shlove/ aly eittelalait ayalats iota $395.00 
SAMBESTENICE SUPPIICS : icc ce pe sews e ee wie 191.26 
JE EAS SU Cras OnE Tn Pe aR OA 8.00 


222 


Sierra Club Bulletin 


In addition, $112 was expended by the Forest Service in salary 
and expenses on the Muir Trail project, chiefly in supervision and 
reconnaissance. The total length of completed trail is 3% miles. 
In addition to outlay on the new trail, $54 was expended in shovel- 
ing snow and fixing up parts of last year’s work that had been 
damaged by slides. 

While the work was in both Ranger Slinkard’s and Ranger 
Clingan’s districts, it was considered admissible to concentrate the 
small amount of money available. Hence, this year’s work was all 
under Ranger Slinkard, with Thomas Adamson, of Lone Pine, as 
foreman on the ground. District rangers are busy men, and both 
Clingan and Slinkard deserve great credit for the painstaking work 
on estimates for new construction. Ranger Slinkard should also 
be credited for keeping the work moving this summer in order to 
get the route open early, in spite of the excessive snowfall. 

The general public has gained the erroneous idea that the Muir 
Trail is practically completed. This has caused many of them to 
comment very adversely on the trail, as many of the old portions 
of the route are little more than ways through. Money so far ap- 
propriated has simply been enough to build a few short pieces of 
the whole length. If the State of California can be prevailed upon 
to appropriate sufficient funds to really complete the entire project, 
the result will be a high-country line of travel without a parallel. 

Several lateral trails will be needed to make Muir Trail accessi- 
ble from side points. Owens Valley is particularly in favor with 
southern California people, and good laterals should be built from 
Lone Pine, Independence, and Bishop. There are trails from these 
points now, constructed by the Forest Service and cattlemen. Com- 
paratively small amounts would place them in Class-A condition. 

Good connecting links to the south and west will no doubt be 
constructed as funds are made available. Lateral trails from 
Mineral King and the Giant Forest should also be extended to the 
John Muir Trail. Possibly some of the roads to be constructed 
in the National Forests under the Taylor Bill will make the John 
Muir Trail more accessible. 

Since the Muir Trail on the Sequoia National Forest is mainly 
a project yet to be completed, it was decided to spend considerable 
time in laying out the route and securing careful estimates of the 
cost. Following is a summary of the entire distance and costs of 
the various divisions as shown on the accompanying map: 


Mount Whitney Division... Da As miles DEMANDE rs $1,875 
Sand Meadow LAS L NT S TA RT a 875 
Tyndall Creek a wi 4640 FE ARN RG UR 1,140 
Bubbs Creek ie AsO Shed ae ea IO 1,050 
Charlotte Creek th sa UU WU RCMee les tan 750 
Glenn Pass mire sie ole RAS Mir Cae noe a 1,500 
Rae Lake PO Pe TE TS ihe ea AN ag 950 
Woods Creek i EL Ge 9 ANE a 1,000 
Pinchot Pass PALL We eee enn Th th ala ear ae tel 1,325 
Taboose "i 4.5 Neiode eA a 800 
Upper Basin RY 3 5 er Apa aes tale 950 


Notes and Correspondence 223 


These figures are the result of careful estimates by Rangers 
Clingan and Slinkard. I have also been over practically the entire 
route and agree that the figures are about right, as judged by our 
past experience in similar country. 

If in accordance with the desires of the State of California, I 
would recommend that the above amounts be expended on this 
project whenever funds are made available. I attach herewith 
topographic sheets showing the proposed route as outlined. 

Respectfully submitted, 
: S. W. WYNNE, 
Hot Springs, California, Forest Supervisor 
October 9, 1916. 


On the Sierra National Forest the trail through the cafion of the Mid- 
dle Fork of Kings River was completed from the mouth of Cartridge 
Creek to the mouth of Palisade Creek, a very difficult piece of construc- 
tion, From the mouth of Palisade Creek it was continued up the Mid- 
dle Fork to a point some two miles above Little Pete Meadow and 
about three miles from Muir Pass, where the trail will cross the God- 
dard Divide. 

This point was reached from the north in 1915, when the John Muir 
Trail was completed from the South Fork of San Joaquin River up Evo- 
lution Creek to Muir Pass; thus, only the length of three miles south 
from the pass to the point where work was discontinued on the Kings 
River side at the end of the present season remains to be completed. In 
order to accommodate the Sierra Club’s outing party, which will cross 
the Goddard Divide early in the field season of 1917, Supervisor M. A. 
Benedict succeeded in having a preliminary trail constructed across the 
uncompleted three-mile stretch before weather conditions prevented 
further work. 

The following information concerning work within the Sierra Na- 
tional Forest is given by Supervisor Benedict: 

I am enclosing a map showing the amount of work completed 
in 1916, and also showing the preliminary trail from the end of the 
completed work toward Muir Pass for the accommodation of the 
Sierra Club’s outing party next July. At least three miles of this 
preliminary trail will be covered by snow when the Sierra Club 


party goes through, and I anticipate no trouble over the remainder 
of the trail to Barrier Rock, where the completed trail ends. 


The work was classified into three different types: 
Type A—Solid rock, from Io per cent to 45 per cent slope. 
Type B—Talus. 


Type C—General type, including dry and wet meadows, talus 
covered with earth, flat solid rock, gravel and dirt 
slopes. 


Following is a tabulation of the work done under each type, and 
its cost: 


224 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Total, with 
Man Cost Prorated Cost 
Type Feet Taye . Moving per 
, Labor | Powder Pees pane Mile 
Voie) REA tne 810} 145|$ 308.80|$ 90.00 | $269.70} $ 837.54 | $5,438.00 
1 ESA 3,850| 90 193.20| 25.00| 167.40 496.14 686.00 
ORE Sei ee me 40,260 | 211 448.90! 30.00] 392.46| 1,140.20 158.00 
Preliminary 
tratle ere . | 32,680] 80 169.80|} 10.00] 148.80 446.25 70.00 
Cost, com- 


pleted trail | 44,920] 446 950.90 | 145.00] 829.56! 2,473.81 264.00 
Total eon 77,600 | 526 | $1,120.70 | $155.00 | $978.36 | $2,920.06| $211.00 


Credits in 

Supplies and 

Equipment 

left over .... 400.00 


Total 
expended .. $3,320.06 


Packing of equipment and supplies, prorated over work, $666. 
8.5 miles, at $264.00 per mile. 
6.2 miles, at 70.00 per mile. 
14.7 miles, total. 
Subsistence cost $1.68 per day per man, including cook, food, 
freight, and packing. 
Our expense record shows— 


State allotments Pon eal ene $4,900.00 
Bxpended oe icssat le ota ioe eam an talteeae 3,320.06 
Balance ti aieeciek bana civa sy ela eeaeee $1,570.94 


Supervision and labor, Forest Service, approximately $200. 
Credits include— 


POWER eh: cteere ob cla siclonsie MAS ReN eae $250.00 
Steel and tools 3.00) ee aCe 30.00 
Crt ee Te ee aad Ce a 100.00 
Cook Outhit ie foe en 20.00 

Motal eee ria hoo ee Cn ane $400.00 


With the balance of a little over $1500 on hand, and with powder, 
tools, and camp equipment sufficient to run a crew almost the en- 
tire season, it is planned to start a twelve-man crew in Evolution 
Creek on July 1, 1917. This amount will run the crew at least a 
month, when it is hoped that a new appropriation by the state will 
be available. 

I am very much interested in getting suggestions for a distinctive 
marker for this trail. Most of the country will not be through any 
timber where blazing can be done. My suggestion is the use of 
a three-foot length of asphaltum-dipped, three-quarter-inch iron 


Notes and Correspondence 225 


pipe, with a white disc six inches in diameter, with a black letter 
“M” stenciled on it; this stencil to be put on both sides of the disc. 
This marker can be placed at intervals not to exceed one hundred 
yards, and will make a permanent and distinctive guide. Ofcourse, 
these will be supplemented by “ducks”; but “ducks” become de- 
stroyed by the elements and loose pack stock, and I believe some 
distinctive marker should be used, whether it is the one I have 
suggested or a better one. This marker, of course, will be sup- 
plemented by a large number of descriptive ones. 


The work accomplished with the single appropriation of $10,000 which 
was made by the state legislature in 1915, has exceeded all expecta- 
tions. With it a passable route along the entire crest of the High Sierra 
has been opened and some of the finest scenery in the United States has 
thus been made accessible. However, this passable route must not be 
understood to be a finished trail, for, indeed, much of it is only over the 
trails which already existed, and these without repairs or rebuilding of 
any kind. Some of this route which has been made passable is not even 
over the official route of the John Muir Trail. From the mouth of Pali- 
sade Creek the trail is yet to be constructed up Palisade Creek to the 
South Fork of Kings River and down the latter, via Woods Creek, Rae 
Lake, and Glenn Pass, to Bullfrog Lake. This section has been care- 
fully explored, located, and estimated. Its construction now only awaits 
the necessary funds. Appropriations should be made by the state for 
continuing the work until the entire trail from Yosemite to Mount 
Whitney is completely constructed. 

In addition to the John Muir Trail, lateral trails at frequent intervals 
are very desirable. With these the main trail would be easily accessible, 
and stretches of it could be visited by those who cannot afford the time 
to travel throughout its entire length. 


TEHIPITE-SIMPSON MEADOWS TRAIL 


A good trail through the cafion of the Middle Fork of Kings River 
from Tehipite Valley to Simpson Meadows has long been needed, but 
funds for improving the existing trail have heretofore not been avail- 
able. The completion of the trail through the upper portion of the Mid- 
dle Fork Cafion from Simpson Meadows to Palisade Creek and of the 
John Muir Trail from Palisade Creek across the Goddard Divide to the 
South Fork of San Joaquin River, during the past season, made this 
construction more necessary than ever before, as a trip which will no 
doubt be very popular will be through Tehipite Valley, the Middle Fork 
Cafion via Simpson Meadows, over Muir Pass, down Evolution Creek, 
and out through the basin of the San Joaquin River, or the reverse. In 
fact, it is this very route which will be followed by the 1917 outing of 
the Sierra Club. 

Before the opening of the field season of 1916 the Directors of the Si- 
erra Club brought the urgent need of rebuilding this trail to the atten- 


226 Sierra Club Bulletin 


tion of Chief Forester Henry S. Graves. There were also similar de- 
mands from individuals. Mr. Graves fully realized the need of this 
construction, and, although the funds at his disposal for such work are 
very limited, he made a special allotment of $1200, to which the Board 
of Supervisors of Fresno County added $400. With the money thus made 
available, a trail crew, under Supervisor M. A. Benedict, of the Sierra 
National Forest, repaired the existing trail on the north side of the river 
from Tehipite Valley to the ford, constructed an entirely new trail from 
the ford to Simpson Meadows, and at the latter point constructed a sub- 
stantial suspension bridge across the Middle Fork of Kings River. The 
ford, which was formerly the only means of crossing the river, and 
which was at certain seasons dangerous, is now eliminated. The new 
location, entirely on the north side of the river, also avoids some rough 
trail across the mouths of several creeks which enter from the south 
wall of the cafion. This piece of trail work is certainly a welcome ad- 
dition to the system of trails which is now being rapidly constructed to 
make the wonderful scenery of the basins of the Middle Fork of Kings 
River and of the South Fork of San Joaquin River accessible. 


ESTIMATE OF Cost oF NEw Work TO COMPLETE A [TRAIL FROM GIANT 
Forest TO MoRAINE LAKE 


District Forester: October 4, 1916. 


Dear Sir: Referring to your letter of August 12 and Mr. Huber’s let- 
ter of August II: 

We looked over the prospective route from Bearpaw Meadow to Mo- 
raine Lake and found that this is a practicable route, except that the 
trail will have to swing onto the divide south of Deer Creek, then fol- 
low up Bear Creek. Following is Ranger Redstone’s report on the piece 
from Bearpaw Meadow to the head of Big Arroyo: 


I found that the route down Deer Creek is impractical, owing 
to the precipitous drop of the narrow rocky creek bed. However. 
I found a very good route a few miles south of Deer Creek over 
the ridge between Deer Creek and North Fork or Bear Creek. 
This route would start at Bear Creek, cross the main Kaweah 
River, and ascend on a fifteen-per-cent grade around the ridge and 
up Bear Creek, crossing the divide near the head of Deer Creek 
and connecting with the trail up the Big Arroyo in the Nine 
Lakes basin. The country is exceedingly rough and a good trail 
will be costly. Two-thirds of the trail over the lower end will be 
fairly easy construction, composed of earth, heavily brush-covered, 
and of loose rock. The upper third will be very expensive, as it 
runs into heavy blasting and wall-building, especially near the 
crossing of the divide. 


Dd 


Notes and Correspondence 227 


From the head of the Big Arroyo to Moraine Lake it is a fairly simple 
proposition, entailing no heavy construction, except about one and one- 
half miles in getting from the Arroyo to the plateau. 
The appended sheet shows the estimated cost of the project. 
Very truly yours, SW. WYNNE, 


Forest Supervisor 
ESTIMATE ON COST OF CONSTRUCTING A TRAIL FROM BEARPAW MEADOW 
TO BIG ARROYO 


Two miles earth trail, covered with heavy brush and 
loose rock, some wall building and blasting, at $60 


RRA IN MCA CN Senn yao iL Gai $120.00 
Four miles earth trail, covered with brush and loose 
MERE AG DET) TING U eid aicia)eCchale ele ahaa ews algo ale\ ais 160.00 
Three miles rock work, walling up, blasting, at $200 per 
EST ECE US eA tS ES ate BE OD HE XB ELD 600.00 
One mile heavy blasting and rock walls at $500....... 500.00 
Motalcost. dor the tem miles. ee eee tuck $1,380.00 


TRAIL—HEAD OF BIG ARROYO TO MORAINE LAKE 
LENGTH, ELEVEN MILES 


Five and one-half miles clearing loose rock and some 
REE AGA ee ee Ne ee $220.00 
One and one-half miles, in slide-rock on grade, at $180. 270.00 
Four miles, clearing loose rock and marking, at $30... 120.00 
610.00 


ES TELL TEV IY RS STG. SSA CRT a gS a $1,990.00 


CLIMBING Mount CLARK FROM MERCED LAKE 


Of all the splendid mountain peaks in the upper regions of Yosemite 
National Park, none can surpass Mount Clark in beauty of form. From 
_ whatever point it may be seen it is always the most striking feature of 
the landscape. From Glacier Point it looks like an isolated section of 
some huge palisade; from the Merced Lake trail it is seen as a thin 
sharp peak rising from slender buttresses; while from the Vogelsang 
Pass trail it appears as a fine pyramid. In any one of its many aspects 
it is an inspiring sight to the mountaineer. 

Yet, notwithstanding its attractiveness and its nearness to Yosemite 
Valley, Mount Clark has not been ascended as often as one would sup- 
pose. The first ascent is a matter of classic record. Those who are 
familiar with Clarence King’s Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada 
will remember the thrilling account of the final leap that brought him 


228 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and his companion, Gardner, within reach of the summit. Like many a 
pioneer effort, this first attempt was a much more perilous adventure 
than subsequent ascents have proved. In 1866 the region around Mount 
Clark, or The Obelisk, as it was then usually called, was comparatively 
unknown, and King and Gardner had little opportunity to make careful 
plans for their route. The south side of the mountain was the most 
accessible, and from that direction animals could be brought to within 
a few miles of the base. They undoubtedly made a bad choice of routes 
for the final part of their ascent, as subsequent climbers have not en- 
countered the extreme difficulties reported by King. Although most of 
the ascents have been made from the south side, a few climbers have 
reached the summit from the north. With the opening up of the Merced 
Lake region through the improvement of trails and the establishment of 
a public camp, the route from this side should become more popular. 
The climb can be made in a few hours from Merced Lake, and, if the 
way be carefully chosen, it can be made without danger or difficulty. 

On the morning of July 4, 1916, I set out from the camp that had just 
been opened by the Desmond Park Service Company at Merced Lake, 
and crossing the river picked my way along the ledges of the opposite 
cliff. In a few minutes I could look down upon the sparkling waters 
of Merced Lake. After a climb of about a thousand feet I entered the 
forested tableland that flanks Mount Clark on the north. I had no in- 
tention of climbing the mountain that day, but only to reconnoiter and 
plan a route for some later day. Before me now lay the choice of fol- 
lowing the basin toward the main snow-field or of mounting the ridge 
to the west. I chose the latter, and in a little while was on the summit 
of the ridge. The panorama was splendid; westward lay Yosemite Val- 
ley, reposing in the midst of the dark-forested upland; to the north and 
east the bright snow-fields of the upper Merced expanded to the Sierra 
crest; southward the ridge ran up to a sharp rocky point toward the 
main summit. Making my way along the ridge, I reached the rocky 
point in the course of an hour and looked down on the other side upon 
a snowy cirque that cut deep into the side of the mountain. Beyond the 
cirque towered the peak. It was a splendid sight; well worth a day’s 
journey in itself. 

The peak seemed very near, and I began to wonder if it were not pos- 
sible to actually make the ascent this very day. The more I thought of 
it the more enthusiastic I became, and I looked eagerly for the most 
promising route. It seemed to be an easy matter to reach the main 
snow-field by descending a little way to the ridge which lay between it 
and the deep cirque. The snow-field must be crossed and the rocks be- 
yond attained at as high a point as possible. There would remain some 
two or three hundred feet of rock-climbing. If the snow was not too 
steep and the rock-climbing too dangerous, the goal could be attained. 

In a few minutes I was on the snow and found it softer and more 
deeply pitted than I had expected. While this made walking difficult it 


Notes and Correspondence 229 


also made it safe, and I was able to mount almost to the very head of 
the field before being forced to the rocks. I had chosen to cross the 
snow-field to the southeasterly side, intending to make the final climb 
along the left-hand sky-line. On reaching the rocks, however, this route 
looked very difficult for a man alone, so I began to prospect for a safer 
way. I had fully made up my mind to turn back if absolute safety was 
not assured. After a little investigation I found that there were several 
fairly wide ledges running at a slight angle across the face of the tower. 
I followed these along to the right, mounting occasionally from one to 
another until I was well around toward the westerly side of the peak. 
Mindful of King’s adventure, I half expected to encounter some impos- 
sible stretch or to find myself in some cul-de-sac and perhaps be denied 
the summit when within a few feet of it. I knew that I was getting very 
near the top, but could not tell as yet just where it was. There might be 
a split summit, and I might be on the wrong side of the split. I wedged 
myself in between two large rocks and crawled up a little higher, Then 
I looked up, and there, only ten feet away, stood the cairn of rocks that 
marked the summit. In another moment I was on top. 

The isolated position of Mount Clark gives it a commanding range 
over the whole Merced basin. Its precipitous sides make the glimpses 
of snow-fields, lakes, and forests far below most impressive. Yosemite 
Valley, lying deep in shadow, has an air of mystery, enhanced by the 
gleam of silver where the waters of Yosemite Creek pour silently into 
the dark chasm. 

For an hour I enjoyed the superb prospect and then reluctantly pre- 
pared to descend. I returned by the same route as far as the snow- 
field, and then, abandoning my morning footsteps, followed the water- 
courses from the melting snow until I came to the timber-lands. Here 
I came upon the vestiges of a trail that appears on the maps as the 
Mount Clark Trail. I found it badly out of repair and almost obliter- 
ated in some places. It is very steep, and in its present condition not at 
all suited to animals. It reaches the river halfway between Lake Wash- 
burn and Merced Lake. From that point on it is plain walking into 
camp. I reached camp at five o’clock, having been gone about eight 
hours. The trip could be made very easily in less time by one familiar 
with the way. 

Before leaving Merced Lake I climbed another mountain that should 
enjoy greater popularity. Mount Florence (12,507 feet) commands in 
some ways a finer view than Mount Clark. It is close to such spectacu- 
lar peaks as Lyell, McClure, Rodgers, Electra, and Foerster, while just 
beyond are Banner, Ritter, and The Minarets. The view is similar to 
that from Lyell, though much more comprehensive, and the ascent is 
comparatively easy. The trip can be made in about ten hours from Mer- 
ced Lake. The most direct route is to follow the McClure Fork trail up 
from the Merced until the Isberg Pass trail branches off. The Isberg 
Pass trail leads across a broad plateau that lies between Mount Flor- 


230 Sierra Club Bulletin 


ence and Lake Washburn. By this route the way is made easy for a 
considerable distance toward the mountain. Probably the best place to 
leave the trail is when it crosses a small stream that flows into Lake 
Washburn from the northeast. This stream comes from the snow-fields 
of Mount Florence and may be followed to its sources. From the snow- 
fields the way can hardly be mistaken. It is just a question of scram- 
bling up over shale and great rough weather-beaten rocks. There is a 
false summit a few hundred feet from the real summit, but the traverse 
between them is easy. The north side of the mountain is a tremendous 
precipice, dropping to a vast snowy amphitheater that stretches toward 


the base of McClure. FRANCIS PELOUBET FARQUHAR 


First ASCENT OF SOUTH GUARD (12,964 FEET) 


On July 26, 1916, after leaving in camp at East Lake those of our fel- 
low-knapsackers who were less strenuously inclined, or who were more 
ardent fishermen, Miss Florence Burrell, Miss Inezetta Holt, Mr. James 
Rennie, and the writer made the ascent of South Guard by following 
Ousel Creek to the unbroken snow-field of its upper basin, where, after . 
finding the snow too solidly frozen to afford secure footing on the steep 
slopes (we had no ice-ax), we chose the rocky knife-edge extending to 
the summit from the northeast. This necessitated a long and arduous 
climb. The knife-edge is very thin, and is composed, for the most part, 
of very loose rock. Added to the interest of the climb was the uncer- 
tainty of whether this route would lead to the summit or whether a 
precipice would bar all further progress, an uncertainty which was not 
removed until the summit was actually reached about 12:30 P. M. 

We found no evidence of any previous ascent of the peak. After 
building a small cairn of rocks on the larger block which constitutes the 
summit, we placed a record in a sardine-can, ate that part of our lunches 
which was left after the many stops on the long ascent, took a few mo- 
ments with binoculars to watch a Sierra Club party which by now was 
descending Mount Brewer, and then began the descent. 

As our party had planned to move camp from East Lake to Vidette 
Meadows, an additional eight-mile walk must be added to the return. 
To descend by the same knife-edge which we had utilized in the ascent 
would necessitate several hours of very careful and slow climbing. 
Surely this plan would permit darkness to overtake us long before reach- 
ing camp at Vidette Meadows. After a brief conference with Mr. Ren- 
nie, it was decided to try to find a place where we could cross the north 
face of the rocky knife-edge and descend to the snow, which we hoped 
would be softer by this time than we had found it in the early morning, 
and would afford a route for descending more rapidly. While the rest 
were crossing the first ledges of the north face more slowly, Mr. Rennie 
went ahead scouting and soon located a possible route. In following we 
crossed several narrow ledges and started some miniature avalanches in 


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Notes and Correspondence 231 


the loose rock, but finally all safely reached the rock directly above the 
edge of the snow-field. 

The descent to the snow offered some difficulties, especially as that 
part of the snow-field directly under the cliff had been shaded through- 
out the day, was still frozen very hard, and was at a dangerous slope 
leading directly to some ugly rocks. With some assistance, all hands 
were finally safely on the snow-field beyond the point where a slide 
would mean striking rocks below. One of our party escaped a very un- 
comfortable slide from the spot where we first reached the icy snow 
only by the precaution which our pathfinder had taken to first dig very 
large footholds and to brace himself securely in these. Once at the 
point where snow-sliding was safe, rapid progress was made, both by 
voluntary and involuntary slides. At East Lake we shouldered our 
packs and finished an interesting day by tramping the remaining eight 


miles to Vidette Meadows. WaALTER L. HuBER 


e e 
e 


AN ASCENT OF TUNNABORA PEAK 


On July 22, 1916, Mr. James Rennie and Mr. Walter L. Huber made the 
ascent of Tunnabora Peak (13,593 feet) from the Sierra Club’s camp in 
the upper portion of Tyndall Creek Basin. The peak was reached by 
following the south branch of the East Fork of the Kern River to its 
head, thus reaching the south side of the peak which slopes to Tulainyo 
Lake. Although all other sides of the peak are very precipitous, the as- 
cent from the south offers no difficulties after its inaccessibility has 
been overcome. The records of the Sierra Club indicated that no pre- 
vious ascent of this peak had been made, but a very rusty tomato-can 
was discovered at the summit, and by subsequent correspondence it has 
been learned that Mr. George R. Davis, of the U.S. Geological Survey, 
made the ascent in August, 1905. 

Tulainyo Lake, at the foot of its south slope, has a diameter of ap- 
proximately half a mile and is at an elevation of 12,865 feet. This lake 
is in a rocky basin on the very crest of the Sierra. A sharp ridge of 
the main crest passes around it on the east and a less rugged ridge passes 
along its western side. It has no apparent outlet on either side. Its set- 
ting is unique among lakes of the High Sierra. 


MazAMaA ACTIVITIES FOR THE PAST YEAR 


In addition to their outdoor activities, the Mazama Club has established 
an educational course, begun last winter and continued during this one. 
This consists of a lecture by some competent person each Thursday 
evening on one of the following subjects, taken in rotation: Botany, 
Geology, Ornithology, and Local History. The lectures are usually il- 
lustrated with lantern-slides. 


232 Sierra Club Bulletin 


The headquarters and club-rooms of the Mazamas in the Northwest- 
ern Bank building have now been maintained for two years. A single 
room with floor space of over 600 square feet is made to serve the vari- 
ous needs. This room, besides a fine collection of photo enlargements 
and other pictures of typical mountain scenery on the walls, is furnished 
as a club-room for both men and women. 

The Mazamas’ annual outing in August was taken to the Three Sis- 
ters group, a trio of peaks lying about seventy miles easterly from Eu- 
gene, Oregon, forming the summit of the Cascade Range. The atten- 
dance was the largest in recent years, the total reaching about 120, 
though not all of this number were in camp for the full two weeks. The 
climb of the three peaks and the explorations on attractive side-trips 
served to fully occupy the time. An unusual feature was a snowfall of 
several inches on the night of August 16th. 

The third annual short outing to Mount Hood, covering the Fourth of 
July, was taken as usual, and two outings to the coast were taken 
during the season, as has been the case for several years past. 

Death has made unusual inroads on the Mazama membership during 
the year, and several of our valued workers have been taken. Among 
these the most prominent was former President Prouty, whose achieve- 
ments in mountain-climbing are known in the Pacific Northwest, and in 
Canada as well, and whose loss is greatly deplored. 

WILLIAM P. HARDESTY 


THE MOUNTAINEERS 


During the past year The Mountaineers have conducted the customary 
series of local walks and short outings in the Cascades. Snoqualmie 
Lodge, built by the club in 1914, has become a favorite resort, offering 
a convenient base for climbing expeditions or the enjoyment of winter 
sports in season, particularly snow-shoeing and skiing. In the winter of 
1915-16, remarkable for deep snows, the lodge was used by parties who 
were obliged to enter through a window in the gable, the only exposed 
corner. 

The club has purchased seventy-four acres near Chico, in Kitsap 
County, one of the few regions in Washington where Rhododendron 
californicum grows abundantly. There is danger eventually of extermi- 
nation because of wanton picking and the exportation of entire plants. 
The new Kitsap Lodge property will protect one of the most beautiful 
parts of this rhododendron land. 

The annual outing of The Mountaineers was held August 5-27, near 
Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan, in the wildest section of the Cas- 
cades. Three different camps were made, three days at Twin Lakes, 
four at Hannegan Pass, and ten at Austin Pass. From the latter camp 
knapsack trips were made for the ascent of Mount Baker (10,750 feet) 
and Mount Shuksan (9038 feet). While not a very high peak, Mount 


Notes and Correspondence 233 


Shuksan is particularly difficult of ascent. Its steep sides are covered 
with sharp pinnacles, while the mountain itself is nearly inaccessible on 
account of deep gorges. Even when the lower portions have been con- 
quered, the summit, a rock pinnacle of some 600 feet rising out of the 
snow-field, can apparently be scaled in but one place. The party that 
climbed it this year numbered twenty-eight. Thirty scaled Mount Baker, 
an all-snow climb over very steep and deeply crevassed slopes. On both 
mountains was left one of the bronze record tubes used by The Moun- 
taineers. These have now been placed for general use on fourteen peaks 


in Washington. WINONA BAILEY 


Something over a year ago Mr. George E. Wright, vice-president of 
the Seattle Mountaineers, succeeded in interesting Stephen T. Mather, 
assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, in the erection of a shelter 
hut at Camp Muir on Mount Rainier. The movement had the support 
of Superintendent Reaburn of Mount Rainier National Park, and as a 
result $700 was set aside by the Government for the work. The hut has 
now been completed, following the plans drawn by Carl F. Gould, a 
member of The Mountaineers. 

The Tacoma News of September 26 prints the following statement 
regarding the construction of the shelter: 


The house was built under the direction of Eugene Frank, who, 
with Fred Verville and Claude Tice, spent seventeen days and 
nights on the mountain, their experiences uniting the extremes in 
weather. Now they were almost carried away by arctic winds; 
then they were tanned to an Indian copper by an equatorial 
sun. They lived in a tent, pegged and weighted to the volcanic 
ash, and to their surprise they managed to retain this shelter, 
though the wind whipped it angrily. They could cook but little 
on their oil-stoves at that altitude. 

Seven barrels of lime and six barrels of cement were carried 
to Camp Muir, a little at a time, on the backs of burros. Sand 
was found on the camp-site—not very good sand, as it is mixed 
with volcanic ash, but Frank believes the cement that was made 
of it will stand for many a day. The house is 8 by 20 feet in size, 
and 7% feet high inside. Its walls are three feet in thickness. 
Two by six beams sustain the roof, which is sheeted with timber 
and covered with tar paper, well nailed, and weighted down with 
stones. Supt. Reaburn set aside $700 for the work, but Frank 
completed it at a cost of $555. Each man was paid double wages, 
and they certainly earned them. 

Bunks for twelve persons will be built in the house. Blankets, 
oil-stoves, and food will be placed there. And the house is to 
have a telephone. Supt. Reaburn proposes to carry the wire to the 
camp early next season. Telephone service already covers the 
important points on the mountain. The line to Camp Muir will 


234 Sierra Club Bulletin 


be run in insulated coverings over the snow-fields and through 
iron pipe secured to the rocks. 


BurREAU OF ASSOCIATED MOUNTAINEERING CLUBS OF NoRTH AMERICA 


During the summer of 1915, I visited the mountaineering clubs and geo- 
graphical societies of the country and suggested the formation of an as- 
sociation for the furtherance of common aims, and for the establishment 
of headquarters in New York where mountaineering information might 
be collected and made available. The plan was outlined as follows: 

It was proposed to form an association of clubs and societies, each of 
which shall co-operate through its secretary and transact its business by 
correspondence with the general secretary. Each club shall send its 
printed matter, which will be added to the collection of mountaineering 
literature established in the New York Public Library. An annual bul- 
letin of information on the membership, officers, and activities of the 
leading organizations shall be issued. The secretary of each club will 
notify the general secretary of the movements of local members who 
have interesting slides, and who can address the members of the asso- 
ciation at such times as they may be in different parts of the country. 

One of the most important features of a club’s activities is that of its 
library. Members shall be encouraged to read what is being done in the 
mountaineering world, for education in this direction is as essential to 
a true appreciation and enjoyment of mountaineering as is the work in 
the field. Copies of many of the new books in mountaineering will be 
sent to each club for review in its annual publication and bulletins, there- 
by materially assisting in the growth of its library. 

It is believed that the existence of this association will have a wale 
able influence in many directions, and, occupying the field, its activities 
may expand as experience and occasion make desirable. 

Meeting with a favorable response to the above ideas, I sent out a 
preliminary letter and received unofficial replies in approval of the plan. 
At the annual meeting of the American Alpine Club, held at the New 
York Public Library on January 8, 1916, I presented these letters and 
asked that the Councilors of the club be instructed to consider the plan 
and to send out an official letter to each club inviting it to become a 
member of the proposed association. 

After due consideration, the Councilors of the American Alpine Club 
sent such a letter in March to the leading clubs, asking them to join ina 
Bureau of Associated Mountaineering Clubs of North America. Secur- 
ing a majority of acceptances, they declared the plan in operation on 
May 2, 1916. 

The first official act of the Bureau was the publication in May of a 
bulletin containing statistics of the membership, officers, and activities of 
the leading mountaineering clubs and geographical societies of the con- 
tinent. The present membership of the Bureau comprises the following 


NWIHHO UAV 


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Notes and Correspondence 235 


organizations. (Some others await the annual meeting of their direc- 


tors.) American Alpine Club, 


American Geographical Society, 
Appalachian Mountain Club, 

British Columbia Mountaineering Club, 
Colorado Mountain Club, 

Fresh Air Club, 

Geographic Society of Chicago, 
Geographical Society of Philadelphia, 
Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, 
Mazamas, 

Mountaineers, 

Prairie Club, 

Sierra Club, 

United States National Parks Service. 


A valuable reference collection of mountaineering books has been formed 
by the New York Public Library in the main building at 476 Fifth Av- 
enue, and we have secured the deposit of the library of the American 
Alpine Club. The combined collection promises to become one of the 
most important in existence. A collection of photographs and enlarge- 
ments of mountain scenery in all parts of the world is also being made, 
and contributions of mounted or unmounted views will be appreciatively 


received. LE Roy JEFFERS, 
General Secretary 


Through the Bureau of Associated Mountaineering Clubs our library 
has received the following new publications noted in the “Book Re- 
views”: The Mountain, Through Glacier Park, Blackfeet Tales, Rambles 
in the Vaudese Alps,Our American Wonderland,Chronicles of the White 
Mountains, Camping and Woodcraft, and A Thousand-Mile Walk to the 
Gulf, 


BEAUTIFUL LAKE CHELAN 


From Wenatchee a branch of the Great Northern runs on up the Co- 
lumbia River, and after an hour and a half reaches the station of Chelan. 
We got out here and took a motor which climbed like a goat (it wasn’t 
a Ford, either) up the cliff wall some hundreds of feet and ran along 
through the dusty sagebrush beside the edge of a deep cafion where the 
blue Chelan River foamed and roared below, till we reached the tcewn 
of Chelan, at the foot of the lake of that name. Perhaps you have h +d 
of Lake Chelan. We, being parochial New Englanders, never had. It 
is, however, probably the most beautiful lake in America. In fact, we 
are disposed to back it against all comers, Crater, Geneva, Como, Louise 


236 Sierra Club Bulletin 


—any of them. It starts with apples, acres of orchards rising from the 
shore of the slopes of a low hill which is only a few hundred feet higher 
than Chocorua—apples and sagebrush and the gray dust from the roads. 
It runs for fifty miles northwest, never more than three miles wide, and 
ends in the heart of the high Cascades, amid snow-capped peaks and gla- 
ciers. The lake itself is 1800 feet deep, going down 400 feet below sea- 
level, and it is the blue of heaven, the blue of glacier ice when the sun 
shines through it, the deep marvelous green of reflected forest walls. 
There is no other lake like it, and, fortunately for the country, it is 
now, with its entire watershed, above the developed land at the lower 
end, a national forest. 

You go up the lake by motor-boat. There is absolutely no other way 
to get to the far end. A road runs on either shore for a few miles till 
the hills close in, and then gives up. The view from the bow of the boat 
ten miles above the lower end is much like the view up the Hudson be- 
tween Storm King and the Point, only the hills at Chelan are much 
higher, and far up the vista shine the snow-capped peaks of the Cas- 
cades. From here on the almost precipitous mountain walls, sparsely 
clad with fir, plunge directly into the lake—there is absolutely no beach 
whatever; and they steadily mount higher and higher till they begin to 
show snow. They are not broken into distinct summits, like the Rock- 
ies, but form a castellated wall attaining finally an altitude of over 8000 
feet. For forty miles your boat sails between them. If you can imagine 
the Crawford Notch filled with blue water up above the level of the 
tracks, extended another twenty miles, and Willard and Willey raised 
to, 8000 feet and snow-capped, you have Lake Chelan. The prospect is 
made still more lovely by the view across the head of the lake of the 
main ridge of the Cascades, with one or two glaciers showing. 

There are two small but comfortable hotels at the farther end, and 
little else except primeval forest. After the lake ceases, if you wish to 
go farther up the cafion, you take horses at the Field Hotel and follow 
the Forest Rangers’ road up the Stehekin River past Rainbow Falls, a 
beautiful straight fall of 360 feet, into the very heart of the Cascades. 
This trip can be made a camping trip of two, three, or more days, and 
will take you, if you wish, into wild horseshoe basins which make Tuck- 
erman’s Ravine look like a dimple, or over the high passes, the glaciers, 
and the snow-fields, where the world below is a wilderness of white- 
capped summits and wild gorges. 

A “pass” in the Cascades is usually some 7000 or 8000 feet up. The 
summit cones are mere humps in the long ridges, and the passes go over 
the lofty cols. We went on a one-day trip up War Creek Pass, on horse- 
back. The ranger’s trail, clinging often to the sides of precipitous 
slopes, was just wide enough to give a trained horse footing. It mount- 
ed a shoulder of the northerly ridge, through forests of huge Douglas 
firs and magnificent gardens of lupine, Indian paint-brush, annual lark- 
spur, dog-tooth violets, wild syringa, and scores of other flowers. It ran 


Notes and Correspondence 237, 


into snow-patches at about the 6000-foot level, and finally crested the col 
at over 7000 feet. From this lofty col the long greenish-blue ribbon of 
the lake lay far below, and the world was a sea of peaks, including Gla- 
cier Peak and Mount Agnes to the southwest, both over 10,000 feet, and 
to the northwest, fifty miles away, the ice-capped summit of Mount 
Baker. We saw no mountain sheep that day, but coming down we ran 
through a herd of 2000 domestic sheep, being driven over the range to 
summer pasturage. 

And we reached the hotel in time to go out behind to the Stehekin 
River and catch enough cut-throat trout for supper, trout weighing about 
three pounds. They catch Dolly Varden trout in the lake up to ten or 
twelve pounds. Nothing but trout live in this ice-cold water. 

Unfortunately, it is a long way from the Eastern seaboard to Lake 
Chelan, and the lake is on a branch line from the through road at that. 
Nor is it a widely advertised national park, with Copley-Plaza hotels 
stuck down into the scenery. At present it is a spot for simple people 
who want one of the most beautiful combinations of water and moun- 
tain scenery in all the land, splendid fishing, and safe but rough trails 
into the heart of the high hills, with plenty of opportunity for uncharted 
mountain-climbing up secondary but by no means easy 8000- to 10,000- 
foot peaks. Some day Lake Chelan will take its place as one of the na- 
tion’s famous scenic reservations. But we are glad we got there before 
the rush. WALTER PRICHARD EATON 


REcorD ON Mount KEITH 


During the 1916 outing of the Sierra Club the ascent of Mount Keith 
(13,990 feet) was made by two parties of three members each. Both of 
these ascents were made from the John Muir Trail by traversing the 
knife-edge from Junction Pass, a route which has probably not been 
utilized in previous ascents. 

The record on the summit, which is contained in the Sierra Club’s 
Canister No. 29, was found to be in good condition. In it the following 
ascents are recorded: July 6, 1898, C. B. Bradley, J. C. Shinn, Jennie 
E. Price, and Robert M. Price; July 6, 1900, Helen M. Gompertz and J. 
N. Le Conte; August 20, 1909, Talbot C. Walker and Stanley H. Jones; 
July 25, 1910, C. W. Norton, Sherwood Norton, and Oscar S. Norton; 
July 23, 1916, Dr. H. B. Graham, E. G. Chamberlain, Agnes W. Vaille, 
Florence C. Burrell, Inezetta Holt, and Walter L. Huber. 


OrIGIN oF NAME KINGs RIVER 


In order to settle a question concerning the origin of the name Kings 
River, Mr. W. H. Spaulding, after some investigation, reports that in 
a volume entitled Spanish and Indian Place Names in California, by 


238 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Sanchez, at page 278, an account of the origin of the name is given. 
The river was named in 1805 by a Spanish exploring party, in honor of 
three wise men—“E] Rio de los Santos Reyes” (The River of the Holy 
Kings). The account also includes a quotation from Gen. Fremont to 
the effect that he found the river called by the few Americans in Cali- 
fornia “Lake Fork,” but that all of the Mexicans called the river “El 
Rio de los Reyes.” 

It appears that Mount King was named for Clarence King of the Cali- 
fornia Geological Survey. 


ToroGRAPHIC Maps 


The topographic map of the United States which is being prepared and 
issued by the United States Geological Survey, and with which most per- 
sons are familiar in the form of “atlas sheets” or “quadrangles,” is now 
only about 40 per cent completed. At the present rate of progress, only 
about 0.8 per cent of the total area of the country is being mapped each 
year, and, with the revision which is necessary on maps already issued, 
nearly a century will be required for the completion of the work. At the 
suggestion of Professor W. M. Davis, Professor Emeritus of Geology, 
Harvard University, there has recently been formed a “Committee to Ex- 
pedite the Completion of the Topographic Map of the United States.” 
This committee proposes to do whatever it can to hasten the completion 
of the map and asks the aid of all interested parties. 

The number of topographic engineers in this country who are qualified 
to do such mapping is limited; hence there cannot be indefinite expan- 
sion of the Survey’s activities in this direction. But the present staff 
could be considerably increased if more funds were available for the 
work. Aid can be lent to the project by securing larger appropriations 
from Congress and from the legislatures of the states which are co-oper- 
ating with the Survey. 

The members of the Sierra Club make much use of the maps of the 
Survey, and should therefore be greatly interested in “expediting the 
map.” Will not the members take it upon themselves individually to 
lend aid in this campaign by writing to their representatives in Congress 
asking for favorable consideration for the Survey’s requests for appro- 
priations? Further information can be secured by writing to Professor 
A. E. Burton, secretary of the committee, Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, Boston, Massachusetts. Tracy I. STORER 


e 


WALKING Trip BETWEEN LAKE TAHOE AND YOSEMITE 


Any persons desirous of taking a two-weeks walking trip between Lake 
Tahoe and Yosemite, During July, August, or September, may find it of 
interest to communicate with Mr. and Mrs. Richard Michaelis, Corte 
Madera, Cal. 


Notes and Correspondence 239 


MEMORIAL EXERCISES IN HONoR OF JOHN MuIR 


We are indebted to Mrs. Anna N. Kendall, a member of the outing party 
of 1911, for the following account of the exercises in honor of John Muir | 
at the University of Wisconsin on December 6, when the bust by C. S. 
Pietro, given to the university by Thomas E. Brittingham, of Madison, 
was unveiled: 


Dear Mr. Colby: I am sending you the program of the exer- 
cises in honor of John Muir and the unveiling of the bust of him. 
I thought of you, one of his younger friends, as his older friends, 
comrades, schoolmates, and professors sat on the platform, some 
of them very old and very white of hair, but all voicing his praise 
most sincerely and genuinely, and certainly with deep affection 
and emotion. I wish their words could be printed in full, also 
that I had a photograph of the platform with the old men sitting 
and standing, all with the expression and attitude of loving re- 
membrance of their old-time friend. 


The program, after naming the speakers, concludes with a “Tribute” 
from Dr. S. Hall Young and this letter from John Burroughs: 


West Park, N. Y., Nov. 29. 

Dear Sir: I wish I could be with you on Dec. 6th when the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin proposes to do honor to the memory of one 
of its old pupils, John Muir; but the very serious illness of my 
wife and my own uncertain health will not permit me to enjoy 
that privilege. 

My affection and admiration for Muir were deep and genuine. 
When in his company I used to chafe a good deal under his biting 
Scotch wit and love of contradiction. He loved a verbal contest 
which was, with him, only another form of the trial of grit which in 
his school days he used to cheerfully submit to when two boys, 
armed with whips, used to stand up before each other and lay on 
till one of them cried enough. As I had never had that kind of 
Scotch discipline I did not keenly enjoy this sort of diversion. But 
his heart was all right, only he liked too well to mask its real 
kindliness in this way. 

He was a genuine student and lover of nature, and he has 
brought to us the message of the mountains as no other man has. 

In recently reading Emerson’s Journals, I was struck and 
pleased with the fact that he places John Muir in the list of what 
he called “My Men.” In said list the first is Thomas Carlyle, whom 
he first met in 1833, and the last is John Muir, whom he met in 
1871. Muir’s nature lore and his striking characteristics were 
bound to make an impression upon Emerson. He met no “mush 
of concession” when he met Muir. Muir tried to persuade him to 
quit his party for a night and go and camp with him in the woods, 
but Emerson’s friends objected. Muir said Emerson had the 
“house habit.” But Emerson looked upon himself then as an old 
man, though he was only 68. 

I am glad your university is to pay this tribute to its famous 
and beloved old student. 

With all good wishes, I am, 

Very sincerely yours, 


Julius E. Olson, Esq., Joun BurroucHs 
Madison, Wis. 


240 Sierra Club Bulletin 


RECORDS OF SIERRAN ANIMALS IN MAGAZINE 


Mr. W. E. Cosy, Secretary Sierra Club. 

Dear Mr. Colby: It occurs to me that a valuable addition to the club’s 
annual magazine would be a record of the animals seen during the an- 
nual outings. 

Some of the members who go on the trips could make the necessary 
notes and write up the articles, giving the dates, localities, descriptions, 
etc. The knapsack parties would naturally be the ones to see any deer, 
bear, or mountain sheep, and it would be well for this to appear in the 
magazine, giving more of a popular than a scientific write-up. 

If I can be of any help in the premises, please call on me. 

Yours very truly, 
M. Hatt MCALLISTER 


EVERETT SHEPARDSON 


Early in January the Sierra Club lost one of its most active members, 
Mr. Everett Shepardson, of Los Angeles. Mr. Shepardson has served. 
on the executive committee of the Southern California Section ever 
since its organization, and was for three years its chairman. He was 
also an earnest worker on the Muir Lodge Committee. During the hol- 
idays, with a party of friends, he went on a knapsack trip into the moun- 
tains, where they were overtaken by a severe snow-storm, suffering 
great privation. Doubtless the exposure and attendant hardship con- 
tributed largely to his death. For many years he has been an enthusias- 
tic member of the annual outings and will be sadly missed. 


KiIncGs RIvER CANON 


Mrs. P. A. Kanawyer wishes to announce to her friends that she is still 
in the business of packing and outfitting for trips into Kings River Cafion 
and vicinity, and that her store and camp in the cafion will be open as 
usual in the summer. Her address is Dunlap, Cal. 


NATIONAL PARK NOTES 
+ 
TEXT OF THE NATIONAL Park ACT 


An Act to establish a National Park Service, and for other purposes 


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That there is hereby created 
in the Department of the Interior a service to be called the National 
Park Service, which shall be under the charge of a director, who shall 
be appointed by the Secretary and who shall receive a salary of $4500 
per annum. There shall also be appointed by the Secretary the following 
assistants and other employees at the salaries designated: One assistant 
director, at $2500 per annum; one chief clerk, at $2000 per annum; one 
draftsman, at $1800 per annum; one messenger, at $600 per annum; 
and, in addition thereto, such other employees as the Secretary of the 
Interior shall deem necessary: Provided, That not more than $8100 an- 
nually shall be expended for salaries of experts, assistants, and em- 
ployees within the District of Columbia not herein specifically enumer- 
ated unless previously authorized by law. The service thus established 
shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as na- 
tional parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such 
means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said 
parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the 
scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein 
and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by 
such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future 
generations. 


Sec. 2. That the director shall, under the direction of the Secretary of 
the Interior, have the supervision, management, and control of the sev- 
eral national parks and national monuments which are now under the 
jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, and of the Hot Springs 
Reservation in the State of Arkansas, and of such other national parks 
and reservations of like character as may be hereafter created by Con- 
gress: Provided, That in the supervision, management, and control of 
national monuments contiguous to national forests the Secretary of Ag- 
riculture may co-operate with said National Park Service to such ex- 
tent as may be requested by the Secretary of the Interior. 


Sec. 3. That the Secretary of the Interior shall make and publish such 
rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the use 
and management of the parks, monuments, and reservations under the 
jurisdiction of the National Park Service, and any violations of any of 
the rules and regulations authorized by this Act shall be punished as 
provided for in section fifty of the Act entitled “An Act to codify and 


242 Sierra Club Bulletin 


amend the penal laws of the United States,” approved March fourth, 
nineteen hundred and nine, as amended by section six of the Act of 
June twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and ten (Thirty-sixth United States 
Statutes at Large, page eight hundred and fifty-seven). He may 
also, upon terms and conditions to be fixed by him, sell or dispose of 
timber in those cases where in his judgment the cutting of such timber 
is required in order to control the attacks of insects or diseases or other- 
wise conserve the scenery or the natural or historic objects in any such 
park, monument, or reservation. He may also provide in his discretion 
for the destruction of such animals and of such plant life as may be 
detrimental to the use of any of said parks, monuments, or reservations. 
He may also grant privileges, leases, and permits for the use of land for 
the accommodation of visitors in the various parks, monuments, or other 
reservations herein provided for, but for periods not exceeding twenty 
years; and no natural curiosities, wonders, or objects of interest shall 
be leased, rented, or granted to anyone on such terms as to interfere 
with free access to them by the public: Provided, however, That the 
Secretary of the Interior may, under such rules and regulations and on 
such terms as he may prescribe, grant the privilege to graze live-stock 
within any national park, monument, or reservation herein referred to 
when in his judgment such use is not detrimental to the primary pur- 
pose for which such park, monument, or reservation was created, except 
that this provision shall not apply to the Yellowstone National Park. 


Sec. 4. That nothing in this Act contained shall affect or modify the 
provisions of the Act approved February fifteenth, nineteen hundred and 
one, entitled “An Act relating to rights of way through certain parks, 
reservations, and other public lands.” 

Approved, August 25, 1916. 


REpoRT OF ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR ON PROGRESS IN 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL PARKS FOR I916 


The report of Honorable Stephen T. Mather, Assistant to the Secretary 
of the Interior, covering the National Park situation for the past year 
should be read by everyone who wishes to keep in touch with the won- 
derful development which has been going on in the national parks under 
Mr. Mather’s able supervision. For the benefit of the members of the 
Sierra Club, the following abstract of this report is made. This report 
is addressed to the Secretary of the Interior, Honorable Franklin K. 
Lane. Mr. Mather states at the outset that Mr. Lane had in mind the 
fact that the scenic features of this country were unsurpassed, and that 
American tourist travel should be induced to visit these parks not only 
during the great war, but after its conclusion. In order to accomplish 
this purpose, accommodations for visitors with both large and small in- 
comes should be provided and means of travel to the parks and through 
the parks perfected. Mr. Mather was authorized to begin the develop- 


National Park Notes 243 


ment of these parks “on a broad-gauge scale,” and he has justified Sec- 
retary Lane’s faith in his ability to undertake this great work. Mr. 
Mather very early selected Robert Sterling Yard to take charge of the 
campaign of public education, and all of our members are familiar with 
the beautiful National Park Portfolio which was only a part of the edu- 
cational campaign. This was published through the co-operation of the 
Government with the railroads benefited by such advertising. 

Publications all over the country were furnished with photographs 
and material descriptive of the parks, and the interest awakened has re- 
sulted in a great demand for the loan of photographs, motion pictures, 
lectures, etc., which the department is as yet unable to meet. 

The increased travel to the parks during 1916 has fully justified this 
educational campaign, for the 1916 travel exceeded the travel of the year 
previous, in spite of the fact that the International Exposition at San 
Francisco was closed. In motor travel particularly was the increase 
noticeable; since 12,563 cars registered at the various parks in I915, 
while 19,848 cars, carrying 78,916 tourists, registered in 1916. In the 
near future it is quite evident that the travel in private machines will 
constitute the greater portion of park travel, and as a consequence this 
necessitates the construction of new roads and the improving of those 
already existing. The revenue from this motor travel is also encourag- 
ing. In 1916, $65,311 was received from automobile fees, as against $42,- 
589 in 1915 and $14,245 in 1914. 

Vigorous protests have been made against this direct tax on the 
motorist, but it must be maintained until larger appropriations are 
made for the construction and maintenance of roads suitable for 
motor traffic. Perhaps it should be continued indefinitely as a 
means of providing funds to repair the natural wear and tear on 
roads and bridges, the deterioration of which is unusually severe 
where they are used extensively by motor cars. 

Mr. Mather feels that the policy of allowing automobiles in the national 
parks has been fully justified by the results.* 

Mr. Mather points out the fact that Congress has largely increased its 
appropriations, showing that it responded to the popular interest in these 
parks. Over half a million was appropriated for the fiscal year 1917, as 
against a little over quarter of a million for the fiscal year 1916, and for 
the first time Congress provided for the care and protection of national 
monuments under the Department of the Interior, appropriating $21,500. 

If Mr. Mather had done no other one act, the people of the United 
States would be deeply in his debt as a result of the recent purchase of 
the patented lands in the Giant Forest. These were lands in the Sequoia 
National Park in the immediate vicinity of Ranger Station and in the 
very heart of the forest, including some of the finest stands of the great 
sequoia. An option was secured from the owners for $70,000, and 
through Mr. Mather’s efforts the sum of $50,000 was appropriated by 

*In this connection it will be recalled that Mr. Muir and the Sierra Club ap- 


proved of allowing automobiles to enter Yosemite National Park, realizing that it 
would mean a great increase in visitors. 


244 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Congress toward this purchase. In order to make up the balance, Mr. 
Mather secured the co-operation of the National Geographic Society, 
which generously and patriotically appropriated $20,000 out of its treas- 
ury, so that this splendid forest of monarchs might be preserved for all 
time. 
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 

The crowning act of last year’s administration of the parks was the cre- 
ation of the National Park Service, of which Mr. Mather has the fol- 
lowing to say: 

The special legislation of greatest importance was the passage 
of the National Park Service bill, providing for the establishment 
of a bureau in Washington to administer as a properly coordinat- 
ed system all of the national parks and the national monuments 
under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department. This substi- 
tutes efficiency for the former haphazard consideration of each 
separate park by a small force in the office of the chief clerk of 
the department, already burdened with numerous other important 
duties. 

This measure provides for the appointment of a director and 
assistant director as the executive officers of the bureau and a 
small corps of clerks, stenographers, etc., all charged with the 
performance of duties relating solely to the administration and 
supervision of the national park system. It is an important step 
forward which renders possible the realization of the manifest 
destiny of our national parks as one economic asset. 


NEW NATIONAL PARKS 


Mr. Mather reports the creation of the new Lassen Volcanic National 
Park in California, and the Hawaii National Park, which embraces the 
craters of the three great volcanoes, Kilauea, Mauna Loa, and Hale- 
akala, on the Hawaiian Islands. 

The bill for the creation of Mount McKinley National Park in Alaska 
passed the Senate and is pending before the House. There is also a 
bill pending providing for the extension of the Rocky Mountain Na- 
tional Park. Recent Federal legislation following up state legislation 
has vested the Federal Government with exclusive jurisdiction in the 
Yellowstone, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake national parks, and pro- 
vision has been made for the United States Commissioners who will sit 
as local judges to punish violations of the rules and regulations. Mr. 
Mather points out the importance of having similar steps taken in con- 
nection with the parks in California and Colorado, but exclusive juris- 
diction over these parks must first be ceded to the Federal Government 
by legislatures of these states.* 

The Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Sequoia, and General 
Grant parks have shown by the revenues of this last year that they are 
paying their own way as far as administrative cost is concerned, and 
when they have been thoroughly developed by proper roads and trails 
they ought to become self-supporting. 


*This is most desirable, and is something that the Sierra Club should work to 
accomplish as far as California is concerned.—Editor. 


National Park Notes 245 


YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 


The opening up of the Cody (or eastern) entrance to the park by rail- 
road was accomplished this last year, and a fourth entrance on the south 
is planned. Automobile travel into the park was heavy during the sea- 
son; 3445 automobiles, carrying 14,980 tourists, entered the park. All 
transportation lines in the park will be motorized, and the stage-horses 
will become things of the past. An important innovation was the re- 
moval of the Federal troops. These were replaced by a corps of civilian 
rangers selected from the officers.and soldiers who had just been policing 
the park. 
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 

Glacier was a very popular park last season, and satisfactory accommo- 
dations for the care of the tourist contributed largely to this popularity. 
In addition to the first-class hotels, chalets, and camps in existence, ex- 
tensive additions to existing hotels are being planned. It is quite im- 
portant that additional roads be built to open up the marvelously beauti- 
ful but less accessible regions of the park. By special arrangement, Mr. 
Mather has secured a splendid administrative site near the southern 
boundary of the park, which he has agreed to donate to the Govern- 
ment, and has secured the co-operation of the citizens of that vicinity, 
so that, if Congress makes the necessary appropriations, new administra- 
tive buildings will be constructed and the park entrance further improved 
in that vicinity. 

The appropriation of $110,000 for the protection and improve- 
ment of Glacier Park which was contained in the last sundry civil 
bill has enabled us to greatly improve the roads on the east side 
of the park, particularly the road in the Blackfeet Indian Reserva- 
tion between Glacier Park Station and Divide Creek. Nearly 
$45,000 has been spent on this section during the past season. 

It has also made possible the construction of several new trails. 
Among these new trails are the Grinnell Glacier trail and the new 
trail between the Glacier Hotel and Avalanche Creek. The latter 
trail will be extended to Granite Park next spring, and when 
completed will be one of the most scenic trails in the park system. 
Shelter cabins of attractive design are also under construction at 
Triple Divide, Red Eagle Lake, Piegan Pass, and Iceberg Lake, 
and next season will welcome the hiker and other trail travelers 
when storms overtake them or when they find it desirable to break 
their trips for other purposes. 

An elaborate trail sign system is also being installed for the 
benefit of the hiker and independent tourist who chooses to ride 
over the trails without guide service. A trail map of the park is 
in contemplation as a further aid to the lover of the trails. 

Mr. Mather has also reorganized the saddle-horse service, so that in the 
future there ought not to be any shortage of animals for the trail. 


YOSEMITE’S GREAT DEVELOPMENT 


A survey of the 1916 season in Yosemite National Park quickly and 
clearly defines three heads under which its development may be dis- 
cussed. These are, first, new contracts covering large public-service 


246 Sierra Club Bulletin 


concessions; second, increased Federal appropriations for improvement 
and protection of the park; third, removal of restrictions on motor travel. 

For many years the department unsuccessfully endeavored to induce 
parties with capital to undertake the construction of new hotels in the 
park, particularly on the floor of the valley. No individual or corpora- 
tion could be interested in the park, and its future at the opening of the 
exposition season was dark indeed. Then D. J. Desmond, of San Fran- 
cisco, general commissary contractor operating in all sections of the 
state, a young man already successful in business, a man of vision and 
immense energy, had the situation in the Yosemite brought to his atten- 
tion. He saw its opportunities, and applied for a comprehensive con- 
cession covering the operation of hotel, camps, transportation service, 
stores, garages, etc. 

This application was not granted to him at that time, but he was per- 
mitted to install and operate a new camp during the 1916 season with 
the understanding that if he rendered good service in his camp he would 
have a long-time concession. He built and operated the Yosemite Falls 
camp and gave his guests service of a high order. He more than met 
the conditions. Accordingly, the department entered into contracts with 
the Desmond Park Service Company, of which Mr. Desmond is presi- 
dent, covering the following: The erection of a hotel on the floor of 
the valley, to cost not less than $150,000; and another hotel at Glacier 
Point, to cost approximately $35,000; camps on the floor of the valley; 
lodges at various points in the higher parts of the park and along the 
Tioga road, which crosses the park at some distance from the rim of 
the gorge; the installation and operation of automobile transportation 
on all the roads of the park open to motor travel; the operation of trail 
transportation, and the construction and operation of stores, garages, etc. 

The privileges granted in these contracts by their terms are to be ex- 
ercised for a period of twenty years, and the department in considera- 
tion of granting these concessions receives annually during the first two 
years of the life of the contract 25 per cent of the net profits of the en- 
terprise, and thereafter 50 per cent of the net profit. The net profit of 
the company is determined by deducting from the gross income 6 per 
cent On money invested in the enterprise, depreciation of equipment, 
buildings, etc., and expenses of operation, such as salaries, advertising, 
and insurance. It is provided, however, that, if this profit-sharing clause 
operates to the disadvantage of the department, it may elect at the end 
of two years to take 4 per cent of the gross income of the company in- 
stead of a share of the net profits. 

Under this contract the Desmond Park Service Company erected, 
prior to the opening of the 1916 season, two camps on the floor of the 
valley, the Yosemite Falls camp and the El Capitan camp, and operated 
them during the season; also the Glacier Point hotel camp, and three 
new lodges at Lake Tenaya, Tuolumne Meadows, and Lake Merced; all 
of which proved popular because of the excellent accommodations and 
service rendered. New automobile stage service was established during 


National Park Notes 247 


the season on the Mariposa and Chinquapin roads south of the valley, 
and on the Tioga road and Big Oak Flat road, as well as on the floor of 
the valley itself. 

Furthermore, construction work on the new hotel at Glacier Point 
was undertaken, and is now nearing completion. On the Fourth of July 
ground was broken for the new hotel on the floor of the valley, and it 
is now in the course of erection. This building will be ready for the 
1918 tourist season. 

This outline of what the Desmond Park Service Company has already 
accomplished and has under way should leave no doubt in the mind of 
anyone that Yosemite National Park is well provided with excellent ac- 
commodations for its visitors, and that more and finer accommodations 
and highest-class hotel service are still to come. 

Camp Curry, Camp Ahwahnee, and Camp Lost Arrow, long established 
in the Yosemite Valley, were operated this season under their manage- 
ments of former years. 


CONGRESSIONAL APPROPRIATIONS 


Congress made a more liberal appropriation for Yosemite National Park 
for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1917, than for any previous period. 
This appropriation made available $250,000 for protection and improve- 
ment of the park. It was provided, however, that not more than $150,- 
000 might be expended in the construction of a new hydroelectric power 
plant, and not more than $75,000 in regrading the El Portal road. There 
was nothing specifically appropriated for other roads in the park, but 
they were improved with revenue derived from concessions granted, au- 
tomobile license fees, and from miscellaneous sources. 

The new hydroelectric power plant was an absolute necessity, in view 
of the increasing demands for power, light, and heat for the park con- 
cessioners, and it was desirable that this demand be met by the Govern- 
ment because the sale of electric current meant a substantial revenue for 
the park. During the summer of 1913 the late Mr. Henry Floy, electri- 
cal engineer, of New York, and sometime inspector of the Interior De- 
partment, made a careful study of this hydroelectric power project, and 
it was largely his able presentation of the results of his study of this 
project before the Committee on Appropriations that gained for it favor- 
able consideration. The new plant is now in the course of construction. 

In general, it may be said that power plants, water and sanitation sys- 
tems, and telephone lines in national parks should be owned and con- 
trolled by the Government. Their construction by the Government re- 
lieves the concessioner from the necessity of investing in these highly 
essential works and makes it possible for him to turn his capital into 
the further development of his own enterprise. Furthermore, as public 
works under the control of the National Park Service, they can always 
be made to yield a revenue. 

The increase in motor travel was remarkable, and a comparison of the 
number of machines entering the park this season with the number reg- 


248 Sierra Club Bulletin 


istered during 1914 and 1915 constitutes the best index of the sound, 
substantial growth of the park’s popularity. The records indicate that in 
1914, 673 cars entered the park; in 1915, 3895; and in 1916, prior to Oc- 
tober 12, 3938. This season 14,166 tourists entered the park in private 
machines. It is generally understood that automobile parties remain in 
the park a longer time than any other class of tourists. This is par- 
ticularly true of those who visited the floor of the valley in their cars. 

It has been indicated that the removal of restrictions on motor traffic 
is one of the important factors that has influenced park development 
during the season of 1916. Prior to this season no private machines 
were ever allowed to run on the floor of the valley, but the opening this 
season of these roads was largely responsible for the great influx of 
private cars and the extraordinary length of time spent by motorists in 
the park. Next season it is expected that motor travel will be double 
that of this season. This is a conservative estimate. 

It is inevitable that for several years Yosemite Park will be just as 
popular with the motorists as Yellowstone, and yet the roads in this 
park are so inferior to those of Yellowstone that it is useless to compare 
them. Appropriations should be made at once to extensively improve 
the Tioga road and Big Oak Flat road, and to continue the regrading of 
the El Portal road. These highways should be put in as good condition 
as the state highways with which they connect. The Wawona road 
should also be improved, but this is a toll road, and until private interest 
in the same is extinguished and it becomes a public highway its recon- 
struction cannot be undertaken. The Wawona and Chinquapin toll roads 
are the only remaining roads in the national parks that are not under 
the control of the National Park Service. They constitute a constant 
source of administrative difficulty, and their private control is inconsis- 
tent with the best interests of the park. The additional cost of using this 
road, which the tourist traveling in his own conveyance has to bear, dis- 
courages travel via Fresno and Merced and other cities in their vicinity. 

Dignified gateways should be constructed at the several entrances, par- 
ticularly at the points where the Wawona, El Portal, and Tioga roads 
enter the park boundaries. 


MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK 


The Rainier National Park Company was granted a comprehensive con- 
cession, including the privilege of operating hotels, camps, transportation 
service, stores, and garages. A first-class hotel camp is under construc- 
tion in Paradise Valley, and will be opened up for the season of 1917. 
This company also operates an automobile service between Tacoma and 
Seattle and various points in the park. On account of the exceedingly 
heavy winter, the season opened very late in the park last year. It is 
highly desirable that other sections of the park be opened up so as to 
make accessible the incomparable Spray and Moraine parks lying on the 
northern slope of the mountain. A road up the Carbon River would ac- 
complish this purpose, and a survey has already been made. 


National Park Notes 249 


CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK 


Mr. Mather plans to completely reorganize the Crater Lake hotel con- 
cession. The construction of the scenic highway around the lake was 


continued. 
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK 


In Sequoia National Park the lack of roads and hotel accommodations, 
while not discouraging tourist travel particularly, has militated against 
the park’s popularity. A new hotel or camp is a necessity, and it is es- 
sential that a new administrative building be erected and an adequate 
water system be installed in the Giant Forest; also that provision be 
made for the sanitation of the village in the forest. 

As the Giant Forest is the scenic attraction of the park at the present 
time, and indeed the only accessible part, its improvement must have at- 
tention. The major portion of the trees in the Giant Forest grow on 
land held in private ownership, but, as has been stated, Congress has ap- 
propriated $50,000 and the National Geographic Society has advanced 
$20,000 to complete their purchase and revest title to them in the United 
States. Funds were also appropriated by Congress for a new bridge over 
the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River near the Giant Forest. 

The new basis of compensation for privileges granted to the Mount 
Whitney Power & Electric Company in the park has netted the revenue 
fund more than $7000 during the past year. This fund is now just large 
enough to protect and administer the park. Appropriations for improve- 
ment only will be requested. 

“THE GREATER SEQUOIA”’ 


Senate bill 5913, introduced by Senator Phelan, and House bill 13168, by 
Representative Kent, providing for enlarging Sequoia National Park to 
include the Kings and Kern cafions and several miles of the crest of the 
Sierra Nevada, including Mount Whitney, are now pending in Congress, 
and will be considered in the short session which convenes in December. 
The early enactment of this legislation cannot be too strongly urged. 

The public land proposed to be added to Sequoia National Park by 
these measures will never be valuable for any other than park purposes. 
Cattle are grazed on the mountain meadows during part of the year, but 
the administration of these meadows as part of the park will not inter- 
fere with the exercise of grazing privileges for many years to come. 
Small tracts of land here and there will be fenced for pasturage of live- 
stock used by tourists. 

Sequoia Park now has the giant sequoia trees as its one attraction, 
but if enlarged as proposed it will become a scenic park of as much dis- 
tinction as that possessed by any other park in the system. Further- 
more, it will become a game sanctuary of as much importance as the 
Yellowstone National Park. 


GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK 


General Grant National Park had a 50-per-cent increase in the number 
of visitors this year. There has been a remarkable increase in travel to 


250 Sierra Club Bulletin 


this park since 1914. In that season 3735 visitors registered in the park, 
last year the number jumped to 10,523, and this year to 15,360; 8612 
people entered this year in automobiles. 

The fees from automobiles so increased the revenues of this park that 
it may now be administered without appropriations by Congress. How- 
ever, an appropriation will be needed for a water system, a new ranger 
station, and other improvements that are absolutely essential. 


ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK 


This park had more visitors than any other large scenic park during the 
past year, and the accommodations were taxed to their maximum capa- 
city. Additions to the larger hotels will take care of this heavy travel 
next year. It is quite essential that the Government appropriate addi- 
tional money for improvements in this park. A bill now pending before 
Congress provides for the addition of a number of scenic tracts which 
will bring the entire boundary of the park close to the city limits of 
Estes Park. 


NATIONAL PARKS CONFERENCE 


The National Parks Conference, held in the auditorium of the New Na- 
tional Museum, Washington, D.C., January 2 to 6, not only resulted in 
stimulating discussions of every phase of national park development, but 
also aroused unusual public interest. The evening sessions in particular, 
four of which were devoted to illustrated lectures on the parks, brought 
out such increasing crowds that on the final evening an overflow audi- 
ence of between two and three hundred persons waited patiently for over 
an hour in an anteroom to hear the “Bear Stories” of Enos Mills, who 
generously repeated his talk for their benefit. We have not space even 
to enumerate the speakers, more than fifty men prominent in administra- 
tive, departmental, civic, and editorial work, men whose co-operation in 
this movement indicates the growing importance of the parks in national 
affairs. Talks by W. A. Welch, Chief Engineer of the Palisades Inter- 
state Park, by J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of Dominion Parks, Canada, 
by Professor E. M. Lehnerts, of the University of Minnesota, and by 
Herbert Quick, the author, were especially significant. One session was 
devoted to “Motor Travel to the Parks,’ another to “Wild Animal 
Life,” and another to “Recreational Use of National Parks.” The names 
of such speakers as Henry S. Graves, Chief of the Forest Service, E. W. 
Nelson, Chief of the Biological Survey, Dr. Charles D. Walcott, Secre- 
tary of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles Sheldon, of the Boone and 
Crockett Club, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Editor of the National Geographic 
Magazine, Huston Thompson, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, and Mrs. 
John Dickinson Sherman, Conservation Chairman of the General Feder- 
ation of Women’s Clubs, indicate the scope of the conference and the 
broad, constructive policy of the National Park Service. The success of 
the conference was in great measure due to the untiring work of Mr. 
Robert Sterling Yard. 


National Park Notes 251 


REPORT OF SUPERINTENDENT OF NATIONAL PARKS FOR 1916 


The annual report of the Superintendent of National Parks for the year 
1916 contains a tremendous fund of information of vital interest and 
gives in detail the plans and accomplishments of the National Park Ser- 
vice. The following recommendations concerning the Ranger Service 
are particularly important: 

I strongly recommend that each member of the corps be ap- 
pointed in the National Park Service, rather than as at present to 
the park in which they are to work, so that an employee in one 
park may be readily transferred to another park, where his train- 
ing and experience make him more valuable to the Service. 

The ranger force in reality makes the success or failure in ad- 
ministering the parks, and I feel that there should be a civil-ser- 
vice examination to determine the educational qualifications of the 
rangers. While such an examination can not determine the most 
important requirements, temperament, tact, etc., it would give an 
assured fundamental base to build upon, and after one season’s 
trial, before a permanent appointment was made, the department 
would know if the ranger had the desired all-around qualifications 
for the ranger corps. 

The longer a man is in the service the more valuable he is, and, 
therefore, I think a ranger should enter the service with the de- 
sire of making it his life’s work, and after the service is once fully 
organized, promotions to higher positions should be made in the 
corps, so that each man would have the fullest incentive to give 
his best service, knowing that advancement would be based solely 
on character and general efficiency. 

The suggestions concerning appropriations for road and trail construc- 
tion are particularly pertinent and point out the tremendous waste that 
is certain to result from piecemeal appropriation. It is questionable if 
Congress can be induced to alter its “pork barrel” methods, which are 
diametrically opposed to the greatest efficiency and economy of expen- 
diture. Mr. Marshall also points out the great need of sanitation and 
appropriate sewer systems in the various parks, which need is becoming 
doubly important because of the continually increasing travel. 
Appended to this report are the reports of the various park supervis- 
ors. Particularly interesting to us is the report of Mr. W. B. Lewis, 
Supervisor of the Yosemite National Park. He points out the necessity 
for suitable bridges across the river, to take the place of those that no 
longer meet the existing requirements. He recommends the extension of 
the Washburn Lake trail to join the Isberg Pass trail, also a new trail 
from the McClure Fork of the Merced via Babcock and Emerick lakes 
over Tuolumne Pass, to take the place of the present trail over the much 
higher Vogelsang Pass. This is a most desirable change, as it will en- 
able travel to pass from the Merced Lake region to Tuolumne Meadows 
much earlier and with much less effort than via the Vogelsang route.* 


*We are informed that last fall a trail was built from Lake Tenaya via Magee 
Lake to the Tuolumne River and thence down to the Waterwheel Falls in the main 
Tuolumne Cafion. This is a splendid piece of work, and the trail should be con- 
tinued on down the Tuolumne Cafion. However, members of the Sierra Club feel 
very strongly that a trail should first be built from the vicinity of Hardin Lake near 
the Tioga road down into Pate Valley, following the grade of the old Indian trail, 


252 Sierra Club Bulletin 


All of the reports of the various park supervisors will bear careful 
reading, and we recommend these comprehensive reports by Mr. Mather 
and Mr. Marshall as being the most convincing evidence of the great 
progress in national park affairs during the past year. 


VISITORS TO PARKS, 1909 TO 1916 


Name of park. 1910 1911 1916 


Hot Springs Reservation....| (4) 120 ,000) 130 ,000| 135 ,000/2 135 ,000)2 125 ,000)2 115 ,000) 118 ,740 
Yellowstone National Park..| 32 ,545 19 575 23 ,054) 22 ,970 35 ,849 
1 


Casa Grande Ruin......... 1 ,909 
Sequoia National Park..... 10 ,780 
Yosemite National Park.... 33 ,390 
General Grant Nat’! Park... 15 ,360 
Mount Rainier Nat’l Park. . 23 ,989 
Crater Lake National Park.. 12 ,265 
Wind Cave National Park. . 9 ,000 
Platt National Park........ 2 30 ,000 
Sullys Hill Park........... 21,500 
Mesa Verde National Park.. 1 385 
Glacier National Park......]........|.....06- 12 ,839 
Rocky Mountain National 

Parle So c)eh oy Woes sets As As MOM ene, MURAL MIS WON UVES Rai aU a eT 2 51 ,000 
Hawaii National Parks 3.22 eee ia OE NE SELON oie Lae | ee (4) 
Lassen Volcanic National 

Parke oe ies ee TEN ON a ce a RYE M1 RAE A rela ean ev aalay anc | atari ae (1) 

Totals oe ae 86 089) 198 ,606] 224 ,407| 229 534] 252 ,153) 240 ,193) 335 ,299] 358 ,006 


1 No record. 2 Estimated. 


AUTOMOBILE AND MOTORCYCLE LICENSES ISSUED, 
SEASONS OF I9QI4, I915, AND I916 


1914 1916 


Auto- | Motor- Auto- Motor- 
mobiles. | cycles. 3 . | mobiles. 


19 ,848 


1 No record kept or estimate made. 2 Estimated. 


crossing the Tuolumne River in Pate Valley, and continuing on out of Pate Valley 
to the north to a connection with the present Pleasant Valley—Rodgers Lake trail. 
This trail would enable parties to leave the Yosemite Valley and easily enter the 
northern portion of the park, which is now walled off from easy access by the Grand 
Cafion of the Tuolumne. The work of the city of San Francisco in Hetch-Hetchy 
Valley has removed the main opportunity for camping on the floor of the valley, and 
has rendered the crossing of the cafion at that point much less desirable. It is im- 
portant that the route suggested through Pate Valley should be opened up at as 
early a date as possible, to take the place of the former route through Hetch-Hetchy, 
so that the northern portion of the park may become easily accessible from Yosemite 
Valley. This would have the double advantage of allowing persons to return via 
Tuolumne Meadows, thus making a round trip that can not be excelled, and will en- 
able a trail to be started from Pate Valley up to the Tuolumne Cafion to meet the 
trail already commenced leading down from Tuolumne Meadows.—Editor. 


FORESTRY NOTES 
Edited by WaLTER L. HuBER 


+ 


EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL Report oF Hon. Davip F. Houston, 
SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE 


RECREATION USE OF THE FORESTS 


The use of the national forests for recreation purposes continues to ex- 
tend. Thousands of local recreation centers, public picnic and camping 
grounds, excursion points, and amusement resorts are being developed. 
Some of the areas, located near enough to cities and towns to be reached 
by considerable numbers of persons, serve already the purposes of muni- 
cipal recreation grounds and public parks. To meet local needs along 
this line, the department is co-operating with municipalities. These 
forms of public service can be rendered without difficulty in connection 
with the fulfillment of the general purposes of the forests. 


NATIONAL FORESTS AND NATIONAL PARKS 


The handling of the national forest recreation resources inevitably 
raises the question of the relation of the national forests and the na- 
tional parks. At present there is no clear distinction in the public mind 
between the two. Both are administered for the benefit of the public 
along lines which overlap. The parks and forests occur side by side and 
have the same general physical characteristics—extensive areas of wild 
and rugged lands, for the most part timbered, with development con- 
ditioned upon road construction and similar provisions for public use. 
They differ chiefly in the fact that the attractions of the national parks 
from the recreational standpoint are more notable. Yet this is not always 
true. Several of the parks are inferior in their natural features to por- 
tions of the forests. The need of drawing a clear distinction between 
national parks and national forests and of a definite policy governing 
their relation is increasingly evident. Parks are being advocated where 
the land should stay in the forests, while elsewhere areas which should 
be made parks continue to be administered as forests—for example, the 
Grand Cafion of the Colorado. 

A national park should be created only where there are scenic features 
of such outstanding importance for beauty or as natural marvels that 
they merit national recognition and protection and, on this account, have 
a public value transcending that of any material resources on the same 
land—such areas, for example, as those now comprised in the Yellow- 
stone and Yosemite parks and in the Grand Cafion National Monument. 
The areas should be large enough to justify administration separate 
from the forests and the boundaries drawn so as not to include timber, 
grazing, or other resources the economic use of which is essential to the 


254 Sierra Club Bulletin 


upbuilding and industrial welfare of the country. In addition, when 
parks are created from parts of the forests, the portions remaining as 
forests should not be left in a form difficult or impossible to administer. 


CLEAR-CUT POLICY NECESSARY 


The importance of a clear-cut policy is evidenced by the efforts fre- 
quently made to secure the creation of national parks out of areas con- 
taining great bodies of timber, extensive grazing lands, and other re- 
sources, the withdrawal of which from use would be uneconomic and 
prejudicial to the local and general public interest. In most cases the 
desire for a specific park, where economic use of the resources also is 
essential, has led to the proposal for an administration of the area, after 
the creation of the park, identical with the present forest administration. 
Several such measures now are before Congress. Their enactment 
would result in a mere division of the public properties into parks and 
forests, having no distinction except in name; handled alike but by du- 
plicate organizations in different departments. Still more serious is the 
fact that the cutting up of the forests would greatly cripple administra- 
tion of the remaining lands. It would doubtless mean the abandonment 
of large areas which should remain under public ownership and control 
for timber production and watershed protection. It would greatly re- 
duce efficiency in forest-fire protection and in the handling of current 
business, increase the expense of protection and administration, and 
cause endless confusion to users, who in many cases would have to deal 
with two departments in developing resources when, for instance, log- 
ging and grazing units overlap. 

The protection of the scenic features and the development of the rec- 
reational use of the lands are being taken care of in the national forests. 
Some of the most unusual scenic areas in the forests are best suited to a 
full park administration. The bulk of the forest areas, however, should 
continue in their present status, where they will be fully protected and 
developed for recreation purposes as a part of the forest administra- 
tion. The extensive road building, made possible by the $10,000,000 re- 
cently appropriated, will open them up rapidly. 

An added cause of confusion is the fact that national parks and na- 
tional forests are administered by two executive departments. While 
there is an effort to co-operate, nevertheless difficulties arise which could 
be wholly avoided if they were under one department. Unquestionably 
the administration of the forests should remain in the Department of 
Agriculture, because of the close relationship of the work of the Forest 
Service to the activities of other bureaus of the same department, such 
as the Bureau of Plant Industry, Bureau of Animal Industry, Office of 
Public Roads and Rural Engineering, Bureau of Soils, Bureau of Bio- 
logical Survey, and the Bureau of Entomology. Obviously, there are in 
the forests many problems relating to live-stock, plant growth, preda- 
tory animal and insect control, soil conditions, and road and trail work. 
These great bureaus are directly and intimately concerned with these 


Forestry Notes 255 


problems. If the forests were transferred to another department, that 
department either would have to duplicate these bureaus in part or 
would have all the difficulties of co-operation with another department 
which seem to be inherent. Whether the National Park Service should 
be transferred to the Department of Agriculture is a matter for con- 
sideration. If the transfer should be made, it would be unnecessary and, 
in my judgment, unwise to consolidate the work of the two services. 
The park service should take its place in the organization of the depart- 
ment as an independent bureau, with its activities closely related to those 
of the Forest Service. Certainly, if the two services are to be adminis- 
tered by different departments, there should be the closest co-operation 
throughout. Such co-operation should include not only the question of 
the creation of new parks out of national forests, but also fire protection 
on contiguous properties, game preservation, road building, and other 
activities. 


RECREATION IN THE NATIONAL ForRESTS OF CALIFORNIA 


During the season of 1916 the Forest Service distributed 90,000 recrea- 
tion maps of nine national forests in California to those planning trips 
to these forests or to others interested. These maps, prepared by the 
Service, give detailed information about trails, roads, camping-places, 
supply-stations, resorts, and points of scenic interest, and also furnish 
concise histories and descriptions of the forests. 

Fifteen thousand copies of the Handbook for Campers in the National 
Forests in California were also distributed. This is an interesting and 
useful pamphlet of forty-eight pages, prepared by the Forest Service. 
After a foreword, which explains the absence of restrictions on camping, 
hunting, and fishing in the national forests (except such restrictions upon 
hunting and fishing as are imposed by the state fish and game laws), a 
brief description of the forest areas of California and of each particular 
national forest is given. Some space is devoted to enumerating desirable 
clothing, camp equipment, and rations for camping in the national for- 
ests of California. Elaborate instructions are given in building camp- 
fires, in camp-cookery, in packing (including figures showing how to tie 
both the ranger-hitch and the bedding-hitch), in first aid in the case of 
accidents, in fire-fighting, and in the laws pertaining to fish and game, 
including a separate abstract of California fish and game laws, which 
is supplied by the State Fish and Game Commission. This interesting 
little pamphlet ends with useful miscellaneous information, varying from 
the care of chafed heels to instructions to persons lost in the California 
mountains. 

The entire stock of both recreation maps and of campers’ handbooks 
has now been exhausted, so great has been the demand for these. Un- 
fortunately, the appropriation of the Forest Service is not sufficient to 
permit a new edition to be published at the present time. The members 


256 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of the Sierra Club can help to promote the recreation use of our splen- 
did national forests by urging their Congressmen to have added to the 
next appropriation for the U.S. Department of Agriculture a special 
fund for this purpose. 


TAHOE- YOSEMITE TRAIL 


The following description of the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail Project is taken 
from a memorandum by District Forester Coert Du Bois: 

The Tahoe-Yosemite Trail is a Forest Service project. . . . The pur- 
pose of the trail is entirely public. It is proposed to afford an easy and 
attractive route from the Lake Tahoe region to the boundary of the Yo- 
semite National Park. Probably before it is completed the National Park 
authorities can be induced to complete the link between the head of 
Jack Main Cafion and Tuolumne Meadows, which when done will con- 
nect the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail with the John Muir Trail and make pos- 
sible a pack-trip over a well-graded trail from Summit, on the Southern 
Pacific Railway, to Mount Whitney. 

Instructions and specifications have been worked out in considerable 
detail and mimeographed, and copies will be placed in the hands of 
every officer or employee responsible in any way for construction or 
supervision on the trail. These specifications are in brief as follows: 


1. Grade—Standard, 15 per cent; maximum, 20 per cent. Re- 
verse grades allowable only when their avoidance would add 10 
per cent to the cost. 

2. Clearing—Standard, 3 feet; maximum, 5 feet. All brush piled 
for burning except through heavy brush-fields on steep sidehills 
with no openings, where the cost of piling and burning is clearly 
prohibitive. 

3. Tread—Standard, 15 inches in solid ground; minimum, 12 
inches; maximum, 24 inches. 

4. Drainage—Waterbreaks when necessary. 

5. Corduroy—When necessary over boggy places, embedded-log 
corduroy with sill will be used. 

6. Rock Walls—Rock walls will be used where their construc- 
tion is cheaper than blasting or digging the tread from the surface 
in place. 


A distinctive sign-heading will be adopted for the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail. 
It is suggested that in addition to the name of the forest all signs along 
the trail carry the name of the trail. Direction signs will be needed 
wherever lateral or intersecting roads or trails are met; and distance 
signs throughout should give the distance and direction to the next 
camping-ground or fenced pasture. Signs should also indicate all points 
of topographic and historic interest, such as peaks, emigrant trails, etc. 
Signs giving the name of the watersheds left and entered should be at 


Forestry Notes 257 


all passes, and all creeks and lakes should be signed up with their proper 
names. Signs should be placed at county boundaries and at national 
forest boundaries. Signs should be placed at the points where the trail 
enters and leaves meadows. Where the trail crosses open country on 
the summit it must be indicated by ducks. It is suggested that a distinc- 
tive duck be developed, consisting, possibly, of three rocks about eight 
inches in diameter as a base and one rock about six inches in diameter 
on top. This will distinguish the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail from the in- 
numerable trails through the high country. 

I have a strong idea that such trails as the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail and 
John Muir Trail are going to be very popular in the future. Already 
every possible camping- and recreation-ground that can be reached with 
a Ford is getting overcrowded. The tendency is to get away from the 
crowd and take either a knapsack-trip or a pack-trip into the high coun- 
try. 

The project will not end with merely building a trail and putting 
proper signs along it. Properly fenced meadows must be supplied at 
very frequent intervals. I should say that horse-feed sufficient for at 
least ten horses for three nights should be available on the average for 
every three miles of trail. It is impossible to foresee where travelers 
will want to camp, and one camp-ground being occupied there should be 
another so close to it that the travelers will have no difficulty in going 
on to the next one. The ultimate development of the trail will include 
rest-houses and locators at the high points, similar to those installed on 
Mount Tamalpais. 

The policy will be to work out this project gradually, concentrating 
the annual expenditures on the worst places and bringing each stretch 
worked upon up to the standard specifications as stated herein. Later on, 
the stretches which are now fairly good will be worked up to standard. 
There is no intention whatever of rushing this through to completion or 
making large expenditures on it immediately; but it is a job which the 
Service has undertaken, and which it is hoped very much will be carried 
through to satisfactory completion in a few years. 

During the field season of 1916 an expenditure of $4990 was made on 
the Lake Tahoe section, where the trail was completed up Meeks Creek 
past the Talent Lakes to Velma Lakes. About four miles remains to be 
built to close the gap from Velma over Dick’s Lake summit to Susie 
Lake. The trail is completed from Susie Lake to Desolation Valley with 
the exception of a very short stretch, and even this is passable for horses. 

On the Stanislaus section $2020 was expended and the trail was com- 
pleted from the head of Disaster Cafion to the east end of Iceberg, ap- 
proximately six miles. 


BOOK REVIEWS 


Edited by MArIoN RANDALL PARSONS 


- 


“A THousAND- “Hungry and happy and hopeful” were his days at the 
MiLtE WALK TO University of Wisconsin, Mr. Muir tells us, when he 
THE GULF’’* bade it farewell to enter the “University of the Wil- 

derness.” Equally happy and hopeful, and even more 
hungry, were the days of his “Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf,” the 

first of his more extended wilderness wanderings. In September, 1867, 
Mr. Muir started on his walk, through Kentucky and Tennessee and 

across a corner of North Carolina and all of Georgia to Savannah. 

There he took ship for Fernandina, a town on the border of Florida, 
and tramped across that “land of flowers” to Cedar Keys on the Gulf of 
Mexico, where he hoped to find a ship that would carry him to South 

America. In this disordered and lawless South of post-bellum days 

bands of guerillas threatened the whole country; a stranger was looked 

upon with suspicion and often given grudging hospitality; and hungry, 
desperate negroes lurked everywhere, ready to “kill a man for a dollar 
or two.” Sometimes Mr. Muir lay out in the open in swamps, not dar- 
ing even to light a fire for fear of drawing the attention of some marau- 
der; often he walked fasting—‘“traveled today more than forty miles 
without dinner or supper” is one entry. It is hardly surprising, there- 
fore, that he contracted the fever which might have ended his life, and 
which did materially change its whole course. On his recovery, he left 

Florida for Cuba, thence sailing for New York, and then by way of 
Panama to California. 

This book may be said to form the second volume of Mr. Muir’s auto- 
biography, for it covers the period between My Boyhood and Youth and 
My First Summer in the Sierra. Dr. Badé has wisely included a Cali- 
fornia chapter—“Twenty-Hill Hollow’—not originally a part of the 
Florida journal, which makes the link complete. This delightful narra- 
tive is the first volume of his unrevised journals to be published since Mr. 
Muir’s death, and it holds rich promise of literary treasures yet to come. 
The journal, however, cannot altogether be classed as “unrevised,” for 
it bears the unmistakable stamp of Mr. Muir’s more mature thought 
and style, even though the typewritten copy from which the material 
was principally drawn was little more than a first draft of the projected 
book. Mr. Muir often told me that he intended to turn his attention to 
the Florida journal immediately after the Alaska travels. 

The book is full of charm and youthful enthusiasm, the register of a 

* A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. By Joun Muir. Edited by William Fred- 


eric Badé. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916. Price, $2.50. 
Illustrated. Large paper edition, $5.00. 


Book Reviews 259 


sensitive, alert mind, open to every new impression. He delighted to 
“ride over this unsullied country of ever-changing water,” or to “cling 
to a small chip of a ship when the sea is rough, and long, comet-tailed 
streamers are blowing from the curled top of every wave.” The Cali- 
fornia plains were “the floweriest piece of world I ever walked.” Even 
the prosaic jack-rabbit seemed to him to move “swift and effortless as a 
bird shadow,” and January weather “grows in beauty like a flower.” 
He exulted in the winds, even those of Florida, though they “no longer 
came with the old home music gathered from open prairies and waving 
fields of oak, but passed over many a strange string.” 

The editor’s work has been done with such sympathy that the whole 
book breathes of Mr. Muir’s own personality, with no intrusive sense of 
an alien hand. Less happy, however, is the make-up of the volume. 
We regret that the clear-type, wide-margin pages could not have been 
given a more dignified outer dress, like that of the admirable large pa- 
per edition. M; Re P. 


“Tue Kion- One finds it rather difficult to characterize this book, wheth- 
DIKE CLAN’’* er it should be classed as a work of fiction or as a narra- 

tive of adventure. The author himself says of it: “The 
incidents are more history than fiction. The characters are types... . 
Many of the adventures of the story occurred under the personal ob- 
servation of the author or that of his friends.” We are inclined to feel 
that a simple narrative of personal experience would have been even 
more effective than this admirable romance of the Klondike stampede, 
especially after reading the author’s earlier published book, Alaska Days 
with John Muir. When the reality is so rich in romance and heroism 
one feels that a really great book is lost to the world when a man of 
Mr. Young’s qualities fails to give the simple, direct narrative of his 
Alaska experience. We hope that some such story of his many years of 
life and work there may yet appear. 

To the lover of tales the book as it stands is more than worth while. 
The hardship, the humor, the folly, and the tragedy of gold-rush days 
are stirringly depicted. The characters are human and likable. We 
quote one story of a missionary’s disastrous dependence upon an inter- 
preter. The Parson had found some difficulty in explaining what sheep 
were like when he went over the text of the twenty-third Psalm with 
his interpreter, only succeeding after “Billy” had grasped the idea that 
they resembled the wild goats which the Indians hunted. “I noticed a 
queer look on the stolid faces of the natives as Billy interpreted my ser- 
mon,” says the Parson, “but until I had learned the language myself I 
was ignorant of Billy’s rendering of the verse. Here it is: ‘The Great 
Chief above is the goat-hunter who hunts me. I do not want him. He 
shoots me down on the green grass and drags me down to the quiet sea- 


*The Klondike Clan. A Tale of the Great Stampede. By S. Hatt Youna. 
Fleming H. Revell Company. Price, $1.35 net. Illustrated. 


260 Sierra Club Bulletin 


beach.’” As one of the characters observes, “Mony is the meenister of 


the kirk who comes no nearer the sense of Scripture.” M. R. P. 
“THE A comprehensive guide-book of the northwest, giving 
TouRIST’sS modes of access to most of the mountain regions of Ore- 


NorTHWEST’* gon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia, with de- 
tailed accounts of roads, railroads, and steamer routes, 
and many items of historical interest. The bulk of the book is given 
over to the scenic features and outdoor life, though cities and hotels 
are also touched upon. A splendid aid to travelers. Well illustrated 
with maps and photographs. M. R. P. 


“THE The book is well printed, artistic in appearance, and easy 
MounrtTAIN’f to read because of the beautiful type and wide margins. 

The topic scheme on the margin makes it easy for refer- 

ence. Mr. Van Dyke is an artist in feeling and in the use of the English 
language. He is a word-painter par excellence. While the title of the 
book is The Mountain, and the descriptions are adequate, the heart of 
the writer is most at home in those scenes where he is dealing with the 
desert. It is in the desert description that he rises to his highest point 
of excellence. You feel the stretches of sand and the shimmering lazy 
sunshine, the dreaming hills that sweep toward the horizon, and the 
smell of sagebrush. You catch the fragrance of the desert air. The one 
word which would describe, possibly, better than any other Mr. Van 
Dyke’s ability and method of description is atmosphere. It would be 
unfair to him to say that he does not know the mountains, or that he 
does not describe them adequately, for he does. He is a poet, and he 
sees everything through a poet’s eyes. While he has climbed the snowy 
peaks and become acquainted with the terrors of the glacier, you some- 
how feel that he does not thrill with the joy that delights the intrepid 
climber who scales the precipitous heights and triumphs over difficulties 
which make up so large a part of the life of the adventurous mountain- 
eer. He talks most familiarly of the Himalayas, the Alps, the Caucasus, 
the Rockies, or our own beloved Sierra, with equal facility, and he leaps 
from one to the other with the agility of a chamois. His pictures are 
always fascinating. He is a lover of nature. He loves the birds and the 
woods and the song of the winds, and he makes you realize that the 
mountains are not all made up of inaccessible peaks. While his view- 
point is not entirely that of an impressionist, he has beyond question the 
impressionistic tendency. You love the mountains better for having read 
him, but somehow you feel that his scientific explanations are not en- 
tirely satisfactory. In other words, Mr. Van Dyke is first, last, and al- 


* The Tourtst’s Northwest. By RutH KeEpzie Woop, F.R.G.S. Dodd Mead & 
Company, New York, 1916. Price, $1.75. Illustrated. 


+The Mountain. By Joun C. Van Dyxe. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 
1916. Price, $1.25. 


Book Reviews 261 


ways an artist. His descriptions are full of color, full of sunshine, full 
of the flashing gleam of high mountain-tops, full of the roar of cataracts 
and waterfalls. He lacks the intimate knowledge of John Muir and the 
science of Joseph Le Conte, but his book in every way is worthy of 
consideration. GrorcE C. THOMPSON 


“Witp LIFE Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains, by George Freder- 
IN THE ick Ruxton, is the story of the author’s trip, during the 
Rocky winter of 1846-1847, from Chihuahua, Mexico, up along 
MountTaIns”* the Rio Grande to Pueblo, Colorado, where he spent a 

number of months in companionship with the mountain 
trappers and hunting in the “Bayou Salado.” Thence, in May, 1847, in 
company with a wagon-train, he proceeded easterly to Fort Leaven- 
worth, Kansas, and from there, by river steamer, train and boat, back to 

England, arriving in August. He returned again almost immediately to 

the wilds of the United States, only to die in St. Louis, in September, 

1848, at the age of twenty-eight. The season of the year, the wild life 

and beauty of the country, the romance of the period, the danger of the 

undertaking, and his hairbreadth escapes, both from the severity of the 
weather and from scalping by the Indians, combine to make the interest 
of the book. The description of the blizzard in South Park, in which 
he spent the night kneeling in the snow with a saddle-blanket over his 
head and his head pressed to his knees, smoking a pipe which finally 

“caught fire and burned completely to the stem,” his mules groaning 

aloud, falling down in the snow, and then again struggling on their legs, 

gives one a good picture of the wildness of the time as well as an in- 
sight into the character of the writer. 

The descriptions of wild life are interesting, and in their number 
symbolic of the period. The buffalo, the grizzly bear, the elk, the big- 
horn, or mountain-sheep, the antelope, the wolf, the beaver, and even 
the little prairie-dog, are among the animals described with whom he 
seemed to have an intimate acquaintance. The book gives the atmos- 


phere of the times and is well worth reading. Daisy C. HUBER 
“CAMPING “An encyclopedia of information on living in the open” 
AND is the publisher’s foreword. There is a multiplicity of 


WooncraF?’} detail, somewhat bewildering both to the tenderfoot and 

to the seasoned camper, but very good to use as a refer- 

ence in making selections. Rough and ready western mountaineers will 

not be likely to need many of the comforts suggested by Mr. Kephart, 

but any one of them will enjoy the capital skunk story told in the course 
of the narrative. H. M. LE Conte 


* Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains. By GrorGE FrepEer1IcK RuxtTon. Outing 
Publishing Company, New York, 1916. Price, $1.00. 


{Camping and Woodcraft. By Horace Keruart. Outing Publishing Company, 
New York, 1916. Price, $1.50 net. 


262 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“CHRONICLES A handsome volume of four hundred pages. Begin- 
OF THE WHITE ning with Indian lore and first settlements, then his- 
MountTaIns”* torical events, carrying the latter down to the present 

day, these first chapters give the pioneer mountaineer 

of the west a good idea of the value of preserving the slowly gathering 
mountain lore of our own region. The actual climbs and discoveries, as 
well as the summer and winter experiences, are linked with a long list 
of noted names, dear to all eastern climbers, and including the pioneer 
innkeepers who were largely instrumental in making the history of the 
Range. The founding, in 1876, of the Appalachian Mountain Club, at’ 
the call of Professor E. C. Pickering, and with Professor C. E. Fay in 
the chair, “marks the beginning of a new epoch in the exploration, study, 
and pleasure use of the White Mountains.” The chapter on “Lumber In- 
dustry and Forestry” is the usual story of waste followed by intelligent 
conservation. Happily the Appalachian Club now owns and controls 
many of the beauty spots of the White Mountains. - H.M.Le Conte 


“BLACKFEET TALES In his Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park 
OF GLACIER James Willard Schultz tells in diary form how, after 
NATIONAL PARK”} a lapse of many years, he spends a summer wander- 

ing through Montana National Park with his old 
friends and foster-brothers, Yellow Wolf, Two Guns, Stabs-by-mistake, 
and Tail-feather-coming-over-the-hill. After days spent in hunting, 
moving camp, or religious ceremonies, the Indians entertain their white 
foster-brother by camp-fire legends of their tribe. We learn how “elk- 
dogs,” or horses, were first given to man; we admire the skill and brav- 
ery of New Robe when he rescues his captive friend by running full 
speed over the seven freshly skinned buffalo-skulls; we are glad when 
the jealous wife drowns in the “swim of hate” which she had herself 
proposed to her unoffending rival; we can almost excuse the treachery 
of the Bad Wife, so plain is it that a sudden and overwhelming passion 
for the handsome stranger blinds her to all sense of right and wrong. 
Coming, as they do, straight from the lips of the natives and couched 
in simple but picturesque phrase, these tales sparkle with a freshness and 
naive charm that no one—not even the lover of the modern psychological 
novel—could resist. Here we have real and living men, women, and 
children—and, yes, even gods, who convince us of their existence by the 
way they talk and act, by the very force of the primitive passions which 
sway them, by the universality of their appeal. FLORENCE ATKINSON 


* Chronicles of the White Mountains. By FrepERicK W. KILBOURNE. Houghton 
Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1916. Price, $2.00 net. Illustrated. 

+ Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park. By JaMES WILLARD SCHULTZ. 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916. Price, $2.00 net. TIllus- 
trated. 


Book Reviews 263 


“YosEMITE: ‘The attractive manner in which Mr. Sterling’s Ode is pre- 
Aw Opr’* — sented will at once commend it to all lovers of Yosemite. 
On the cover is an excellent reproduction of a painting by 
H. J. Breuer in which the artist has shown a welcome restraint, both in 
color and in drawing. Within are five well-chosen illustrations from 
photographs by W. E. Dassonville, each with a delightful note of its 
own. The first brings out the sweep of the great precipices and the vast 
depth of the valley; in the second the graceful beauty of Yosemite Falls 
is enhanced by the exquisite texture of meadow, river, tree, and cliff that 
surrounds it; next comes a view of Bridal Veil Falls, its pendent shaft 
of whiteness balanced by the dark column of a pine; the fourth illustra- 
tion is a twilight study in strong lights and shadows, with a foreground 
of unusual beauty; and, lastly, the splendor and magnificence of Yosem- 
ite scenery is illustrated in a superb view of Half Dome at sunrise. 

The poem, composed in a lofty and dignified style, is a tribute to the 
spirit of Beauty as exemplified in the various aspects of the incomparable 
valley. Many of the descriptive passages cannot fail to delight the “in- 
ward eye” of all who read, as when we are invited to 


“Ascend at dawn to that uplifted place 
Whence the doomed torrent, from its eyrie leaping, 
Takes virgin vesture and immortal grace. 
Beauty surpassing all! 
Splendor of whiteness, foam of pearls that crash 
To rainbow-mist on barriers immense! 
Iris and veils of amethyst that lash 
The eternal granite in magnificence! 
Can eyes behold you save with rapture wet, 
Or turn them from your glory and forget?” 


It is not easy to rhapsodize on the grander aspects of natural scenery, 
and especially in Yosemite one is bound to feel the inadequacy of any- 
thing that poets may say. Acknowledging this at the very outset, the 
poet would nevertheless offer his tribute, humbly praying that through 
it there may be revealed to him 


“Some aspect of thine inner loveliness 
Or instant blaze 


Of sunlight on the marbles of thy truth.” Et eb, 
“On ALPINE George D. Abraham, in his On Alpine Heights and 
HEIGHTS AND British Crags, makes us acquainted with a series of 


BritisH Cracs”} climbing incidents in both Switzerland and Britain. 
For those in love with horripilant narrative no better 
book could be found. The author with his companions seems to ob- 


* Yosemite: an Ode. By Grorce STERLING. With a cover in color after the 
painting by H. J. Breuer and illustrations after photographs by W. E. Dassonville. 
A. M. Robertson, San Francisco, 1916. Price, 75 cents. 

+ On Alpine Heights and British Crags. By Grorce D. AspraHAM, author of the 
Complete Mountaineer (see S1erRA CLuB BULLETIN, Vol. VII, No. 1). Houghton 
Mifflln Company, Boston and New York. Price, $2.50 net. With 24 illustrations 
from photographs. ys 


264 Sierra Club Bulletin 


serve a high pic as a problem to be solved, and they proceed to the solu- 
tion thereof with scarpetti, ropes, ice-axes, and a tremendous amount of 
faith and courage. Many an exciting incident befalls them. Yet by the 
constant use of wisdom no mishap must be recounted. Not only do they 
mount to the summits themselves, but, in spite of the objections of the 
guides, do they haul up in some miraculous manner a heavy photo- 
graphic equipment. For this effort the reader may be grateful. The pho- 
tographic reproductions are among the most remarkable to be found 
anywhere. The author’s style is humorously thrilling—to witness: One 
day an opposition party was climbing the same peak. There had been 
an accident among the rivals. Stones drop ominously. A form like a 
human body comes bouncing downward—bump, bump! They are hor- 
rified to see the tell-tale trail of red on the white snow. At their very 
feet the body ceases to roll, and they recognize a huge ruck-sack with a 
broken flask of claret! 

The second part of the book is on “British Crags.” The tyro yearn- 
ing for future success in Switzerland contents himself with sensational 
winter climbing when his fingers and toes are so frozen he can scarce 
clutch the tiny footholds and handholds. Next he betakes himself to 
the less better-known rocks of Wales. To read a list of Welsh proper 
names is in itself a dangerous excursion filled with pitfalls, crevices, 
couloirs, escarpments, ledges, slabs, buttresses, and other troubles. Come 
with me, then, to scale Cwm Cywion, Mynydd-Trwsgwl, Bwlch y Drws 
y Coet—from all accounts a most imposing group of rocks where one 
can have climbing equally as thrilling and healthy and thoughtful as any 
in Switzerland. LENA REDINGTON CARLTON 


“RAMBLES Rambles in the Vaudese Alps consists of a month’s climb- 


IN THE ing, botanically, in the valley of the Rhone at Gryon, not far 
VAUDESE’ from the famous St. Moritz. The author is most ardent in 
ALps””* his scientific discoveries. His notes on the flora of the dis- 


trict and his observations on the habits of plants in general 
are chiefly of interest to botanists, particularly to English botanists, for 
his comparisons are ever with the conditions of the same plants as they 
grow in Britain. Aside from the science of the volume, there are, too, 
bits of life as seen in Switzerland—descriptions of the chalets with their 
eave-protected balconies, the flat-chested women and girls, knitting as 
they tend the family cow, the leaves drying about the doorstep, to be 
used for lighting winter fires, etc. But the reviewer feels that the sci- 
entific interest outweighs the travel interest. It would be a charming 
book to take with one should one be fortunate enough to make the same 
journey in the cantons of Vaud and Vallais. 

LENA REDINGTON CARLTON 


* Rambles in the Vaudese Alps. By F. S. Satispury. E. P. Dutton & Co., pub- 
lishers. $1.00 net. 152 pages. Eight full-page illustrations from photographs by 
Somerville Hastings. 


Book Reviews 265 


“CALIFORNIA In his introduction to this very interesting list of In- 
PiacE NAMES OF dian names, Professor Kroeber says: “The origin of 
INDIAN ORIGIN’* many place names in California which are of Indian 

derivation is very imperfectly known, and has often 

been thoroughly misunderstood. There is no subject of information in 
which rumor and uncritical tradition hold fuller sway than in this field. 
The best literature dealing with the topic—and it is one of widespread 
interest—contains more errors than truths. The present compilation, in 
spite of probably embodying numerous misunderstandings and offering 
only doubt or ignorance on other points, is at least an attempt to ap- 
proach the inquiry critically.” Many names that are listed are of special 
interest to our readers, as may be seen from the following examples: 

Hetch Hetchy Valley, in the famous cafion on Tuolumne River, 
is named from a Central Miwok word denoting a kind of grass or 
plant with edible seeds abounding in the valley. 

Koip Peak, between Mono and Tuolumne counties, is probably, 
like near-by Kuna Peak, named from a Mono Indian word. Koip 
is “mountain sheep” in the closely related Northern Paiute dialect. 

Kuna Peak, between Tuolumne and Mono counties, is probably 
named from the Shoshonean word kuna, usually meaning “fre,” 
but appearing in the Mono dialect of the vicinity with the signifi- 
cation of “firewood.” 


“THE Book or The Book of Forestry, by F. F. Moon, covers the field in 
Forestry’ } a brief, interesting, and non-technical way which is very 

acceptable to the general reader. Although written par- 
ticularly for boys, it should prove of decided interest and value to older 
readers. Some of the topics considered are the meaning of forestry; 
the usefulness of forests; the life-story of the tree; the properties and 
uses of wood; the methods of raising, protecting, measuring, and har- 
vesting crops of timber; the life of a forester; city forestry. Part II is 
a description of such characteristics of trees and of the various kinds of 
wood as are of help in identifying trees and commercial timbers. A 
glossary of technical terms is appended. 

It is perhaps unfortunate that some of the statements are eomeunee 
too dogmatic. For example, “Forestry is not agriculture, because agri- 
culture has to do with tillable fields and level lands.” If, as has been 
done, we define agriculture as the production of living things from the 
soil, then forestry is a part of agriculture. That this point of view is 
accepted by many is shown by the fact that so large a proportion of the 
managed forests of the world are administered by departments of agri- 
culture. In points so open to argument, it would seem that it would 
have been well for the author to state both viewpoints. 


* California Place Names of Indian Origin. By A. L. Kroeser. University of 
California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 
31-69. Price, 40 cents. 

+The Book of Forestry. By FrepericK FranKtIn Moon. D. Appleton & Co., 
New York and London. 1916. Price, $1.75. Illustrated. 


266 Sierra Club Bulletin 


The carelessness in making misleading or imperfectly explained state- 
ments, and in faulty proof-reading, which seems to be altogether too 
common in American books on forestry, appears again here to a slight 
extent, but not in nearly so pronounced a form as in some previous 
works. An example is the statement on page 196, that “the Sequoias. are 
found largely in California”! The use of various equivalents for red fir 
and Pseudotsuga taxifolia must be confusing to the beginner. The au- 
thor on page 290 states that red fir is Abies magnifica, on page 283 that 
red fir is Pseudotsuga taxifolha, and on page 195, in a description of 
Pseudotsuga taxifolia, the heading is “Oregon fir,” and the same tree is 
referred to lower on the page as Douglas fir. All of these statements 
are in accordance with common usage, but without explanation they are 
confusing to the reader unfamiliar with the variation in the use of tree 
names. Some misprints occur. 

It is also to be regretted that, probably because of the greatly in- 
creased cost of book-making, the book is rather poorly printed and does 
not make so favorable an impression as the price would lead one to 
expect. shill W. M. 
“THE MOUNTAINEER” The Mountaineers’ annual publication maintains 

VOLUME IX* the high standard of its predecessors. The Moun- 
taineers’ activities in 1916 were centered mainly 
about Mount Baker, and most of the articles in their annual are related 
in some way to this mountain. Mrs. L. R. Frazeur, well known to sev- 
eral Sierra Club outings, describes The Mountaineers’ climbs last year 
of Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan. Charles Finley Easton contrib- 
utes an interesting and valuable account of Mount Baker’s glaciers. 
Other articles—on early explorations of Mount Baker, on Indian leg- 
ends connected with the mountain, on the wild animals of the region, on 
neighboring points of scenic interest—complete a well-rounded survey of 
Mount Baker from the point of view of the mountain-lover’s interests. 
The Mountaineer devotes considerable space to the activities of other 
mountaineering clubs—a valuable feature. A. H-A. 


“TuHroucH The first impulse of a normal Sierran upon reading Mrs. 
GiacieER Mary Roberts Rinehart’s little book will be to buy a ticket 
Park} at the first opportunity for the Glacier National Park, in the 

hope of seeing the things which Mrs. Rinehart saw, and in 
the hope of meeting Howard Eaton. “Howard Eaton,” says Mrs. Rine- 
hart, “is extremely young. He was born quite a number of years ago, 
but what is that? He is a boy, and he takes an annual frolic. And be- 
cause it means a cracking good time, he takes people with him and puts 


*The Mountaineer, volume IX. Published by The Mountaineers, Seattle, De- 
cember, 1916. 112 pages. Price, 50 cents. Illustrated. 


t Through Glacier Park: The Log of a Trip with Howard Eaton. By Mary Ros- 


ERTS RINEHART. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York. 1916. Price, 75 
cents. Illustrated. 


Book Reviews 267 


horses under them and the fear of God in their hearts, and bacon and 
many other things, including beans, in their stomachs. . . . He is a 
hunter, a sportsman, and a splendid gentleman.” Such was the guide 
who conducted the party of whom Mrs. Rinehart was one. It surely is 
a privilege to make a tour of Glacier Park with such a man. 

Mrs. Rinehart does the tour justice; she enjoyed every minute of the 
three-hundred-mile trip, and she makes it enjoyable for others to read 
about. The book can be bought for a small price and read in a short 
time, and the return in enjoyment for the time and money invested in it 
will be just about one thousand per cent. Aull. A. 


“ALASKAN The National Geographic Society published in 1914 the re- 
GLaciER sults of its explorations of glaciers in the Yakutat Bay, 
Stupies’* Prince William Sound, and Lower Copper River regions of 

Alaska. The field-work was done in 1909, 1910, 1911, and 

1913, and the report is by Professor R. S. Tarr, formerly of Cornell 

University, and Professor Lawrence Martin, of the University of Wis- 

consin. It would be impossible to give an adequate account of this ex- 

haustive report in the space available for this belated notice, nor woulda 
thorough analysis of it be appropriate, perhaps, in this BULLETIN. Each 
glacier in the region named is studied in detail over a period of years, 
its activities measured and recorded, and fully described. The report is 
lavishly illustrated with half-tones and drawings, and with a set of nine 
excellent colored maps. A. H.A. 


° ® 
e 


The Journal of Agriculture of the University of California has issued a 
special Forestry number which is extremely attractive and interesting. 
It contains seventeen excellent contributed articles from officials high in 
rank in the Federal service, from private lumbermen, from educators 
and others. It also contains some interesting notes of the Agricultural 
Department of the University of California. 


A book of Songs of the Sierra Club has been published, and is on sale 
at the club-room—price, ten cents, or, with postage, twelve cents. Our 
outing members will find in it many songs to recall camp-fire days. 

* Alaskan Glacier Studies of the National Geographic Society. . . . By RALPH 


STocKMAN Tarr and Lawrence Martin. The National Geographic Society, Wash- 
ington. 1914. Illustrated. 


Traverses Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt 
Counties, the territory that appeals to the hiker and lover of primi- 
tive out-of-door sports 


EVERY TWO HOURS 


during the day, a fast electric train leaves 
San Francisco, Key Route Ferry Depot 


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Fast comfortable service through some of 
the prettiest spots in Central California. 


Write for Time Table and Rates 


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When dealing with our advertisers mention the Bulletin 


Some of the Hi oh | 
Points of i, 
Pacific Coast 


The Pacific Coast is Nature’s Exposition,two thousand 
five hundred miles long, of wonderful climate, 
wonderful scenes, wonderful products — 


Tahoe—“‘The Mile High ake in the heart of the 
Sierras. 


Yosemite—Its domes and cliffs, its Aoweree mead- 
ows, its glorious waterfalls. To miss Yosemite 
is to lose a delightful experience. 


Mariposa Big Trees—The oldest living things. Ideal 
trees, impressive in size and symmetry. 


Kings and Kern Rivers Canyons, with Sequoia and 
Grant National Parks, at summit of Sierras—a_ 
vast and rugged region to tempt the sportsman © 
and mountaineer. 


Santa Cruz Mountains and Be Trees, and Califor- 
nia State Redwood Park—4o00 acres of virgin | 
- forest. 
Crater Lake National Park and the Klamath Lakes — 
country—Oregon’ s marvelous tourist ground and 
‘sportsman’s paradise. 
Mount Shasta, Mount Lassen (the only active vol- 
cano in the United States), the Siskiyous, Mount — 
McLoughlin, Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, © 
Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, 
Mount Whitney (our highest peak), Mount San 


Jacinto, Mount San Gorgonio, Mount San Ber- A ee 


nardino, aaa Lowe, Mount Wilson. 


ALL ARE REACHED VIA LINES OF 


SS outer Pach fic 


“SAN FRANCISCO 
"onde 


WV, 
B mi fh ¢ Ms 


wal? 
wat fd a} Mi Th ee Oe 


Abies oo ra 


je 


ina OF THe SIERRA CLUB 


/ 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


eR Ve _ FOUNDED 1892 


l Edited for the Club by i) 
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE AAT 


January, 1918 iti 


Vou. x CONTENTS 


Plate CLXXXVI. Robson and Tumbling Glacier. 


A Weex Arounp Mount Rosson Marion Randall Parsons 269 — 
‘Plates CLXXXVII, CLXXXVIII, CLXXXIX, CXC, CXCI, CXCII Moe ate 


aa; 
RECORD OF AN Earty ExpioraTIoN or Tenaya CaNon = J. N. Le Conte 276 : i Catt 


THE WHITE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA Willis Linn Jepson 282 
Plates CXCIII, CKCIV 


\ 
MountTaAIN CLIMBERS : Aristides EB. Phoutrides 286 vy; ih ; 


THE CLims. OF DUNDERBERG VIA VirGINIA CANon George C. Thompson 7 
Plates CKCV, CXCVI, CXCVII, CXCVIII, CXCIX, CCXVI, CCEVIN 
CCXIX 


KNAPSACKING IN THE Kincs-SAN Joaguin REGION mb Big Jordan 292 . 
Plates CCIII, CCV 1 


THE JUNIPERS OF LAKE VALLEY Ci ornelius Boa Bradley 8 
Plates CC, CCI, CCII, CCIV 


STUDIES IN THE SIERRA i Jona Mare ; at " 
IV. GiactaL DENUDATION : | Pain 


ORGANIZATION OF THE SIERRA CLUB 
War SERVICE RECORD | evide 
EDITORIALS Panes 


REPORTS OF COM MITTEES 
Plates CCVI, CCVII 


NoTEs AND CORRESPONDENCE 
. Plates CCVIII, CCIX, CCX, CCXI, CCXII, CCXIII, CCXIV, ccxy 


NATIONAL Park NOTES 


Forestry Notes © 
Plate Heron 


Boox Weviews 


_ Correspondence concerning the distributjon and sale of the iltniesten 
with reference to advertising rates and space location, and concerning its 
erally, should be addressed to the Secretary of the Sierra at Reo 
ing, San Francisco, California. 

Price, 5° Cents PER iby 


PLATE CLXXXVI. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


ROBSON AND TUMBLING GLACIER 


| ’ 


Photo by Marion R. Parsons 


ited 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


VOLUME 
TEN 


NUMBER 
THREE 


SAN FRANCISCO 
JANUARY 
1918 


e 


A WEEK AROUND MOUNT ROBSON 
' By Marion RANDALL Parsons 


> 


* HAT is your final destination?” asked the immigration 

officer. For a wanderer with such indefinite plans the 

question seemed simpler to answer according to catechism than 
to geography. 

“May I say heaven?” I asked. 

“No,” said he, not relaxing his official solemnity, “not un- 
less you have a ticket there.” 

So I gave Jasper Park as the farthest east of my summer 
destinations. 

Jasper Park and Forest Reserve, and the smaller Mount 
Robson Park on its western margin, lie along the borders of 
British Columbia and Alberta on the line of the Grand Trunk 
Pacific Railway. Tributaries of the Fraser, the Athabasca and 
the Peace rivers rise among the great snowfields that make 
these two great parks of the northern Rockies a shining glory 
for mountaineers. The region is also rich in the romance of 
the great fur trading companies. Jasper House and Henry 


270 Sierra Club Bulletin 


House; Jasper Hawes and the “yellowhead” halfbreed whose 
name is perpetuated in Yellowhead Pass and the Tete Jaune 
Cache—these are names familiar to all lovers of the early his- 
tory of the Northwest. 

My companion, Miss Lulie Nettleton, and I had only a day 
at Jasper, the administrative center and principal settlement. 
There we played the unwonted part of tourists, conveyed 
about in carriages. From the Tent City on Lake Beauvert we 
drove to Pyramid Lake and the curiously sculptured and pot- 
holed Maligne Cafion. The roads had a novel interest, as they 
had been built by interned Austrians and Germans the first 
year of the war. These national parks were created so shortly 
before war-crippled times that only by such haphazard means 
has their development been possible. 

Lack of roads, however, is no deterrent to mountaineers, 
but rather the contrary. We had hoped to take a horseback 
journey to Mount Cavell and over the Athabasca Trail to Ma- 
ligne Lake, but all our available time was given to the Robson 
country, where tent cities there are none and trails are almost 
as negligible. There, in war time at least, is only Donald 
Phillips, guide, trapper, hunter, cook and king of the whole 
mountain wilderness. 

Donald looked distinctly amused that afternoon, when we 
descended from the train, demanding in the first breath that he 
take us up Mount Robson. Donald was one of the Robson 
pioneers, and since he and Mr. George Kinney made their 
climb in 1909, only three other men—Captain McCarthy, Mr. 
F. W. Foster, and their guide, Conrad Kain—have succeeded 
in reaching the summit. Donald’s ascent had been made before 
the building of the railroad, and they had traveled with a pack- 
train all the way from Edmonton. In addition to hardships 
that included three defeats by storms and “ninety-six hours 
spent above ten thousand feet altitude,” they had suffered from 
a shortage of food. “We ate squirrels till we could taste the 
stripes,” was Donald’s vivid way of describing it. Small won- 
der that his eyes twinkled as he advised us to wait till the 
clouds lifted and we got a good look at Robson before we de- 
cided to climb. 

After spending a night at Donald’s camp on the Fraser we 


A Week Around Mount Robson 271 


started out on the trail—riding, rather against our will. But 
there were swift, strong rivers to be forded and we had no 
choice. Robson was still cloud-hung, and its great front, 
streaked with horizontal strata of brown and yellow, and gul- 
lied with snow and ice, towered above us, black and menacing, 
to unguessed heights. Our trail led up the Grand Fork Cafion, 
through flats of contorta pines, and up among woods of hem- 
locks and Douglas firs, moss-carpeted like the coast forests. 

True alpine scenery began at Kinney Lake, a smooth sheet 
of robin’s-egg blue walled by the shining slope of Whitehorn. 
The lake lies at the lower end of the Valley of a Thousand 
Falls. One after another the cascades came into view—slant- 
ing obliquely over ledges; dropping in dainty veils of mist, 
wind-tossed to nothing before they reached the ground; slow- 
rocketing down from great heights; booming deep in rocky 
chasms; and above them all the mighty Emperor Falls, pour- 
ing down in full sunlight. High above, too, hung the White- 
horn Glacier, with sharp-toothed seracs cutting blue and white 
gashes in the sky. 

Then up into fields of asters and paintbrush we climbed, and 
through alluring patches of wild strawberries and raspberries, 
to a valley whose whole floor was filled by the river bed. For 
half a mile we splashed from one gravel bar to another through 
torrents of muddy glacier water. It is a curious, and at first 
rather a terrifying, experience to ride into a river up to the 
horse’s girths. The current swept past with such speed that 
the laboring horse ahead seemed to be standing still, and only 
by the heaving sensation could I realize that my own horse 
was moving. 

Above this river-trail came a gravelly waste. Fan-shaped 
deposits from glacial side-streams pushed the river close under 
Mount Robson. We had rounded the mountain and were now 
on its northern side. Instead of a wall of rock, as on the 
southern and western faces, the mountain here was a seamed 
and shattered wall of ice. The Tumbling Glacier, lost in 
clouds above, broke off in a sharp white cliff into Berg Lake. 
A fleet of fairy ice-ships was drifting in it, and as we rode 
along its shore a crashing avalanche set a host of new bergs 
afloat. 


272 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Just beyond Berg Lake lay our camp at Robson Pass, the 
site of the Canadian Alpine Club camp of 1913. We started 
afoot with Donald next morning over the Robson Glacier to 
Snowbird Pass. It was a day of easy climbing, up the glacier 
for three or four miles and then along grassy slopes and rocky 
ledges. The mountain tops were still hidden, though now and 
again the clouds would sweep apart and disclose the icy crown 
of Whitehorn, the saurian head of “Mugger,” the sharp tooth 
of the Lynx, or white Resplendent, the snowiest and most ra- 
diant of them all. 

From Snowbird Pass we climbed to the summit of Ptarmi- 
gan Peak whence we overlooked the Coleman Glacier and the 
deep blue rift of the Smoky River Valley. A timely break in 
the clouds showed us an avalanche on Robson, tons of pow- 
dered ice pouring down for a thousand feet like the mist of a 
waterfall, The Robson Glacier, whose whole length we could 
see, is the fountain of rivers flowing into two oceans. Its ter- 
minal is split by a rocky point. The northern half of the ice 
stream drains into Lake Adolphus, whence it flows to the 
Smoky River and ultimately to the Peace; the southern half is 
the source of a branch of the Fraser. 

Not until morning did we see the whole of Robson. Donald 
called us at sunrise, and we looked from our tent to see it shin- 
ing in golden glory in a cloudless sky. We were close under 
it, hardly more than a mile from its base; it rose abrupt, nearly 
eight thousand feet above us. From a snow cornice at the 
summit the Tumbling Glacier swept down the whole flank of 
the mountain, each ice pinnacle alight and glittering. The 
right hand slope was a long rock ridge, broken by ledges and 
precipices; that on the left swung around in an icy ridge to- 
ward black Rearguard. Even more cruel and formidable did 
the mountain appear in its sharp-cut brilliance than as we had 
heretofore seen it in fleeting glimpses through the clouds. 

By this time we were ready to admit that Robson was no 
mountain for women to climb—not for two women with only 
one man at any rate. So that afternoon we decided to move 
camp about ten miles northeastward to Moose Pass. From 
this camp we made the ascent of Mount Pam, about ten 
thousand feet, a snow peak of little difficulty or danger except 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CLXXXVII. 


EMPEROR FALLS AND SLOPE OF ROBSON 
Courtesy of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway 


ABMIIEY Oye YUNA, puesy sy} jo Asajyinoy 
NOSdOU LNOOW HO ACIS HLYON 


“TTIAXXXT) ALVITd *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANTS VuUNAIS 


2 


A Week Around Mount Robson 273 


_from hidden crevasses, which with so small a party are always 
something of a menace. We roped together, however, and had 
no misadventure. 

Mount Pam stands out beyond the main axis of the wild- 
est, snowiest mountain chain that I have ever seen. All around 
us shone literally hundreds of white summits, of which not one 
in fifty had ever been climbed or named. Far away to the 
northwest, almost like a cloud on the horizon, Donald pointed 
out the great peak “Kitchie,” visited by Miss Mary Jobe sev- 
eral seasons ago, but as yet unclimbed. Close beneath us were 
high, bare plateau regions, the range of caribou herds; blue 
lakes and dusky valleys showed farther to the east. The whole 
horizon was rimmed with shining mountains, Robson towering 
above them all, visible now from its snow cornice to the blue 
depths of Lake Adolphus at its base. 

Our return late that afternoon over glaciers and down long 
heather slopes gave a new and still more glorious impression of 
the wild sea of mountains. The peaks burned with the sun- 
set ; the velvety slopes of Moose Pass grew purple and shadowy 
in the dusk. Our camp was in a flowery park among groves of 
spiry balsams. Purple asters and yellow compositae, blue gen- 
tians and shaggy anemone heads—“little owls” Donald called 
them—made bright garden patches among the trees. We held 
campfire that night in a tepee, sitting around the tiny blaze on 
blankets. Many a story Donald told us of trapping days in 
winter, or of Hudson’s Bay Company men, grown old in the 
wilderness before the railroad came. As we talked and our 
fire burned low, a strange, unearthly glow shone upon our 
faces. 

“Northern lights!” said Donald, and we crept outside. 

Flickering bands of greenish light were moving across the 
sky like figures in a ghostly dance. Suddenly great shafts of 
light shot upward toward the zenith. All around the horizon, 
though fainter toward the south, they shone, a tepee of the 
Great Manitou set in the starry meadows of the sky. 

Here at Moose Pass we were on the outskirts of one of the 
finest big game regions of the north. We had seen the tracks 
of moose and caribou and grizzly bears, but except for two 
goats on Mount Pam, no living animal larger than a porcupine. 


274 Sierra Club Bulletin 


As we rode down the pass on our way to the Smoky River, 
however, Donald pointed out a caribou far down in the valley 
of Calumet Creek. 

“Ride on steadily without speaking,” he said. “We may be 
able to get quite close.” 

We were perhaps within an eighth of a mile when the cari- 
bou first saw us. Instead of running, he wheeled about once 
and stood looking at us as we rode forward. We had ap- 
proached within a hundred yards before he showed any signs 
of fear. Then he merely circled and came back to look again. 
We got near enough to photograph him several times before he 
decided we were dangerous and swung away into the woods. 
He was a magnificent fellow, with glossy dark coat and great 
spreading antlers. In response to our surprise at his coolness 
Donald told us that he had killed one out of a herd the year 
before and the rest had stood around to watch him skin it. 

That was my day to ride behind the caravan. Donald led 
always, as the way was often obscure. One lady was privi- 
ledged to ride behind him, free from care, while the other kept 
the pack animals in motion. One of them, the Kid, reminded 
me of an elderly lady I once knew, who under a very meek ex- 
terior hid an iron determination to go her own way. Left to 
his own devices, however, the Kid would never quite drop out 
of sight, so I learned to let him follow at his own pace, and be- 
hind old Roanie rode on unfretted, enjoying the new snow 
peaks rising in every notch of the valley and the picturesque 
maneuvers of our train. We followed an old Indian trail, 
scarcely a trail at all, that forded the river about forty times 
that day. 

As fresh tributaries were added the fords became more and 
more disturbing. At lunch time Donald shook his head. 

“The river’s mighty high,” said he. “It’s been rising for 
two days. We may have to swim the horses below.” 

“Can my horse swim and carry me too?” J demanded in some 
trepidation. 

“Oh, he can a little way,” said Donald. “But if the cur- 
rent’s too swift you’d better hop off.” 

“Hop off !” said I. 

“Yes—just hang on to the pommel and he'll pull you 


A Week Around Mount Robson 275 


9 


through.” Luckily this feat was not required of me. We 
made the last crossing, that of Glacier Creek, without mishap, 
though it ran turbulently over a rough and bouldery bottom. 
At dusk we pitched camp in a fir-fringed meadow close under 
Mount Bess. The special charm of this camp was its close 
proximity to grizzly bears. We plucked their hair off trees for 
souvenirs, and found their tracks wherever we stepped, even 
saw drops of water shaken from their coats not yet dry on the 
streamside rocks, but not a bear did we see. 

From the upper slopes of Bess Pass, where we climbed in 
the morning, we saw new ranges and valleys of desire. A 
high green upland and a chain of white peaks that terminated 
in an icy Olympian mountain aroused our keenest interest. 

“Some day,” we said to Donald, “we are coming back, with 
Sierrans and Mountaineers and three weeks’ time and provi- 
sions instead of one. Save us that beautiful mountain for a 
first ascent.” 

“Sure I will,’ promised Donald. “I'll set all my bear traps 
around it in the fall.” 

Then we struck camp and started the caravan along the 
homeward trail. Kinnikinic* and dwarf cornel berries flashed 
red under the trees, and though the best flower season was 
past, harebells and paintbrush and asters still bloomed in the 
open spaces. We left the long shingle bars of the Smoky Val- 
ley near sunset and rode up through the yellowing meadows of 
the upper valley. As we rounded Lake Adolphus, Robson and 
Resplendent again rose before us, banded and crowned with 
brilliant clouds. Down in the darkening water, too, clouds and 
mountains were shining as brightly. Looking into the blue 
depths I thought that, as far as I was concerned, Robson itself 
was no less unconquerable than its mirrored image or the 
crests of cloudland piled above it in the sky. 


* Arctostaphylos uva-ursi. Kinnikinic is an Algonquin word meaning a mixture. 
It is applied also to a mixture of the leaves and bark of several plants — willow, 
sumac and silky cornel — smoked by the Indians. 


| AR 


RECORD OF AN EARLY EXPLORATION OF 
TENAYA CANO 


EpITep wiTH Notes By J. N. LE Conte 


> 


HE Sierra Club is fortunate in being able to secure a de- 


scription of what was certainly the first exploration of the ~ 


Tenaya Cafion, in the Yosemite National Park. Those of us 
who have climbed through this rugged gorge, so near to the fa- 
miliar Yosemite Valley yet so little known in detail, have al- 
ways considered that John Muir’s trip in the early 70’s was the 
first made by a white man. While it probably was the first 
complete trip through from Lake Tenaya to Mirror Lake, there 
has now come to light a partial exploration made in 1866 by 
Mr. Joseph Ferrell. This valuable historical record has been 
written out by his daughter, Mrs. Mary Russell Ferrell Colton, 
whose introduction to the diary follows: 

“The following is an account, taken from an old diary, of 
what is probably the first exploration of Tenaya Cafion, made 
by two young men from Philadelphia, my father, Mr. Joseph 
L. Ferrell, and Mr. Alfred Jessup, in the year 1866. It will be 
remembered that the valley had been known to the world for 
but fifteen years previously, and up to this time had been visit- 
ed by only six or seven hundred people, while during the year 
in question 382 tourists came to the Yosemite.* See Bunnell, 
L. H., The Discovery of the Yosemite, Los Angeles, 1911. 

“This was before the days of the railroads in the Great 
West, and my father and his companion had already crossed 
the plains with a mule team, encountering many thrilling ad- 
ventures along the old immigrant trail, en route to San Fran- 
cisco and the Sandwich Islands. 


“Mary RUSSELL FERRELL COLTON, 
“Flagstaff, Arizona, September 14, 1916.” 
The diary opens on October 15, 1866, at San Francisco, and 


* A map and description of Tenaya Cafion will be found in “Scrambles About 
the Yosemite,” by Joseph Le Conte, Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 9, no. 3, January, 
IQI4. 


suosieg ‘yy uoliey Aq o10Yg 
WVd LNNOW dO LSHAXD WOW LSAMHALNOS 


eye ‘ f 7 
“XIXXX19 ALVId X “TOA ‘NILATING ANT VANTIS 


suosieg ‘yYy uote Aq oJOYg 
WVd LNOOW WOd LNAAUNATdSHY GNV NOSdOU 


SORE 


“OXO ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATING €NTD VUUNTIS 


Record of an Early Exploration of Tenaya Cafion 277 


describes the trip by steamboat up the Sacramento River to 
Sacramento. From this point Mr. Ferrell and party continued 
by stage to Stockton, and then on by stage to Hornitas and 
Bear Valley. At Bear Valley the party traveled on horseback, 
although the road even at that early date extended beyond 
Mariposa. A short distance beyond White and Hatch’s Mill 
the journey was continued over the Chowchilla Trail to Clark’s 
Station (now known as Wawona), on the South Fork of the 
Merced. The following day a trip to the Mariposa Big Trees 
was made, and it is of interest to note that on this trip Mr. Fer- 
rell met Clarence King, of the California Geological Survey. 
The next morning the party proceeded over the regular trail by 
Inspiration Point to Hutchings Hotel in Yosemite. 

Mr. Ferrell’s diary continues as follows: 

“Hutchings, Monday, Oct. 22d: We got up late this morn- 
ing, had a good breakfast and afterwards started up the valley 
to Mirror Lake, about four miles off. We reached there be- 
times and sat down on the banks gazing on the marvelous re- 
flections of the huge mountains on either side in the water. We 
spent the whole morning here watching the different phases of 
scenery, ate lunch, and like great children sailed boats on the 
lake waters until I concluded to return to the house and fish in 
the river for trout and write. Mr. J. and the guide, Mr. Steg- 
man, resolved to go beyond the lake and explore a little. I rode 
back alone at a good jog on my good mare Kate and fished 
awhile in the clear crystal water of the river without success, 
and talked the rest of the time with our landlady until supper, 
when the boys came. They had wild stories to tell of their ex- 
plorations in a cafion which has never as yet been traversed 
above some fine falls situated there. Mr. Hutchings tells me 
they have never been seen and the cafion not known. Mr. J. 
and Mr. S. are determined to go tomorrow and explore fur- 
ther. 

“Lincoln Cation, Yosemite Valley, Oct. 23d: This morning 
we had a good early breakfast and consequently a good start 
and rode off up the valley toward the lake. I turned off to the 
cabin of an old settler by the name of ‘Lamon’ to enquire all 
about the topography of the locality to which we were bound. 
I found that he knew nothing about it and wheeled away and 
rode to the lake, passing by the rocks to an open grassy glade 


278 Sierra Club Bulletin 


beyond, where we dismounted, tethering our horses by long 
lariats, relieving them of saddle and bridle so they could graze. 
Mr. J. and Mr. S., taking off their coats, threw them down on 
the saddles. Cutting great canes to assist us, we started upon 
the Mono Trail, traversed occasionally by Indians. [Note 1.] 
For a while it led up the valley through open plots of grass and 
between hugh masses of rock in the deep dark forest. We sud- 
denly turned sharply off to the left, up the mountain, where at 
once we began to climb the steep ascents following the dim 
trail of the Indians. It was a work of incredible difficulty to 
creep and clamber up the mountain side. In very many places 
we had to climb over the smooth rock for a great distance 
where the slightest slip of hand or foot would have precipitated 
one into a horrible abyss. After going on about two hours we 
came to a place where the trail turned off to the left, winding 
around to a cafion, up which it wended to the mountain sum- 
mit. 

“Here we halted and held counsel with each other. Our 
cafion lay off to our right. Above us the summit of the moun- 
tain, the slope of which reaching downward was impassable 
from the smooth rock that formed it. Breaking above us it 
exhibited an overhanging surface barring our progress in an 
upward direction. Below us and from a line parallel and ex- 
tending from our position to our right as far as the cafion, the 
mountain swept smooth and precipitously down to the base, 
leaving a bushy, briary space between which it might or might 
not be practicable for us to reach the cafion to our right. We 
rested ourselves a while and then summoning all our energies 
we struggled frantically over the debris of granite and through 
dead limbs of trees on the verge of the precipice, watchful, 
half exhausted and yet determined to achieve our project if at 
all feasible. A long, long and most exciting and fearful strug- 
gle we had of it, exploring and fighting a passage over almost 
impassable rocks and through thickets, where we were torn by 


{Note 1.—The Mono Trail to which reference is made must have been an old 
Indian trail ascending the west wall of Tenaya Cafion between the present Tenaya 
zigzags and Snow Creek. Mr. Fiske, the pioneer photographer of Yosemite, on 
being questioned on this subject, says that the Mono Indians had often mentioned 
the fact that such a trail existed, and that it was in fact their usual route to the 
valley from the east. Mr. A. C. Pillsbury has made the trip up Snow Creek cafion 
and reports remnants of an old trail there even at the present date. When the pres- 
ent Se Trail was built no indications of an Indian trail were found along that 
route. 


Record of an Early Exploration of Tenaya Cation 279 


briars and our boots worn through to our feet by the sharp 
cutting edges of the coarse granite. Finally, about two o’clock, 
we came to the side of the cafion, but found it precipitous. 
[Note 2.] We hunted hither and thither slowly and most cau- 
tiously for means of descent, finally finding a narrow ledge 
where with infinite care we might get down. Down we did 
succeed in getting, and right before us saw a beautiful basin of 
rock with huge boulders forming its sides, which basin was 
filled with most exquisite water, and into which a cascade of 
about ten feet fell through the great rocks in foaming flakes, 
forming a most charming picture. To us who were so fear- 
fully exhausted the sight of the water cheered marvelously. 
We rushed to it without speaking, and falling down on our 
faces, drank long and deep draughts from the crystal fountain. 
Never did anything taste so surpassingly excellent. After rest- 
ing ourselves and looking up and down the cafion, we ate our 
lunch and, feeling much strengthened thereby, girded up our 
loins and began the ascent. Far above, at an angle of 60°, we 
saw the end of the cafion and the summit of the mountain. To 
the left through a tall pine we saw the lashing of a mighty fall 
of water, leaping and dashing over a lofty ledge of rocks and 
falling into the cafion. [Note 3.] Between our position and 
the cascade lay half the cafion, almost impassable from the ti- 
tanic rocks chaotically piled one upon another, suggesting 
doubts of a passage. Above on either side the cafion was a 
sheer smooth precipice with beautiful ferns feathering every 
crevice with drooping fronds of emerald green. Through great 
masses of rock that blocked the cafion the waters hissed and 
boiled and percolated in foaming torrents, most beautiful to be- 
hold. We started our venture up the cafion, clambering, climbing 
on hands and knees, leaping from huge boulders over cauldron- 
like basins of foaming waters, exertions calling forth all our 
strength, Finally, we accomplished the distance which brought 
us to the base of the magnificent cascades, broad and ethereal, 
dashing a thunderous sheet of foam below. I climbed up be- 


_ [Note 2.—It would appear from the above that the party must have climbed en- 
tirely out of the cafion and over the top of Mount Watkins, descending again into 
Tenaya Cafion just beyond that great barrier. It is not clear just how this portion 
of the climb was made. It seems strange that the crossing of Snow Creek is not 
mentioned. | 


[Note 3.—This must be the great fall at the head of the main cafion and just 
below Glacier Valley. There are two falls here, the large one being above. ] 


280 Sierra Club Bulletin 


side the cascades to see if there was a perpendicular fall above 
descending from the mountain summit, and found one perhaps 
a hundred feet in height. I then descended to the rest of the 
party and we slowly returned down the cajion to the place 
where we had entered it. It was then about four o’clock. Mr. 
J. and Mr. S. concluded that there was a practicable passage 
down the cafion, and therefore we went down some distance 
until we were met by a smooth face of rock running all across 
the cafion where the waters flowed over, making a beautiful. 
fall of a hundred feet in height. [Note 4.] Below it was re- 
peated, forming a second fall. Here we were forced to betake 
ourselves to the left-hand side of the cafion, the right-hand side 
being precipitous and smooth surfaced rock. We had to work 
our way through the branches of oak with great care down- 
ward until we came to a spot where from a tree the rock was 
smooth for about fifteen feet, until we reached a crevice below. 
Down this place Mr. S. slid on his back and reached the crevice 
in the rock, with Mr. J. and myself after him. On reaching 
this place below we made the rather startling discovery that be- 
low us the mountain showed a smooth, precipitous face of rock 
for perhaps a hundred feet. An old trunk of a tree lay before 
us and it was proposed to lower it and work our way down to 
a ledge below on it, but even then we could not be certain that 
we would not meet a more extensive and formidable precipice 
below that point, so that design was abandoned. 

“Night came creeping on and it behooved us to adopt some 
plan. We were standing in a crevice of rock about a foot in 
width and ten or twelve feet long, a precipice above and one 
below and the cafion beside us, with the swiftly rushing waters 
gliding over the glassy surface of the rock, falling in impalpa- 
ble mist a hundred feet below. Our position was truly peril- 
ous, and it was with great delight that we discovered that Mr. 
J. had had the forethought to bring a rope with him in the 
morning. He had worn it around him and now he produced 
it. Mr. S. and I first pushed him up the rock that we had slid 
down until he was able to reach the ends of the limbs over- 
hanging the rock, when he drew himself up and, tying the rope 
to the limb, threw it to Mr. S., who, with my aid in pushing his 


[Note 4.—This was probably at the upper entrance to the box cafion.] 


suosieg ‘yy uoTiey Aq 0JOYg 
MAH LAWNTVO JO AATIVA ‘NOAIYVO 


‘IOX) ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATIOS ANA1D VuUIS 


PLATE CXCII. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


LOOKING ACROSS BERG LAKE 


Caribou Range and slope of Whitehorn in distance 


Photo by Marion R. Parsons 


Record of an Early Exploration of Tenaya Cation 281 


feet up, got up beside Mr. J. I followed, holding‘on to the rope 
and, when within distance, was seized by Mr. J. and drawn up 
to them. In the gloom of the evening we retraced our steps 
and after a hard clamber reached a flat rock. overlooking the 
upper of the two falls, surrounded by great rocks. Here we 
concluded to camp out all night in preference to attempting to 
get down in another way on the mountain or in seeking our 
trail of the morning. Whilst there was yet a little light left, 
Mr. J. got some wood, of which there was plenty near at hand, 
and built a good fire on the flat rock, while Mr. S. went out to 
see if he could find some other way to get out of our difficulty. 
He soon returned, however, and we three sat down by our 
bright fire in doleful anticipation of a cold and cheerless night, 
hungry, without even coats to shield my companions from the 
cold air that followed the rushing water down the cafion. Mr. 
S. improvised a bed to obviate the necessity of lying on the 
hard rock by cutting the leafy branches off the near trees and 
placing them beneath us. We all lay down by the fire, quiet 
and yet unable to sleep, the fire toasting our side nearest it 
while the wind chilled the other side. Mr. S. found a semi- 
cave in which he built a fire and made a bed for Mr. J. in which 
he was shielded from the wind. The night passed slowly and 
drearily. 

“Hutchings, Oct. 24: The moon shone beautifully down in 
the valley and about midnight stood above our deep cajfion, 
gleaming on the worn rocks and intensifying the shadows. The 
morning, as it.drew on, brought with it more intense cold, and 
all the wood we could throw on our fire failed to ward off the 
chills. Dawn at length stole in upon us and we prepared to 
seek our trail of yesterday. We plodded over the rocks and 
got up upon the mountainside, where with much labor we suc- 
ceeded in following up the trail until it struck the main Mono 
trail. Then, as fast as possible, hurried down into the valley, 
put the saddles on the horses, poor animals who had suffered 
for want of water, and rode as fast as we could to Mr. Hutch- 
ings’ house. Here all day we have been lying listlessly about 
the house, reading and whiling away our time, resting our- 
selves and preparing for our trip to the Nevada and Vernal 
Falls tomorrow.” 


THE WHITE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 
By Wituis Linn JEPSON 


- 


EST of botanical exploration and the perennial desire for 

the open of the back country had long combined to whet 
my desire for a summer’s work in the White Mountains of 
eastern Mono and Inyo counties. They form one side of the 
great Owens Valley trough, and they rise as abruptly from the 
valley floor as does the Sierra Nevada wall to the west. 

Our way of approach was by Silver Cafion, a characteristic 
cafion of a desert range. Opening into Owens Valley it runs 
eastward in a nearly straight line for six miles, directly into 
the White Mountains. As is usually the case in such cafions 
its narrow floor seems nearly level, but the gradient is about 
ten feet in ten to sixteen rods. At the point where the cafion 
parts into three forks our party of scientific men made camp at 
6500 feet in order to spend some days in field work on the 
mammals, birds, and plants. Just at this point in the cafion 
there is a narrow band of a desert Mahogany (Cercocarpus in- 
tricatus) on the cafion wall, a species remarkable for its minute 
leaves. A gay border of moisture-loving plants edges the 
swift streamlet in the bottom—yellow Monkey-flower, an an- 
nual Indian Paint-brush (Castilleia stenantha), a Columbine, 
the same as the coast species, and Desert Crowfoot (Ranuncu- 
lus Cymbalaria). 

On our journey to the summit of the range we follow the 
left-hand or northerly fork, which is really the continuation of 
the main cafion, finally leaving the cafion bed and zigzagging up 
its easterly wall. Very soon we enter the zone of the Pifion or 
One-leaf Pine, which forms here a very fine forest—very open, 
of course, but giving a distinctive character to these slopes and 
narrow benches or flats on the mountain side. A full-grown 
tree is inclined to become very individual, and not a few of 
them develop the habit of a Coast Live Oak, some standing out 
in high relief on the steepest rocky walls, some on the little 
level benches. Towards the upper limit of the Pifion, the com- 


The White Mountains of California 283 


mon Desert Mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) forms bands 
on the ledges of the cafion walls up to altitudes of 7500 or gooo 
feet. These shrubs have here a blue-green aspect, but of dark- 
er tint than the blue rock ledges which they follow. 

At 8500 feet one leaves the Pifion and enters a zone of the 
Limber Pine (Pinus aristata). Like every so-called forest in 
a desert range of mountains it is very open. The trees are 
mostly short and stocky, that is, twenty to forty feet in height, 
sometimes fifty-five feet, with extreme trunk diameters of three 
or four feet. The bark is a light-colored drab, with streaks of 
black in the fissures. There is practically no underbrush, al- 
though occasionally one finds a fine clump of Desert Spiraea* 
(Chamaebatiaria millefolium). Leaving the forest the trail 
leads for seven miles through a sagebrush association where 
grow a number of interesting herbs, the Sego Lily, various 
Eriogonums and Arenarias, a Silene and a Lupine. 

Just northeast of Big Prospector Meadow camp was made at 
8300 feet, on the headwaters of North Fork Crooked Creek. 
Springs in this range are very scarce, but we are fortunate in 
having by the camp a fine spring pouring from the granite 
rocks. 

After some days at this point I leave the remainder of the 
party and start for the highest point in the range, White Moun- 
tain Peak. I elect to trail along the sides of the range some 
distance, instead of climbing at once to the axis. My way 
leads over a low ridge north of the camp and down into and 
along Poison Creek, through a luxuriant growth of Tall Lark- 
spur and Selinum, a luxuriance contrasting strangely with the 
scanty, or at least desert-like, vegetation of the mountain sides. 
After two miles I turn to the right up a fork of the stream and 
cross a low divide to a small tributary of Cottonwood Creek, 
the main water channel of this region. 

One of the members of our party saw mountain lions a few 
days ago at Cottonwood Creek, and as I proceed down the 
tributary to the main stream I hope to glimpse one of the big 
cats. Huge blocks of granite lie at right angles, often molded 
into dome forms or semi-orderly structures. One looks up the 
little lateral cafions as one passes up the main stream and sees 


* See Sierra Club Bulletin, vol. 9, p. 42, 1913. 


284 Sierra Club Bulletin 


miniature El Capitans rising from dainty green meadows broi- 
dered with flowering herbs. 

The flowering herbs in this cafion are of especial interest and 
so engross my attention that lions are quite forgotten. My 
botanical press becomes heavy and still more heavy until I am 
interrupted by a Mexican vaquero, of whom I inquire about 
the trails to the peak and finally about lions. “But where is 
your gun?” says the Mexican. “Oh, I never carry arms” is 
my reply. “El Americano!” I heard him exclaim, as he turned 
his horse down the trail. 

Hours of steady pulling over the rock-strewn bed of the up- 
per Cottonwood brings one finally to the summit of the range, 
and I start northward along the plateau, passing the night at 
McAfee Meadow. The next morning the way is still northerly 
along the axis, White Mountain Peak in full view, standing up 
out of the range like an eagle’s beak with the perpendicular 
wall to the west. 

After reaching the face of the peak proper it is simply la- 
borious climbing for near fifteen hundred feet up, over a wil- 
derness of angular blocks. The United States Geological Sur- 
vey bench-mark on the summit at the monument gives the alti- 
tude as 14,242 feet, which is higher than any of the peaks in 
the Yosemite group across the gorge of Owens Valley. That 
is to say, it exceeds Mt. Dana by 1192 feet, Mt. Lyell by 1152 
feet, and Mt. Ritter by 1086 feet. 

At the summit of the peak grows the Alpine Polemonium 
(P. eximium), extending down the slopes to 13,500 feet. An 
alpine Erigeron grows within one hundred feet of the summit, 
these two species being the only plants found above 13,900 feet. 
Between 13,200 and 13,900 feet were found a species each of 
Hulsea,* Calyptridium, Draba, and Potentilla. In addition the 
yellow-flowered Alpine Buttercup (Ranunculus Eschscholten) 
grows on the rocky slopes at 13,700 feet. This is a remark- 
able species, being the only truly alpine species of buttercup in 
the high mountains of California. It extends far northward to 
Alaska and the Aleutians. It only remains to be said that the 


* Hulsea algida, which is a characteristic alpine of the highest Sierra peaks, from 
Mt. Whitney to Tower Peak and Mt. Rose. On Mt. Whitney it is found nearly if 
not quite to 14,000 feet, ranging higher on that mountain than any other species of 
flowering plant observed by the writer. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. BEATE CXCIII. 


LEGENDS FOR -FIGURES 


Fig. 1. Flats of the axial plateau, about 11,500 feet, between McAfee Meadows and 
White Mountain Peak, the latter the highest point at the left. The upper 
limits of the forest band of Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) and 
Hickory Pine (Pinus aristata) show on the slopes of 
the eastern mountain wall to the right 


A. C. Shelton photo 
PLATE CXCIV. 


Fig. 2. Summit of White Mountain Peak, from a point at about 14,000 feet 
A. C. Shelton photo 


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The White Mountains of California 285 


number of plant species on the peak proper is very small and 
the vegetation is exceedingly scanty. 

If one is a pigmy one cannot view a giant very well by 
standing at his feet. One does, to be sure, obtain a certain im- 
pression of the vastness and height of the eastern wall of the 
Sierra Nevada by standing at its base in the Owens Valley; 
but these impressions are not in any wise comparable to the 
impressions thronging instantly on the mind as one surveys the 
Sierra from the altitude of White Mountain Peak. The high 
snow fields and plateaux and peaks unfold in a way to reveal 
unexpected and unusual grandeur. It is a revelation of the 
highest Sierra—almost as if one were viewing them from the 
vantage point of a separate planet which had wandered near. 

In the end of April and early May it was my fortune to be 
in Death Valley, whence a trip was made into the Panamint 
Range, of which the dominating height is Telescope Peak, 11,- 
045 feet in altitude. The situation of Telescope Peak, its dis- 
tance from Mt. Whitney, and its altitude combine to render it 
an unequalled view-point for comprehension of the premier 
mountain chain of California. From this pinnacle one sees the 
Sierra Nevada rising from the great interior plateau as an un- 
broken wall barring the westward way. One is thrilled with a 
new sensation, for he feels that he sees the whole snowy range. 
There it comes, out of the far distance from the Mt. Ritter 
group of peaks, down to University Peak and Mt. Williamson, 
curving down to Mt. Whitney, Mt. Le Conte, and Mt. Lang- 
ley, curving steadily on to Olancha Peak, and always without 
pass or break, and still curving steadily on westerly till lost in 
the Double Peak of the Tehachapi Range, thus enfolding to the 
westward that mysterious land, the light of which one sees 
through a purple haze beyond the line of snowy peaks. 

To my mind no other view of the Sierra Nevada equals this 
in romantic character. From no other point does one so nearly 
seize the whole mighty chain in one sweep of the eye; from no 
other point is the contrast of the desert ranges so impressive; 
from no other point is there greater possible appreciation of 
the Sierra Nevada as a barrier, especially in its relation to the 
westward migration of men. 

The White Mountains, however, far surpass the Panamint 


286 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Range in extent and height, and in area and persistence of 
snowfields. The name White Mountains does not seem happy, 
but certain granite peaks of the range are said to show white 
as viewed from the northwest. The term “White Mountain 
Peak,” which is used for the highest point by the United States 
Geological Survey, seems especially awkward and unfortunate. 
An alternative name, Mt. Olmsted, appears on the Forest Ser- 
vice map of the Inyo National Forest and is much to be pre- 
ferred. 


- 
MOUNTAIN CLIMBERS 


By ArIstTiIpEs E. PHOUTRIDES 


Under sun-enamored shades 

Born of cedar, pine, and fir, 
Through the flower-spotted glades 
Where the fleeting insects stir, 
Past the valleys, past the hills, 

Up the singing mountain rills, 
Upward! Upward! 

The blithe climbers go! 

Upward! Upward! 

Past all things below! 


To the lofty mountain peak! 

To the snows that touch the sky! 
Where the tongues of ages speak 
With eternal voices high, 
Echoed in their endless rhyme 
By a bournless space and time! 
Upward! Upward! 

The blithe climbers go! 
Upward! Upward! 

Past all things below! 


(From LicHts aT Dawn) 


Kern River, California, 
July, 1912. 


THE CLIMB OF DUNDERBERG VIA 
VIRGINIA CANON 


By GrorcE C. THOMPSON 


- 


HE encampment of the Sierra Club in Tuolumne Mead- 

ows during July, 1917, was, from every standpoint, a suc- 
cess, and from many standpoints an unqualified success. It 
pursued, in the main, the objects for which the constitution of 
the club declares we exist. It is a matter of common consent, 
however, that the side trip, those few days when kindred 
spirits become knights of the road, is the piéce de résistance of 
the summer outing; for it is then you see the finest views, 
climb the highest peaks, get the biggest appetite, and catch the 
most unheard-of trout. It is then, too, that you readily find 
out what stuff your comrades are made of. 

Last summer’s outing can boast of at least two such trips 
that had the zest of newness and romance, and that, too, within 
a bow-shot—of course I mean a Sierra bow-shot—of the Soda 
Springs. They were the trip to the Ten Lakes Basin, and the 
climb of Dunderberg via Virginia Cafion. The first, Ten Lakes 
Basin, does not come within the scope of this article. The 
five-day Dunderberg trip, however, I shall attempt to describe 
briefly, having been in the thick of it as a fly-caster and hum- 
ble member of the commissary. 

When it became noised along the rocky slopes of Parsons 
Ridge, I almost said Parnassus Ridge, that a five-day trip was 
being planned to explore Virginia Cafion, climb the forbidding 
pile of frowning rock, properly known as Thunder Mountain, 
that stands sentinel over the desert, and return cross country 
via Young Lake and Mount Conness, there was unusual stir 
and excitement. And when it became farther known that that 
intrepid and insatiable mountaineer, Walter Huber, was to be 
commander-in-chief of the expedition, and that he was to be 
assisted by Mrs. Parsons, it was soon a question whether it 
would be a side trip or whether we would have to move the en- 
tire camp, Soda Springs, Toy Gong, Tap, and all, in order to 


288 Sierra Club Bulletin 


accommodate the numbers. It was finally agreed, however, 
that twenty should be the limit of the party, and that for con- 
venience of commissary and general handling they should be 
divided into two platoons of ten each. 

And so we set forth, bag and baggage, with the most efficient 
of packers and five pack animals. The first night found us by 
our camp fire at Conness Creek, dining on rainbow trout, and 
afterwards mingling our voices in true Sierra Club fashion in 
hymns of praise and thanksgiving. On the other side of the 
creek, Ray Bailey and his Rodgers Lake revelers were making 
their best efforts to prove that they were the true and only 
dwellers in the mountains. But they failed. We were it. So 
we thought and so we still believe. We were off ta an un- 
known land—a valley lying somewhere to the northeast, 
guessed at, but unknown—and a still more mysterious moun- 
tain beyond. We had been to Rodgers Lake and knew it by 
heart. But no one, as far as we knew in the history of the Si- 
erra Club, had been up Virginia Cafion and to Dunderberg. 
And so with lusty voices we proved our right of primacy far 
into the night. At last the fire died out and the winds and 
tumbling streams sang us to sleep. 

The morning of our second day found us still on familiar 
ground, up Cold Cafion and over the ridge following the Mat- 
terhorn trail as far as Return Creek. Return Creek is the name 
given to the stream formed by the junction of Spiller and Vir- 
ginia creeks, so Return Cafion and Virginia Cajfion are, in fact, 
geographically one. The same stream heading in Virginia 
Cafion flows through both. At the point where the main trail 
crossed the creek we picked up the Virginia Pass trail, running 
northeasterly and following closely the stream. 

Virginia Cafion is one of the many spots in the Sierra that 
owe their beauty and charm to what may be called their inti- 
macy. You leave the rest of the world behind; you are visit- 
ing a friend at home, in the seclusion of a quiet beauty that is 


denied the world in general. To add to its charm you have not. ~ 


only meadows of rare flowers, but on either side the most per- 
fect tamarack-pine forests that I have seen anywhere. Not a 
single dead tree up to the very sky-line mars the unbroken 
sweep of glistening green; and, best of all, the trail, which 


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The Climb of Dunderberg via Virginia Canon 289 


within a few years has been reblazed at the lower part of the 
cafion, suddenly gives out, and you are your own trailmaker. 
Open meadow follows stretches of forest, and forest succeeds 
delightful flower-scented glades. If you are careful, you are 
further repaid with the sight of soft-eyed deer, looking at you 
from the tangled underbrush, unafraid. The birds, particular- 
ly the thrushes, are fluting their dreamy songs from brush to 
mountain side, and the chickadee sings his love song. 

We had evidence abundant that this is the true home of 
Apollo and the Muses. In fact one of our number had strange 
stories to tell of a lost trail leading to secret haunts where the 
sense of direction becomes confused and where, in bewilder- 
ment, one lies down and dreams to the music of unseen choris- 
ters and is wafted away under the tricky guidance of Pan and 
the water sprites. Yes, it is an intimate, a lovely, a friendly 
cafion, with a stream in its midst that has every virtue that a 
stream could have — babbling noises, tumbling rapids, cold, 
crystal pools, moss-lined and tanglewood banks, and overhang- 
ing shelves where the ouzel dips with lightning speed—every- 
thing !—with one exception. In vain did the best of fishermen, 
even the unexcelled d’Estrella, speed the singing line upon the 
foaming pools and change from fly to fly. Sad but true, the 
trout is a minus quantity. Still the trout is not always neces- 
sary, and we had ample compensation, an appetite and a thirst 
“you couldn’t buy,” and a meal truly fit for the gods. 

And then as we sat in the gathering twilight, listening to the 
music of the stream and the last song of the thrush, we were 
suddenly aware of a miracle. The entire valley was trans- 
formed into a bowl filled to its brim with molten gold, while 
Shepherd’s Crest, with its mantle of snow, blazed in the last 
rays of the sun like a great amethyst. We sat in silence for a 
long time watching it until gradually the light faded and the 
long shadows dropped into darkness. It was a scene that none 
of us can ever forget. 

And then such a camp-fire as we had, soaring high above 
and lighting and lifting higher still the splendid tree tops that 
seemed to lose themselves in the sky! Songs, stories, a round 
table of friendly jest and reminiscence, and we are safe again 
in our sleeping bags upon “rock and cones imbedded deep.” 


290 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Morning brings the third day, and while still the dipping 
stars were winking and the shadows filling up the valley, even 
before the highest point of Shepherd’s Crest had felt the morn- 
ing’s breath, we were up and away. A climb of a thousand 
feet brought us to Summit Lake and in full view of Thunder 
Mountain. 

Here the ways divided, and while the bold spirits turned 
their faces to the storm-defying heights, the slackers and a 
large part of the commissary contented themselves with climb- 
ing to Epidote Peak, and, dreaming in the sunshine, picking 
out the various peaks and lakes, and watching through field 
glasses the intrepids scale the frowning cliffs. 

Dunderberg is a mountain of multi-colored rock, steep as to 
its sides, broken as to the rocks, and slippery, shifting, red and 
hot as to the uncertain shale. It also has snow on the side— 
steep, unclimbable snow—and on top, when you get there, a big 
monument of more broken rocks. It is easy to come down, but 
not exactly safe as to the coming. Rennie, the Mountain Goat, 
makes a bee line down ravines of crushed shale and fetches up, 
in a few thousand dashes, in something like twenty-three min- 
utes, at the bottom. Others come more slowly, and with cau- 
tion. After you have climbed it you are glad, and when you 
get back to camp you are gladder still. Those left behind at 
camp are glad, too, for they have kept dinner waiting, and they 
show their joy by unusually friendly greetings, and by hand- 
ing out dainties that you never knew existed, such as onion and 
potato salad. I forgot to state that the elevation of this Thun- 
der Peak is 12,365 feet. 

Do not be too hasty, however, in deciding not to climb Dun- 
derberg. The real and most important reason for climbing any 
mountain is the getting there and the things one can see from 
the top. Measured by this standard, Dunderberg ranks sec- 
ond to few in the entire Sierra. In fact it is the vantage point 
of this entire region, and commands on all sides views which 
are simply superb. Bridgeport Valley to the north, Monument 
Ridge and Saw Tooth Ridge to the north and west, Dana, 
Gibbs, Conness, Lyell, and many other old friends greet you 
from a new angle. Saddlebag Lake, Virginia Lake, East Lake, 
West Lake, Greek Lake, and innumerable others—even Hoover 


The Climb of Dunderberg via Virginia Cation 291 


Lake—winking with laughing eyes of blue, send their glisten- 
ing light to greet you. Beyond, to the east, mysterious, silent, 
desolate, shadow-like, filled with shifting rainbow colors, lie 
Mono Lake and Mono Desert. 

At the campfire that night, amid stories of adventure, nar- 
row escapes, scientific discussion, etc., it was clearly demon- 
strated to the entire satisfaction of the twenty campers, and to 
the packer, that if a flying body, Homer Miller, for instance, 
in a mad leap for lower ledges, comes in contact with a splinter 
of Dunderberg, it is eminently fitting and necessary that he 
come into camp last of all, and that he occupy his place at the 
camp-fire in his sleeping bag, in order that Miss Bridges may 
illustrate with needle and thread a new use for bandanas. 

Our cross-country trip from Virginia Cafion to Young Lake, 
where we camped for the last night, was a constantly shifting 
scene of forest, stream and mountain, with many surprises as 
to distances. Young Lake, only a short distance from Soda 
Spring, has not received the appreciation to which it is clearly 
entitled. We voted it by acclamation a spot of almost unpar- 
alleled beauty. Ragged Peak, White Mountain and Conness, 
so encircle it from various sides that its setting is one of wild 
beauty unsurpassed. The stunted trees, the broken granite 
boulders, the snow edging its way into the waters of the lake, 
the restless waves that nervously rock themselves from cliff to 
sandy beach, all add to the impression that this spot is very far 
from the world. One could well believe that no human being 
had ever visited it until his eye falls upon a bit of obsidian, or 
an exquisite arrowhead, giving evidence that in a bygone age 
here was once a happy hunting ground of the Indians. 

The last day brought us to the top of Conness, and back by 
Young Lake and the circuitous contours of Ragged Peak, to 
the base camp at Soda Springs. Blessed is the side trip, so say 
we all; blessed is the spirit of the mountains; and blessed are 
the streams of crystal water and ice-cold plunge in lake and 
pool. The stars are blessed, too, showing in untold myriads so 
friendly and near. Blessed is the thunderstorm, and the sweet 
mountain rain, and the trees and flowers that hold up grateful 
heads. And blessed beyond all the comradeship that no one 
knows who has not tested its sweetness in the High Sierra. 


KNAPSACKING IN THE KINGS-SAN JOAQUIN 
REGION 


By A. L. JorDAN 
- 


N THE 12th of June, 1917, we left Cascada, the terminus 

of the San Joaquin and Eastern Railway, with knapsacks 
and outfits weighing between fifty-five and sixty pounds apiece. 
My companion was Mr. H. H. Bliss of the University of Cali- 
fornia. We traveled via Huntington Lake and Badger Flat to 
Kaiser Pass, where we had a fine view across the South Fork 
of the San Joaquin of Saddle Peak, Red and White Mountain, 
Mount Abbott, Mount Gabb and others. The South Fork 
seemed larger than the Merced at Yosemite. We had a bath 
in the hot sulphur spring, then crossed the suspension bridge 
and went onward. 

Leaving the trail, we explored a peculiar rock mesa which 
we had seen from the pass. It was of volcanic nature and had 
vertical cliffs, accessible in only one or two places. We called 
it “Jericho Mesa.” We next came to Mono Meadow and then 
to Vermilion Valley, where we passed through some aspen 
thickets and noted many evidences of avalanches. On leaving 
Mono Creek we entered a country with no trails, and going on 
into the Second Recess, climbed the steep right bank of Mills 
Creek at about nine thousand feet. 

Here we discarded our moccasins, put on caulked shoes and 
began “hitting the snow.” On the way to the pass a large coy- 
ote was seen, and the tracks of many others were noticed in 
the snow. We called it “Coyote Pass” (12,200 feet). Leaving 
our packs here, we started for Mount Gabb, and finding only a 
few steep places, reached the summit about two o'clock. The 
reward was one of the finest views I have ever seen—a great 
vista of gigantic peaks, rock-masses and snow. Finding no evi- 
dence that the peak had been climbed before, we made out a 
statement, placed it in a “dehydro” can and left it in a cairn on 
the summit. The elevation marked on the map is 13,700 feet. 

We made a speedy descent, resumed our packs and started 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CXCVIII. 


CONN 


SS GLACIER FROM THE MOUNTAIN SUMMIT 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 


“XIOXO ALVITd 


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Knapsacking in the Kings-San Joaquin Region 203 


on. The great shadow of the mountain warned us that we had 
but three hours of daylight in which to get down to timber line. 
The packs were heavy and we were tired and the shore line of 
Lake Italy is a long one. As one weary pilgrim put it, “That 
lake is strung out like a piece of macaroni!” So it seemed 
quite a time before camp was made, at 10,800 feet, in the Hil- 
gard branch of Bear Creek. The nearby peaks were bathed in 
the beautiful pink of the alpenglow. 

Next day we went on down Bear Creek, crossed the branch 
on a rough log bridge about a quarter of a mile above the 
junction, and continued on up the right bank of the East Fork. 
Here we had to make our first ford. The water was not up to 
our waists, but there were ice-floes near and H. H. did not like 
the temperature. A little farther on we left our packs again 
and climbed Seven Gables (13,066 feet). There were a few 
cliffs and one chimney with slide-rock, but most of the climb 
was plain snow-plugging. So far as we know, the peak had 
been climbed only by Messrs. Le Conte, Cory and Hutchinson 
before us. The next day we went on to a gap ahead which we 
christened ‘‘Hardscrabble Pass’ (about 12,200 feet), then 
made quick time over the snow down to Piute Creek in French 
Cafion. We made camp here, though we walked farther down 
to the junction with the San Joaquin and saw the fine new 
bridge across the creek. ) 

On our way up the stream the following day we saw a big 
porcupine, and had great fun trying to get him to pose for a 
. photograph. Passing on up Piute Creek, we got a fine view of 
Mount Humphreys (to the north) and at last reached Piute 
Pass. We noticed that some timber extended clear to the top 
(11,400 feet). Plunging down through the soft snow, we fol- 
lowed the North Fork of Bishop Creek to a wooded region 
called Bishop Park. Farther on we came to the intake for one 
of a series of hydro-electric stations and spent some time ex- 
amining the gate mechanism. We were then being scruti- 
nized by the watchman, not only because of our unshaven and 
vagabondish appearance, but for a reason which will appear 
later. 

Following the pipe line, we soon reached Andrews’ Camp, 
where we were welcomed by the proprietor. We had been 


294 Sierra Club Bulletin 


thirteen days from Cascada and our packs weighed about 
thirty-seven pounds each. 

After resting and loading up with groceries we were ready 
to depart. Mr. Andrews called us aside and told us that the 
telephone wires were hot with instructions for the men at the 
next dam to be on the lookout for “two fellers with packs who 
acted suspicious and might be German dynamiters!” We 
thanked him and started. Our packs now weighed sixty-eight 
pounds apiece, so we found that one mile was far enough for 
that evening. We went on up Bishop Creek, past South Lake, 
and at the end of the day came to the most beautiful campsite 
of the trip on the shore of Long Lake. The lake is set like the 
jewel of the poet, between great colored mountains. Our camp 
was in a little clump of limber pine and tamrac. The elevation 
is 10,800 feet. We were awakened by our familiar friend the 
Gambel sparrow, who sings just before dawn, and we rose 
while the stars were still visible. The lake was frozen nearly 
over. 

On our way up toward the pass we met two young men 
from Bishop, with five burros, who were returning after their 
second attempt to get their animals over. After a long hard 
climb we reached Bishop Pass and crossed into Fresno County 
again. Our course was now over great snow-fields into the 
headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Kings. It was after 
midday and the snow was soft. My companion was ahead 
breaking trail when he went through the crust and wrenched 
his ankle. Luckily we had reached timber line, and we soon 
found a good camping-place on the Dusy branch, where we 
stayed for two days. I explored a little, finding one easy pass 
(for knapsackers) over into the Palisade Basin. We finally 
got off again, myself with the larger load, down, down, into 
the cafion of the Middle Fork. The injured ankle improved 
rapidly and we made the junction of the Dusy branch and the 
river. We here struck a recently completed portion of the 
John Muir Trail, so travel was easy. After awhile the trail 
stopped. The workmen had blasted a way half the distance up 
a water-worn cliff and then quit for the season. By using the 
rope we worked our way up a cleft in the rock. Toiling up- 
ward slowly, we camped on the edge of a lakelet, about a mile 


Knapsacking in the Kings-San Joaquin Region 205 


below Helen Lake. Ice had to be broken before we could get 
water for cooking. 

We were up next morning while it was yet dark, and got 
breakfast as the alpenglow lit up the mountain side. Then fol- 
lowed a great climb over the snow, where little ice-chunks made 
a curious tinkling sound when kicked off by our shoes. One 
ice-cave with some fine stalactites was seen. Reaching Muir 
Pass (12,059 feet), we crossed into the Evolution Creek re- 
gion, then found a way directly opposite the middle of Wanda 
Lake over into North Goddard Creek. We dubbed this “Lag- 
gard Pass,” the name telling how we felt. Trudging onward 
down the creek, we passed one fine lake and camped at the first 
scrubby timber near another. This was our highest camp—1I,- 
000 feet. Leaving the left bank of the creek about a mile above 
where it enters the South Fork of the San Joaquin, we worked 
over into the cafion of the main stream. Here at short intervals 
the river leaps gleefully in most beautiful waterfalls. 

A good place to ford was found about a hundred and fifty 
yards above where North Goddard Creek comes in, and H. H. 
spoke “full and free’ concerning the coldness of the water, the 
swiftness of the stream and the roughness of the stones on the 
bottom. The trail led on along the bank of the clear, rushing 
river. We missed the Hell-For-Sure trail and camped on the 
very brink of a fine fall, whose roar lulled us to sleep. It was 
the most romantic of all our camps. Up at dawn, we “hit the 
side of the cafion.” Using the map, also the note of Mr. Le 
Conte’s party,* we came up near Red Mountain. Here we had 
to go down hill some distance, and bearing to the left, were 
forced to cross a mile or more of slide-rock, but we finally 
reached the pass with the appropriate name (11,300 feet). A 
great contrast was offered by the views to the east and to the 
west. The former was one of a country smothered in snow, 
the latter of lakes in their natural blue color, some bare earth, 
and in the distance trees and green meadow. 

This point marked this portion of the trip into two parts, the 
remainder being in what seemed low country. After some 
tramping over granite, we came to forest country and again 


* See Sierra Crus Butwetin, vol. II, no. 5, page 260. 


296 Sierra Club Bulletin 


heard the “harp of the winds” in the trees. This was a well- 
ducked and well-marked trail through woods sometimes open 
and cheerful, sometimes dark and gloomy. Walking on through 
Post Corral Meadows, we reached Sand Meadow (Helms 
Creek), where I prepared for a little nap. H. H. started fish- 
ing. I was awakened by wild yells, and as soon as I could get 
my eyes open beheld H. H., the rod bent almost double, strug- 
gling with a large trout. After helping him get it ashore (it 
was almost a foot long), I returned to my nap. Very soon 
there was a duplication of the performance, so I gave it up 
and started supper. We got eleven beauties all told, the first 
real fishing of the trip. They had the ordinary markings, and 
what was new to me, the fine bright red spots of the Eastern 
brook trout. 

Next day we went on upward, noting a pair of fine gray 
foxes on our way through the forest. The trail here passed 
through magnificent forests of red fir, tamrac, white fir and 
sugar pine. Near by dozens of beautiful snow plants were 
seen. We finally left the trail and struck out across country 
to try to find the McKinley Grove of Big Trees, marked rather 
indefinitely on the maps. Upon climbing to the top of a huge 
rock, great was our joy when we made out a number of the 
sequoias among the thousands of trees visible. After plunging 
through the brush we came upon one of the giant redwoods 
and knew that we had found the grove. The impression was 
that of entering a great cathedral, and we went in with our 
hats off. The wonderful coloring and size of the trees are al- 
ways soul-stirring. The grove is a small one, but is almost 
unspoiled by tourists, and pin-headed officials have not yet la- 
beled the trees “General Wellington,” “General Napoleon,” etc. 

We now resumed our journey, and passing down Laurel 
Creek, approached the Dinkey Ranger Station. The first man 
we talked with since leaving Bishop Pass was a cook for the 
outfit of J. Robinson, well known to Sierra Club people. We 
rested at the station, then trudged on over a dusty road, think- 
ing of the clean and dustless country left behind. Luckily, a 
delightful camp-spot was found, where a clear stream gushed 
out of a fragrant group of azalea. 

Our walk next day was through a most desolate region of 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCIII 


PORCUPINE, PIUTE CREEK 
Photo by H. H. Bliss 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCV. 


PEAK NEAR LONG LAKE 
Photo by A. L. Jordan 


Knapsacking in the Kings-San Joaquin Region 207 


stumps and rotting timber; the forest had been lumbered and 
no effort made to burn refuse. It was very depressing all the 
way to Shaver Lake. At the lumber company’s store we got a 
few luxuries and then went on. The following day brought us 
to the Stevenson Creek station of the San Joaquin and East- 
ern, a short distance from where we started. We were not yet 
out of food, though we had been out just fifteen days from 
Andrews’ Camp. With a little care, we could have gone seven- 
teen or eighteen days. 


OW the sun has come out after the storm, how bright, how 

full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the 
new world! The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a mem- 
orable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beau- 
ty of flowers . . . After a storm at this season, the sun comes 
out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is 
full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, 
and the earth is a fairyland. Thoreau’s Journal 


THE JUNIPERS OF LAKE VALLEY 
By Cornetius Beacu BRADLEY 


- 


NE day last summer, while driving through Lake Valley 

at the upper end of Lake Tahoe, I was surprised to see 
among the yellow pines and tamaracks of the open forest cer- 
tain trees that seemed to me new. I thought that I knew all 
the trees in that part of the Sierra. My companion pronounced 
them tamaracks (Pinus contorta var. murrayana), which in- 
deed they greatly resembled in stature and in habit. But the 
tawny-gray fibrous bark and the finer sprays of foliage con- 
vinced me that they could not be that. On examination at a 
later time we found that they were junipers, but so unlike the 
forms of Juniperus occidentalis with which we were familiar 
that we were compelled to suppose them to be of a different 
species—possibly one that had worked its way over from the 
eastern side of the range through Luther’s Pass. But on my 
return to Berkeley the specimens of foliage and fruit which I 
had brought with me were identified by Dr. H. M. Hall as un- 
doubtedly those of J. occidentalis. 

The features of these trees which had puzzled me were: (1) 
their unusual situation on the floor of a deep sheltered valley, 
instead of on the exposed rocky slopes of the Sierra ridges; 
(2) their close association with other conifers instead of being 
scattered about singly in the open; (3) their stature, reaching 
eighty or ninety feet—twice or thrice that of the tree in its 
usual habitat; (4) their symmetrical shape and aspiring habit 
which here persist even to old age. For, while this feature is 
common throughout the whole group of cypress-like trees, and 
regularly appears in the early life of this species, it is lost long 
before maturity by those individuals which face the Sierra 
storms unprotected.* 

Another feature which impressed us later was the frequent 
occurrence in this group of the twin or double tree, as seen in 
plates CCII and CCIV. This also occurs, but I think not so 


* See plates CC and CCI. 


The Junipers of Lake Valley 299 


frequently, among junipers which grow on the exposed moun- 
tain ridges. The double tree might in reality be a single one 
which forked very early in life because of the loss of its lead- 
ing shoot; or it might be two trees which, germinating near 
each other, grew at length large enough to touch and then to 
mingle into one common trunk. But why should this be more 
common among these junipers than among the yellow pines 
and tamaracks about them? Here surely is an interesting prob- 
lem for some one to solve. 

Here then was a group of some hundreds of these trees scat- 
tered about among the pines of the valley floor between My- 
ers’ station and the forest-ranger’s cabin some two miles to the 
south. They seemed moreover to be strictly confined to this 
area. None were found either to the north or to the south of 
it. Right through the center of it runs the automobile road to 
Luther’s Pass and Markleeville. Hundreds of campers and 
tourists pass through it every season. Yet it seems never to 
have come to the notice of our botanists. Indeed Dr. W. L. 
Jepson tells me that he has never known of such a group of 
these trees, although he has known of exceptional individuals 
of their stature and habit. 

The special characters of this group are due no doubt to the 
richer soil in which they grow, and to the protection against 
storms afforded both by the high ridges east and west of them 
and by the other forest trees growing about them. Since simi- 
lar conditions are by no means uncommon in the Sierra at this 
altitude, it seems altogether likely that such groups might be 
found elsewhere, if people were only on the lookout for them.+ 
I hope that members of the Sierra Club and other persons in- 
terested in such things will, on their summer rambles, keep this 
matter in mind, and especially that they will not fail to report 
their findings. 

The fact that a number of these trees had recently been cut 
to furnish posts for some miles of fencing on the road to Tal- 
lac, led me to take up the question of their age. The trees 


_ tin his monumental Silva of California (1910) the only notice of this excep- 
tional type is the following sentence: ‘In protected localities they present regular 
figures forty to sixty-five feet high, and sometimes six or seven feet in diameter.’ 

} Since writing the above I have learned of the existence of a somewhat similar 
group on the South Yuba, between Cisco and the Summit. 


300 Sierra Club Bulletin 


felled for this purpose were all vigorous and clean-growing 
junipers in their young prime, from two to three feet in diam- 
eter, and from sixty to seventy feet high. From my notes I 
select the following typical counts of the annual rings of 
growth. 

No. 1. Prostrate trunk, one of the two trunks of a double 
tree. Section at 10 feet from the ground. Diameter 24 inches, 
247 rings. 

No. 2. Stump. Section at three feet from the ground. Di- 
ameters 27 and 36 inches, 236 rings. 

No. 3. Prostrate half of a double tree which had stood 70 
feet high. Diameter at 10 feet above the ground, 28 inches, 
255 rings. 

No. 4. A fine double tree, still in vigorous growth; each 
trunk nearly five feet in diameter, and the combined trunk 
nearly nine feet. A superficial cut to a depth of 1% inches 
showed 40 layers of growth. 

In order to bring these results to bear upon the question of 
the age of junipers growing under conditions which are for 
them more usual than those of Lake Valley, we later cut down 
a vigorous young tree growing on a rocky ledge in Glen Alpine, 
near Lily Lake, and brought a section of the trunk to Berkeley, 
where it is now in the Herbarium of the University. This tree 
is— 

No. 5. Diameters, 14 and 18 inches. Rings, 230.§ 

This last tree from the mountain side proved to be a very 
instructive parallel to those selected as typical of growth on 
the valley floor. For while the age was nearly the same 
throughout the whole group, the measured diameters of the 
valley trees averaged nearly twice as great as that of the moun- 
tain tree. All this was interesting and suggestive, but it did 
not go far enough. We need to know also the age of the much 
larger trees which are frequently encountered—from five to 
seven feet, as stated in the Silva; and trees considerably larger 
than that have been credibly reported. Direct and conclusive 
answer to this question can, of course, be had only by felling 


§ The upper surface was chosen for measurement because it was clear of the 
swell about the roots. The count of rings could not be made on this surface be- 
cause of a cavity at the heart. It was therefore made on the lower surface, and 
showed 234 rings. An allowance of 4 rings was then made for the difference of 13 
inches in height. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CC. 


YOUNG JUNIPER, GLEN ALPIN 
Photo by Harold C. Bradley 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


BIG TWIN JUNIPER 
Photo by Harold C. Bradley 


PLATE CCIlI. 


The Junipers of Lake Valley 301 


some of these great trunks and making an actual count of the 
rings. This, however, it was impossible to do in what remained 
of the vacation. ie 

Nevertheless it seemed that the data already secured should 
furnish sufficient basis for a good approximation to the answer 
desired. Of course no simple scheme of proportionate in- 
crease as between age and diameter would avail, since age 
increases regularly by addition of equal increments ; whereas in- 
crease of diameter is by unequal increments, greatest at a point 
very early in the life of the tree, and diminishing thereafter to 
the end. The Glen Alpine tree, for example, could not by any 
possibility have doubled its diameter of 16 inches in twice its 
230 years of age. Still less could it have doubled that again to 
64 inches at 920 years of age. Yet this last diameter—by no 
means extraordinary among mountain junipers—could hardly 
have been reached short of 1400 or 1500 years! 

Thus there was opened up for these trees a vista of life un- 
expectedly long, equalling perhaps even that of the giant se- 
quoias. My thoughts turned at once to a study made many 
years ago of a magnificent specimen of that race in the Cala- 
veras Grove, felled while in full vigor of growth at the age of 
1240 years. By careful count and measurement I secured a 
complete record of its growth through the four centuries of its 
youth and the eight centuries and more of its glorious prime. 

Here then was the clue I needed. With those ages and meas- 
urements{| as coordinates, was plotted the curve of growth ac- 
tually made by that tree throughout its entire life.** 

It is No. 1 of the accompanying chart, and it is to serve as a 
norm of growth with which we may compare, and thus fore- 
cast, the growth of other long-lived trees of kindred stock and 
similar figure, growing in the same climate and in the same re- 


4] The measurement for each 200-year period was as follows: 


b 


Years Radius measurement Years Radius measurement 
200 25 inches 800 66 inches 
400 AB ie? 1000 Pa ee? 
600 on Maa 1200 81 ? 


The measurements presently to be used in plotting the growth of the junipers are 
diameter-measurements. This is done merely to facilitate comparison of the different 
curves by bringing them nearer together, and does not at all affect the conclusions 
reached concerning the growth of the junipers. Should the diameter of the sequoia 
be needed, it may, of course, be had by simply doubling these measurements. 


_ ™* Since the curve is quite regular, it has been possible to continue it in dotted 
line, with little risk of error, beyond the actual life-time of the tree to the 3000- 
year mark. The curves of the junipers have been carried out on the same plan. 


302 Sierra Club Bulletin 


gion— namely, these junipers. Barring extraordinary acci- 
dents, the curve of their growth should be essentially like that 
of the sequoia, having the same time-scale, and differing only 
in the scale of magnitude—that is, the ordinates of the juniper 
curve should at all points be proportional to those of the se- 
quoia curve. The problem is therefore to find the constant ra- 
tio between the two. 


EST Olen ea 

a Oo eS Ce el ie 
ECCS ere E no ea a 
ca eT ee SO 
BREN 22 ak2 Ee ame 
REP Cae ae eee 
BED e2 ane hee eee 


|| ed pl 
AL A OT Te Ea TA Ct 
a a eee 
Cod a Le Tepe fee peg ae pe De a ee aie gi fC 


Turning now to the first juniper of the above list, we see that 
the initial point of its curve must of course be at zero of the 
century scale. A second point is also known, determined by 
its age of 247 years (at P) and its diameter of 24 inches (Pa). 
By continuing the vertical coordinate Pa to the sequoia curve 
at d, we get the ordinate of that curve at the 247-year point Pa, 
—that is, the radius-measurement of the sequoia at that age, 
29.5 + or 0.8 is therefore the ratio sought. Applying this ratio 
in succession to each of the 200-year measurements of the se- 
quoia growth, we shall have the corresponding measurements 
of our juniper according to our forecast, which, when plotted, 
give us curve No. 2 of the chart. In like manner the age and 
measurements of the Glen Alpine tree result in curve No. 3 of 
the chart. 

The scheme assumes that by the time such a tree as these has 
reached the age, say of 250 years, it has struck its true pace— 
has found its proper scale of growth. Forecasting on this basis 
the “expectation of growth’ for these two trees, we find that 
the mountain juniper might attain the five feet of diameter as- 
signed to its class at about the age of 1300 years, and the val- j 
ley juniper the seven feet assigned to its class at about £500. 
The forecast is probably a little too favorable for the junipers f 


The Junipers of Lake Valley 303 


which occupy exposed positions on the mountain ridges. For 
the sequoia-record which serves as the basis of the forecast is 
that of a tree uncommonly well defended from the accidents 
and stresses which sap the strength and check the growth of 
middle and later life. Serious damage by fire it seems to have 
escaped altogether. The deadly freezing and drying winds of 
winter which the junipers must face singly as they stand scat- 
tered about on the storm-beaten heights, could not harm this 
sequoia deep in its narrow dell and girt about by its giant 
brethren. So far then as this consideration has weight, it 
points to a date still later than that just now named for the at- 
tainment of its supposed maximum size. 

There is also another consideration which seems to point in 
the same direction. The largest junipers that I have chanced 
upon have always been found far up on the mountain flanks. 
Their curve of growth therefore should be represented not by 
curve No. 2, but by the more pinched and starved No. 3. I feel 
sure that I have seen among them trees of more than seven feet 
in diameter, but never having had the wit to measure them, I 
cannot insist upon that.—Let their maximum be seven feet in 
diameter. According to curve No. 3 how old should they be? 
One actually hesitates to name the figure. 

On the other hand, the enormous age which used to be 
claimed for the giant sequoias has been steadily cut down by 
the increase of definite knowledge, until now it appears that 
the greatest age demonstrated by actual counts is no more than 
2200 or 2300 years. It would seem then that the juniper is ac- 
tually in the race of life alongside of its big brother the se- 
quoia ! 

May 16, 1917 


STUDIES IN THE SIERRA 
By Joon Murr 


NO. IV. GLACIAL DENUDATION 
- 


LACIAL denudation is one of the noblest and simplest 

manifestations of sun-power. Ocean water is lifted in 
vapor, crystallized into snow, and sown broadcast upon the 
mountains. Thaw and frost, combined with the pressure of its 
own weight, change it to ice, which, although in appearance 
about as hard and inflexible as glass, immediately begins to flow 
back toward the sea whence it came, and at a rate of motion 
about equal to that of the hour-hand of a watch. 


This arrangement is illustrated in Fig. 1, wherein a wheel, 
constructed of water, vapor, snow, and ice, and as irregular in 
shape as in motion, is being sun-whirled against a mountain- 
side with a mechanical wearing action like that of an ordinary 
grindstone. 

In north Greenland, Nova Zembla, the arctic regions of 
Southeastern Alaska and Norway, the snow supply and general 
climatic conditions are such that their glaciers discharge di- 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE; GGL. 


OLD JUNIPER, OVER TEN FEET AT BASE 
On Tamarack Trail, Ralston Peak in distance 
Photo by Harold C. Bradley 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCIV. 


* — r P od 


GIANT JUNIPER IN CATHEDRAL CANON 
NATIONAL PARK 
Photo by William E. Colby 


LOSE IMsiguE 


Studies in the Sierra 305 


rectly into the sea, and so perhaps did all first-class glaciers 
when in their prime; but now the world is so warm, and the 
snow-crop so scanty, most glaciers melt long before reaching 
the ocean. Schlagenweit tells us those of Switzerland melt on 
the average at an elevation of about 7400 feet above sea-level ; 
the Himalaya glacier, in which the Ganges takes its rise, does 
not descend below 12,914 feet ;* while those of our Sierra melt 
at an average elevation of about 11,000 feet. In its progress 
down a mountain-side a glacier follows the directions of great- 
est declivity, a law subject to very important modifications in 
its general application. Subordinate ranges many hundred feet 
in height are frequently overswept smoothly and gracefully 
without any visible manifestations of power. Thus, the Ten- 
aya outlet of the ancient Tuolumne mer de glace glided over 
the Merced divide, which is more than 500 feet high, impelled 
by the force of that portion of the glacier which was descend- 
ing the higher slopes of Mounts Dana, Gibbs, and others, at a 
distance of ten miles. 

The deeper and broader the glacier, the greater the horizon- 
tal distance over which the impelling force may be transmitted. 
No matter how much the courses of glaciers are obstructed by 
inequalities of surface, such as ridges and cafions, if they are 
deep enough and wide enough, and the general declivity be suf- 
ficient, they will flow smoothly over them all just as calm 
water-streams flow over the stones and wrinkles of their chan- 
nels. 


PRESENT CONDITION OF THE SIERRA CONSIDERED WITH 
REFERENCE TO GLACIAL ACTION 


The most obvious glacial phenomena presented in the Sierra 
are: first, polished, striated, scratched, and grooved surfaces, 
produced by the glaciers slipping over and past the rocks in 
their pathways. Secondly, moraines, or accumulations of mud, 
dust, sand, gravel, and blocks of various dimensions, deposited 
by the glaciers in their progress, in certain specific methods. 
Thirdly, sculpture in general, as seen in cafions, lake-basins, 
hills, ridges, and separate rocks, whose forms, trends, distribu- 
tion, etc., are the peculiar offspring of glaciers. 


* According to Captain Hodgson. 


206 Sierra Club Bulletin 


In order that my readers may have clear conceptions of the 
distribution and comparative abundance of the above phenom- 
ena, I will give here a section of the west flank from summit 
to base between the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, which, 
though only a rough approximation, is sufficiently accurate for 
our purposes. The summit region from D to C (Fig. 2) is 
composed of metamorphic slates, so also is most of the lower 
region, B to A. The middle region is granite, with the excep- 
tion of a few small slate-cappings upon summits of the Merced 
and Hoffmann spurs. With re- 
| | gard to the general topography 
| >, AvirndA RO RLS | of the section, which may be 
ae ae Nay rm taken as fairly characteristic 
: ais of the greater portion of the 


range, the summit forms are 
sharp and angular, because they 
have been down-flowed; all the 
middle and lower regions com- 
prising the bulk of the range 
have rounded forms, because 
they have been overflowed. In the summit region all the gla- 
cial phenomena mentioned above are found in a fresh condi- 
tion, simply on account of their youthfulness and the strong, 
indestructible character of the granite. Scores of small gla- 
ciers still exist on the summit peaks where we can watch their 
actions. But the middle region is the most interesting, because, 
though older, it contains ail the phenomena, on a far grander 
scale, on account of the superior physical structure of granite 
for the reception of enduring glacial history. 

Notwithstanding the grandeur of the cafions and moraines 
of this region, with their glorious adornments, stretching in 
sublime simplicity delicately compliant to glacial law, and the 
endless variety of picturesque rocks rising in beautiful groups 
out of the dark forests, by far the most striking of all the ice 
phenomena presented to the ordinary observer are the polished 
surfaces, the beauty and mechanical excellence of which no 
words will describe. They occur in large irregular patches 
many acres in extent in the summit and upper half of the mid- 
dle regions, bright and stainless as the untrodden sky. They 


Studies in the Sierra 307 


reflect the sunbeams like glass, and though they have been sub- 
jected to the corroding influences of the storms of countless 
thousands of years, to frosts, rains, dews, yet are they in many 
places unblurred, undimmed, as if finished but yesterday. The 
attention of the mountaineer is seldom arrested by moraines 
however conspicuously regular and artificial in form, or by. 
cafions however deep, or rocks however noble, but he stoops 
and rubs his hand admiringly on these shining surfaces, and 
tries hard to account for their mysterious smoothness. He has 
beheld the summit snows descending in booming avalanches, 
but he concludes that these cannot be the work of snow, be- 
cause he finds it far beyond the reach of avalanches; neither 
can water be the agent, he says, for he finds it on the tops of 
the loftiest domes. Only the winds seem capable of following 
and flowing in the paths indicated by the scratches and grooves, 
and some observers have actually ascribed the phenomenon to 
this cause. Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly at the 
strange brightness of the ground, and smell it, and place their 
feet upon it cautiously; only the wild mountain sheep seems to 
move wholly at ease upon these glistening pavements. 

This polish is produced by glaciers slipping with enormous 
pressure over hard, close-grained slates or granite. The fine 
striations, so small as to be scarcely visible, are evidently 
caused by grains of sand imbedded in the bottom of the ice; 
the scratches and smaller grooves, by stones with sharp grav- 
ing edges. Scratches are therefore most abundant and rough- 
est in the region of metamorphic slates, which break up by the 
force of the overflowing currents into blocks with hard cutting 
angles, and gradually disappear where these graving tools have 
been pushed so far as to have had their edges worn off. 

The most extensive areas of polished surfaces are found in — 
the upper half of the middle region, where the granite is most 
solid in structure and contains the greatest quantity of silex. 
They are always brighter, and extend farther down from the 
axis of the range, on the north sides of cafions that trend in a 
westerly direction than on the south sides; because, when wet- 
ted by corroding rains and snows, they are sooner dried, the 
north sides receiving sunshine, while the south walls are most- 
ly in shadow and remain longer wet, and of course their gla- 


308 Sierra Club Bulletin 


ciated surfaces become corroded sooner. The lowest patches 
are found at elevations of from 3000 to 5000 feet above the 
sea, and thirty to forty miles below the summits, on the sunni- 
est and most enduring portions of vertical walls, protected 
from the drip and friction of water and snow by the form of 
the walls above them, and on hard swelling bosses on the bot- 
tom of wide cafions, protected and kept dry by broad boulders 
with overhanging eaves. 


MORAINES 


In the summit region we may watch the process of the form- 
ation of moraines of every kind among the small glaciers still 
lingering there. The material of which they are composed has 
been so recently quarried from the adjacent mountains that 
they are still plantless, and have a raw, unsettled appearance, 
as if newly dumped, like the stone and gravel of railroad em- 
bankments. The moraines belonging to the ancient glaciers 
are covered with forests, and extend with a greater or less de- 
gree of regularity down across the middle zone, as we have 
seen in Study No. III. Glacial rock forms occur throughout this 
region also, in marvelous richness, variety, and magnitude, 
composing all that is most special in Sierra scenery. So also 
do cafions, ridges and sculpture phenomena in general, descrip- 
tions of whose scenic beauties and separate points of scientific 
interest would require volumes. In the lower regions the pol- 
ished surfaces, as far as my observations have reached, are 
wholly wanting. So also are moraines, though the material 
which once composed them is found scattered, washed, crum- 
bled, and reformed, over and over again, along river-sides and 
over every flat, and filled-up lake-basin, but so changed in po- 
sition, form of deposit, and mechanical condition, that unless 
we begin with the undisturbed moraines of the summit region 
and trace them carefully to where they become more and more 
obscure, we would be inclined to question the glacial character 
of these ancient deposits. 

The cafions themselves, the valleys, ridges,and the large rock 
masses are the most unalterable and indestructible glacial phe- 
nomena under consideration, for their general forms, trends, 
and geographical position are specifically glacial. Yet even 


Studies in the Sierra 309 


these are so considerably obscured by post-glacial erosion, and 
by a growth of forests, underbrush, and weeds, that only the 
patient and educated eye will be able to recognize them be- 
neath so many veils. 

The ice-sheet of the glacial period, like an immense sponge, 
wiped the Sierra bare of all pre-glacial surface inscriptions, 
and wrote its own history upon the ample page. We may read 
the letter-pages of friends when written over and over, if we 
are intimately acquainted with their handwriting, and under 
the same conditions we may read Nature’s writings on the 
stone pages of the mountains. Glacial history upon the sum- 
mit of the Sierra page is clear, and the farther we descend, the 
more we find its inscriptions crossed and recrossed with the 
records of other agents. Dews have dimmed it, torrents have 
scrawled it here and there, and the earthquake and avalanche 
have covered and erased many a delicate line. Groves and 
meadows, forests and fields, darken and confuse its more en- 
during characters along the bottom, until only the laborious 
student can decipher even the most emphasized passages of the 
original manuscript. 


METHODS OF GLACIAL DENUDATION 


All geologists recognize the fact that glaciers wear away the 
rocks over which they move, but great vagueness prevails as to 
the size of the fragments, their abundance, and the way in 
which the glacial energy expends itself in detaching and carry- 
ing them away. And, if possible, still greater vagueness pre- 
vails as to the forms of the rocks and valleys resulting from 
erosion. This is not to be wondered at when we consider how 
recently glacial history has been studied, and how profound 
the silence and darkness under which glaciers prosecute their 
works. 

In this article I can do little more for my readers than indi- 
cate methods of study, and results which may be obtained by 
those who desire to study the phenomena for themselves. In 
the first place, we may go to the glaciers themselves and learn 
what we can of their weight, motions, and general activities*— 


* Here I would refer my readers to the excellent elementary works of Agassiz, 
Tyndall and Forbes. 


310 Sierra Club Bulletin 


how they detach, transport, and accumulate rocks from vari- 
ous sources. Secondly, we may follow in the tracks of the 
ancient glaciers, and study their denuding power from the 
forms of their channels, and from the fragments composing 
the moraines, and the condition of the surfaces from which 
they were derived, and whether these fragments were rubbed 
off, split off, or broken off. 

The waters which rush out from beneath all glaciers are tur- 
bid, and if we follow them to their resting-places in pools we 
shall find them depositing fine mud, which, when rubbed be- 
tween the thumb and finger, is smooth as flour. This mud is 
ground off from the bed of the glacier by a smooth, slipping 
motion accompanied with immense pressure, giving rise to the 
polished surfaces we have already noticed. These mud parti- 
cles are the smallest chips which glaciers make in the degrada- 
tion of mountains. 

Toward the end of the summer, when the winter snows are 
melted, particles of dust and sand are seen scattered over the 
surfaces of the Sierra glaciers in considerable quantities, to- 
gether with angular masses of rock derived from the shattered 
storm-beaten cliffs that tower above their heads. The separa- 
tion of these masses, which vary greatly in size, is due only in 
part to the action of the glacier, although they all are borne 
down like drift on the surface of a river and deposited to- 
gether in moraines. The winds scatter down most of the sand 
and dust. Some of the larger fragments are set free by the ac- 
tion of frost, rains, and general weathering agencies; while 
considerable quantities are borne down in avalanches of snow, 
and hurled down by the shocks of earthquakes. Yet the glacier 
performs an important part in the production of these super- 
ficial effects, by undermining the cliffs whence the fragments 
fall. During my Sierra explorations in the summers of 1872 
and 1873, almost every glacier I visited offered illustrations of 
the special action of earthquakes in this connection, the earth- 
quake of March, 1872, having just finished shaking the region 
with considerable violence, leaving the rocks which it hurled 
upon the ice fresh and nearly unchanged in position. 

But in all moraines we find stones, which, from their shape 
and composition, and the finish of their surfaces, we know 


Studies in the Sierra 


were not thus derived from 
the summit peaks overtopping 
the glaciers, but from the 
rocks past which and over 
which they flowed. I have seen 
the north Mount Ritter Gla- 
cier and many of the glaciers 
of Alaska in the act of grind- 
ing the side of their channels, 
and breaking off fragments 
and rounding their angles by 
crushing and rolling them be- 
tween the wall and ice. Inall 
the pathways of the ancient 
glaciers,also, there remain no- 
ble illustrations of the power 
of ice, not only in wearing 
away the sides of their chan- 


nels in the form of mud, but _}fjilp 
in breaking them up into huge > 
blocks. Explorers into the up- ° 


per portion of the middle 
granite region will frequently 
come upon blocks of great 
size and regularity of form, 
possessing some character of 
color or composition which 
enables them to follow back 
on their trail and discover the 
rock or mountain - side from 
which they were torn. The 
size of the blocks, their abun- 
dance along the line of dis- 
persal, and the probable rate 
of motion of the glacier which 
quarried and transported them, 
form data by which some ap- 
proximation to the rate of this 
sort of denudation may be 


311 


312 Sierra Club Bulletin 


reached. Fig. 3 is a rock about two miles west of Lake Tenaya, 
with a train of boulders derived from it. The boulders are 
scattered along a level ridge, where they have not been dis- 
turbed in any appreciable degree since they came to rest toward 
the close of the glacial period. An examination of the rock 
proves conclusively that not only were these blocks—many of 
which are twelve feet in diameter—derived from it, but that 
they were torn off iis side by the direct mechanical action of 
the glacier that swept over and past it. For had they simply 
fallen upon the surface of the glacier from above, then the rock 
would present a crumbling, ruinous condition—which it does 
not—and a talus of similar blocks would have accumulated at 
its base after there was no glacier to remove them as they fell; 
but no such talus exists, the rock remaining compact, as if it 
had scarcely felt the touch of a single storm. Yet, what count- 
less seasons of weathering, combined with earthquake violence, 
could not accomplish, was done by the Tenaya Glacier, as it 
swept past on its way to Yosemite. 

A still more striking and instructive example of side-rock 
erosion may be found about a mile north of Lake Tenaya. 
Here the glaciated pavements are more perfectly preserved 
than elsewhere in the Merced basin. Upon them I found a 
train of granite blocks, which attracted my attention from their 
isolated position, and the uniformity of their mechanical char- 
acters, Their angles were unworn, indicating that their source 
could not be far off. It proved to be on the side of one of the 
lofty elongated ridges stretching toward the Big Tuolumne 
Meadows. They had been quarried from the base of the ridge, 
which is ice-polished and undecayed to the summit. The rea- 
son that only this particular portion of the ridge afforded 
blocks of this kind, and so abundantly as to be readily trace- 
able, is that the cleavage planes here separated the rock into 
parallelopipeds which sloped forward obliquely into the side of 
the glacier, which was thus enabled to grasp them and strip 
them off, just as the spikelets of an ear of wheat are stripped 
off by running the fingers down from the top toward the base. 
An instance where the structure has an exactly opposite effect 
upon the erodibility of the side of a rock is given in Fig. 4, 
where the cleavage planes separate it into slabs which overlap 


Studies im the Sierra 313 


each other with reference to the direction of the glacier’s mo- 
tion, like the shingles of a roof. Portions of the sides of rocks 
or cafion walls whose structure is of the latter character always 
project, because of the greater resistance they have been able 
to offer to the action of the past-flowing glacier, while those 
portions whose structure is similar to that of the former exam- 
ple always recede. 


Fig. 5 is a profile view of a past-flowed glacier rock, about 
1500 feet high, forming part of the north wall of Little Yo- 
semite Valley near the head. Its grooved, polished, and frac- 
tured surface bears witness in unmistakable terms to the enor- 
mous pressure it has sustained from that portion of the great 
South Lyell Glacier which forced its way down through the 
valley, and to the quantity, and size, and kind of fragments 
which have been removed from it as a necessary result of this 
action. The dotted lines give an approximate reconstruction 
of the rock as far as to the outside layer at A. Between A and 
B the broken ends of concentric layers, of which the whole 
rock seems to be built, give some idea of the immense size of 


314 Sierra Club Bulletin 


some of the chips. The reason for the greater steepness of the 
front from A to B than from B to C will be perceived at a 
glance; and, since the cleavage planes and other controlling 
elements in its structure are evidently the same throughout the 
greater portion of its mass as those which determined its pres- 
ent condition, if the glacial winter had continued longer its 
more characteristic features would probably have remained 
essentially the same until the rock was nearly destroyed. 

The section given in Fig. 6 is also taken from the north side 
of the same valley. It is inclined at an angle of about twenty- 
two degrees, and therefore has been more flowed over than 
flowed past. The whole surface, excepting the vertical por- 
tion at A, which is forty feet high, is polished and striated. 
The arrows indicate the direction of the striae. At A a few in- 
cipient cleavage planes are beginning to appear, which show 
the sizes of some of the chips which the glacier would have 
broken or split off had it continued longer at work. The whole 
of the missing layer which covered the rock at B, was evident- 
ly detached and carried off in this way. The abrupt transition 
from the polished surface to the split angular front at A, shows 
in a most unequivocal manner that glaciers erode rocks in at 
least two very different modes—first, by grinding them into 
mud; second, by breaking and splitting them into blocks, whose 
sizes are measured by the divisional planes they possess and 
the intensity and direction of application of the force brought 
to bear upon them. That these methods prevail in the denuda- 
tion of overflowed as well as past-flowed rocks, is shown by 
the condition of every cafion of the region. For if mud parti- 
cles only were detached, then all the bottoms would be smooth 
grooves, interrupted only by flowing undulations; but, instead 
of this condition, we find that every cafion bottom abounds in 
steps sheer-fronted and angular, and some of them hundreds 
of feet in height, though ordinarily from one to ten or twelve 
feef. These step-fronts in most cases measure the size of the 
chips of erosion as to depth. Many of these interesting ice- 
chips may be seen in their tracks removed to great distances or 
only a few feet, when the melting of the glaciers at the close 
of the period put a stop to their farther progress, leaving them 
as lessons of the simplest kind. 


Studies in the Sierra ars 


Fig. 7, taken from the Hoffmann fork of Yosemite Creek ba- 
sin, shows the character of some of these steps. This one is 
fifteen feet high at the highest place, and the surface, both at 
top and bottom, is ice-polished, indicating that no disturbing 
force has interfered with the phenomena since the termination 
of the glacial period. 


Fig. 8 is a dome on the upper San Joaquin, the top of which 
is about 7700 feet above sea-level. The arrow indicates the di- 
rection of application of the ice-force, which is seen to coin- 
cide with the position of remaining fragments of layers, the 
complements of which have been eroded away. Similar frag- 
ments occur on the stricken side of all domes whose structure 
and position were favorable 
for their formation and pres- 
ervation. 

Fig. 9 is a fragmentary 
dome situated on the south 
side of the Mono trail, near 
the base of Mount Hoffmaian. 
“\u| Remnants of concentric shells 

Fic. 9 ——~ of granite from five to ten 
feet thick are seen on the up-stream side at A,where it received 
the thrust of the Hoffmann Glacier, when on its way to join 
the Tenaya, above Mirror Lake. The edges of unremoved lay- 
ers are visible at B and C. This rock is an admirable illustra- 


316 Sierra Club Bulletin 


tion of the manner in which a broad deep glacier clasps and de- 
nudes a dome. When we narrowly inspect it, and trace the 
striae, we perceive that it has been eroded at once in front, back 
and sides, and none of the fragments thus removed are to be 
found around its base. Here I would direct special attention 
to the fact that it is on the upper side of this rock at A, just 
where the pressure was greatest, that the erosion has been least, 
because there the layers were pressed against one another, in- 
stead of away from one another, as on the sides and back, and 
could not, therefore, be so easily broken up. 


QUANTITY OF GLACIAL DENUDATION 


These simple observations we have been making plainly in- 
dicate that the Sierra, from summit to base, was covered by a 
sheet of crawling ice, as it is now covered by the atmosphere. 
Its crushing currents slid over the highest domes, as well as 
along the deepest cafions, wearing, breaking, and degrading 
every portion of the surface, however resisting. The question, 
therefore, arises, What is the quantity of this degradation? 
As far as its limit is concerned it is clear that, inasmuch as gla- 
ciers can not move without in some way and at some rate low- 
ering the surfaces they are in contact with, a mountain range 
may be denuded until the declivity becomes so slight that the 
glaciers come to rest, or are melted, as was the case with those 
concerned in the degradation of the Sierra. However slow 
the rate of wear, given a sufficient length of time, and any 
thickness of rock, whether a foot or hundreds of thousands 
of feet, will be removed. No student pretends to give an arith- 
metical expression to the glacial epoch, though it is universally 
admitted that it extended through thousands or millions of 
years. Nevertheless, geologists are found who can neither 
give Nature time enough for her larger operations, or for the 
erosion of a mere cafion furrow, without resorting to sensa- 
tional cataclysms for an explanation of the phenomena. 

If the Sierra were built of one kind of rock, homogene- 
ous in structure throughout its sections, then perhaps we 
would be unable to produce any plain evidence relative to 
the amount of denudation effected; but, fortunately for 
the geologist, this is not the case. The summits of the 


Studies in the Sierra 


range in the section under spe- 
cial consideration are capped 
with slates; so are several 
peaks of outlying spurs, as 
those of the Merced and Hoff- 
mann, and all the base is 
slate- covered. The circum- 
stances connected with their 
occurrence in these localities 
and absence in others, furnish 
proof little short of demon- 
stration that they once cov- 
ered all the range, and, from 
their known thickness in the 
places where they occur, we 
may approximate to the quan- 
tity removed where they are 
less abundant or wanting. 
Moreover, we have seen in 
Study No. III that the physi-° 
cal structure of granite is such” 
that we may know whether or 
not its forms are broken. The 
opposite sides of valley walls 
exhibiting similar fragmen- 
tary sections often demon- 
strate that the valleys were 
formed by the removal of an 
amount of rock equal in 
depth to that of the valleys. 
Fig. 10 is an ideal section 

across the range from base to 
summit. That slates covered 
the whole granitic region be- 
tween B and D is shown by 
the fact that slates cap the 
summits of spurs in the de- 
nuded gap where they are suf- 
ficiently high, as at C. Also, 


a 
a) 


317 


318 Sierra Club Bulletin 


where the granite comes in contact with the slates, and 
for a considerable depth beneath the line of contact, it par- 
takes, in a greater or less degree, of the physical structure of 
slates, enabling us to determine the fact that in many places 
slates have covered the granite where none are now visible for 
miles, and also furnishing data by which to approximate the 
depth at which these surfaces lie beneath the original summit 
of the granite. Phenomena relating to this portion of the ar- 
gument abound in the upper basins of the tributary streams of 
the Tuolumne and Merced; for their presentation, however, in 
detail, we have no space in these brief outlines. 

If, therefore, we would restore this section of the range to 
its unglaciated condition, we would have, first, to fill up all the 
valleys and cafions. Secondly, all the granite domes and peaks 
would have to be buried until the surface reached the level of 
the line of contact with the slates. Thirdly, in the yet grander 
restoration of the missing portions of both granite and slates 
up the line between the summit slates and those of the base, as 
indicated in Fig. 10 by the dotted line, the maximum thickness 
of the restored rocks in the middle region would not be less 
than a mile and a half, and average a mile. But, because the 
summit peaks are only sharp residual fragments, and the foot- 
hills rounded residual fragments, when all the intervening re- 
gion is restored up to the dotted line in the figure, we still have 
only partially reconstructed the range, for the summits may 
have towered many thousands of feet above their present 
heights. And when we consider that residual glaciers are still 
engaged in lowering the summits which are already worn to 
mere blades and pinnacles, it will not seem improbable that the 
whole quantity of glacial denudation in the middle region of 
the western flank of the Sierra considerably exceeds a mile in 
average depth. So great was the amount of chipping required 
to bring out the present architecture of the Sierra. 

Reprinted from the Overland Monthly of August, 1874. This is the fourth of 


a series of seven studies in which Mr. Muir developed his theories of the geology 
of the Sierra.—EDITOoR. 


Sere ACLU B 


Founded 1892 
402 Mitts Buitpinc, San Francisco, CALIFORNIA 
Annual Dues: $3.00, (first year $5.00) 


- THE PURPOSES OF THE CLUB ARE: 
sare, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific 
Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; to enlist the sup- 
port and co-operation of the people and the Government in preserving the 
forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada. 
- 
JouHN Murr, President 1892 to 1914 


OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES FOR THE YEAR 1917-1918 
BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


rarer OOrny, Sat PLANCISCO. 6c fice k si ol a pai ee ele eel ae President 
VERNON L. KELLoccG, Stanford University ............... Vice-President 
MARTON RANDALL Parsons, Berkeley...2.......0...00cec ees Treasurer 
Bee re CONTE Derkeley 3.4.00 oe bce t ws b's a Sale ew ireeaeeend lees Secretary 


WILLIAM FREDERIC Bape, Berkeley Atsert H. ALLEN, Berkeley 
Watter L. Huser, San Francisco Ropert M. Price, Reno, Nevada 
Crair S. Tappaan, Los Angeles 
HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS 
JAMES Bryce, London, England 
Henry S. Graves, Washington, D. C. 

Ropert UNDERWOOD JoHNSoN, New York City 
Davip Starr JorDAN, Stanford University 
J. Horace McFartanp, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 
Enos A. Mitts, Estes Park, Colorado 
STEPHEN T, MatuHer, Washington, D. C. 

COM MITTEES 
Outing Committee: Wi1LL1AM E. Cosy (Chairman and Manager), CLairR 

S. Tapraan (Assistant Manager), JoseEpH N. LE Conte. 

Committee on Local Walks: Frep R. PARKER (Chairman), Witt1am T. 
GoLpsporouGcH, A, E. NEUENBURG, LESLIE GARDNER, H. T. CARLTON. 

Committee on Le Conte and Parsons Memorial Lodges: JosrerH N. LE 
ConTE (Chairman), MARION RANDALL Parsons, RoBertT M. PRIceE. 

Auditing Committee: WitttaM F. BapE (Chairman), WALTER L. HuBER, 
ALBERT H. ALLEN. 

Librarian: Nei L. TAGGARD. 

Southern Califorma Section Executive Committee: CHartes J. Fox 
(Chairman), Putt S. Bernays (Secretary, 315 West Third Street, 
Los Angeles), BENJAMIN W. FENTON (Treasurer), MABELLE Mc- 
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Wiu1AM P. BoLtann, Ernest Dawson, GEorcE A. WHITE. 


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SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


Published annually for the members 


EDITORIAL BOARD 
TGS A aE See An na ee a LE Editor 
SN a Of 8 i i a ie a a Notes and Correspondence 
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ALBERT H. ALLEN, FrANcIS P. FARQUHAR 
Wa tter L. Huser, WILLIAM T. GoLpsBorouGH, JosEPH N. LE ConrmeE, 
Exxiott MCALLISTER 


WAR SERVICE RECORD 
> 


United States Army 


Apert H. Aten, Captain Infantry 
C. R. Barney, 2nd Lieutenant Field Artillery 
Davin P. Barrows, Major, Dept. Philippines 
Epwin T. BLaxe, Captain Engineers, France 
Hoimes BEcKwirTH, Ist Lieutenant Field Artillery 
FipeL C. CHAMBERLAIN, Captain Engineers, Washington, D. C. 
ALEXANDER CRAVEN, 2nd Lieutenant 
Dozier FINLEY, Captain Ordnance Department 
PAut C. Gripper, 2nd Lieutenant Infantry 
D. H. Gruss, Lieutenant 
C. A. Koro, Major Sanitary Corps 
CuHar-_es H. LEE, Ist Lieutenant Engineers 
GiLBerT N. Lewis, Major, Gas Service Dept., Washington, D. C. 
RatpuH C. McGee, Captain Infantry 
RoBERT SPANDER, Lieutenant 
E. T. THursTON, Captain Engineers 
SYDNEY ZOBEL, Lieutenant 


PRIVATES 


Rosert CAMPBELL, 116th Engineers, A. E. F., France 
J. Le Roy Corrigan 
FARNSWORTH CurRRIER, Ist Sergeant, 348th Machine Gun Battalion 
C. Netson HAcKETT 
H. L. Hansen, Section 586, A. E. F., France 
RosBert LIPMAN, Ordnance Dept., San Antonio Arsenal 
NATHAN PutNAw, I8th Railway Engineers, A. E. F., France 
LAWRENCE RENTCHLER 
GerorcE Ross 
K. A. RYERSON 
E. L. StockinG, 18th Railway Engineers, A. E. F., France 
J. C. TorMEY 
GerorcE W. WHiITtE, 14th Field Artillery 
TYLer R. VAN DEcRIFT, Ist Sergeant 7th Battery 


AVIATION 


EpMUND CHAMBERLAIN, Ist Lieutenant, 1st Aero Squadron, 
U.S. Marine Corps, Mineola, L. I. 
WILLIAM T. GOLDSBOROUGH, Ist Lieutenant, 138th Aero Squadron 
BricHt R. Paxton 
WarreEN L. Pierson, Ist Lieutenant, France 
Avery TOMPKINS, 2nd Lieutenant, Washington, D. C. 
MEDICAL OFFICERS RESERVE CORPS 


E.J. Brest J.G. Brown Matco_tm GoppArp 
CL Hose FREDERIC KROLL A. M. MeEaps 
O. H. Ropertson STANLEY STILLMAN 


AMERICAN FIELD SERVICE 
Henry L. Perry, Lieutenant 


RESERVE OFFICERS’ TRAINING CAMP 
LESLEY EINSTEIN H. V. S. Hupparp 


War Service Record 321 


United States Navy 
L. E. Bruce, Ordnance Officer 


UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE FORCE 


Francis P. Fargquuar, Passed Assistant Paymaster (Lieutenant), 
Cost Inspection, Union Iron Works, San Francisco 
S. M. Has ett, Jr., Ensign, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis 
Homer T. MILter, Assistant Paymaster (Ensign), Twelfth Naval 
District, San Francisco 


The lists given above are doubtless incomplete and members are 
urged to send in corrections and additions. Mention should also be 
made of many of our members who are giving volunteer service in im- 
portant fields of civilian war work. Our vice-president, Vernon Kel- 
logg, formerly associated with Mr. Hoover on the Commission for Re- 
lief in Belgium, is now his assistant in the Food Administration. With 
him also are Duncan McDuffie and J. S. Drum. Warren Gregory is an- 
other member of the C. R. B. who has done notable work. Warren Ol- 
ney, Jr., is a member of the State Bureau of Military Registration, and 
Walter J. Burpee, a member of the Local Exemption Board. W. J. 
Aschenbrenner is an associate member of the Legal Advisory Board. 
Homer P. Earle is in Government service in Washington. 

From the University of California the following members of the fac- 
ulty have been engaged in investigation for the Pacific Coast Research 
Conference: W. C. Bray, J. S. Burd, Herman Kower, A. C. Lawson, W. 
A. Setchell, Max Thelan. For the State Council of Defense: H. R. Hat- 
field, W. L. Jepson, C. A. Kofoid, E.P. Lewis, G.L. Louderback, Walter 
Mulford. 

The Reverend A. W. Palmer is a Director General of religious work 
in the Y. M.C. A. Charles J. O’Connor is at the head of Civilian Relief 
of the Red Cross for the whole Pacific Coast. Other devoted workers 
in the Red Cross are Ellen Emerson, John Gardner, D. L. Beard, Mary 
Haskell, Jane M. Spalding, Agnes Vaille and Jessie Tatlock. Miss 
Willie Morrow and Grace Beans are on their way to France as nurses. 
Mrs. Eunice Tietjens and Elizabeth Hammond are both in France, the 
former correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, the latter as inter- 
preter and entertainer in a Red Cross Unit. Edith Bull is likewise in 
France on war service. Professor Charles A. Huston of Stanford Uni- 
versity and Professor Edward C. Franklin are both on the War Trade 
Board, Mr. Huston on the Control of Exports, and Mr. Franklin on the 
Control of Mines. 

A few names likewise come to mind of friends from former outings 
not now members of the club, news of whom may be of interest to 
many. Bernard Miller is a Captain in the Army; Dr. Henry Forbes is 
in France with one of the American base hospitals, “loaned to the Brit- 
ish”; he has served in Serbia also. Aristides Phoutrides is First Lieu- 
tenant of Infantry, U.S.A. Alice Leavens is a member of the Smith 
College group engaged in rebuilding ruined villages in France. Dr. Ster- 
ling Bunnell is also in France. 


EDITORIALS 


OI 
SHALL SHEEP Powerful influence will be brought to bear this winter in 
DESPOIL an effort to have the national parks thrown open to sheep 
NATIONAL grazing. War pressure and the necessity for additional 
Parks ?* mutton and wool will be urged as the excuse for this ad- 


ditional entering wedge. But if these natural wonder- 
lands are ever again invaded by the “hoofed locusts,” the fable of the 
camel and the Arab’s tent will be repeated. Once allowed to enter, 
these destructive agencies will hold on like grim death, even when the 
asserted need is over. It took the courage and foresight of a John Muir 
and years of effort to “drive these money changers out of the temple,” 
and no man was ever better qualified to judge the damage these wander- 
ing hordes did to the wild gardens of the Sierra and other mountain 
parklands. He accompanied a band of sheep on his first trip into the 
Sierra, and in all his wanderings was impressed with the desert-like de- 
struction they left in their wake. To use his own words: 


In the summer of 1889, I took one of the editors of the Century 
Magazine out for a walk in Yosemite . . . and when we were 
camped one day at the Big Tuolumne Meadows, my friend said, 
“Where are all these wonderful gardens you wrote so much 
about?” And I had to confess—woe’s me—that uncountable sheep 
had eaten and trampled them out of existence. 

The axe is not yet at the root of every tree, but the sheep is, or 
was before the national parks were established . . . the sheep 
consume every green leaf, not sparing even the young conifers, 
when they are in a starving condition from crowding, and they 
rake and dibble the loose soil of the mountain sides for the spring 
floods to wash away, and thus at last leave the ground barren. 

And to think that the sheep should be allowed in these lily 
meadows! after how many centuries of Nature’s care planting and 
watering them, tucking the bulbs in snugly below the winter frost, 
shading the tender shoots with clouds drawn above them like cur- 
tains, pouring refreshing rain, making them perfect in beauty, and 
keeping them safe by a thousand miracles... . 


A few years later he wrote: 


On this ramble I was careful to note the results of the protec- 
tion the region had enjoyed as a park under the care of the Fed- 
eral Government. . . . When I had last seen the Yosemite Na- 
tional Park region, the face of the landscape in general was brok- 
en and wasted, like a beautiful human countenance destroyed by 
some dreadful disease. Now it is blooming again as one general 
garden, in which beauty for ashes has been granted in fine wild 
measure. . 


* The National Park Service has opened the parks to a limited number of cattle. 
While the necessity for even this is to be regretted, no permanent harm can result 
if ie numbers are restricted, for cattle are not nearly so destructive to vegetation 
as sheep. 


Editorials 322 


This is no time to take advantage of a nation’s stress and urge the 
granting of an unnecessary destructive privilege which will injure her 
at home as well as abroad. After the war is over the need of national 
parks will be greater than ever to help heal the wounds and allay the 
suffering of the war. Our parks should then be at their best and should 
not needlessly show the blasting effects of modern warfare. Every 
loyal American should be willing to sacrifice anything and everything 
vitally essential to victory, but we should not blindly sacrifice priceless 
possessions to our everlasting regret until the need for such sacrifice be- 
comes compelling. The national parks are only a small fractional area 
of the public domain. 

The French, who have superbly suffered the heaviest burdens in this 
war, are keeping the gardens of Paris blooming in all their peace-time 
glory in order to cheer the wounded and downhearted and make them 
forget for the moment their misery. Why does not France spend this 
labor in making shells or raising wool? Why not auction off the price- 
less art treasures of the Louvre if money and material gain is the only 
consideration in this war? No, the world is not coming to an end and 
there is a brighter day to look forward to, be it near or be it remote. 
And when that day arrives, let us not still be confronted with the ter- 
rible ravages of war by the sight of needless destruction of our wild 
playgrounds at home. W.E. C. 


To OvurCtius’ There is a natural tendency in these days to relinquish 
MEMBERS the privileges of club membership for financial reasons. 
The cost of living has risen and taxes of all kinds are 
greatly increased. Consequently the loyalty of all who belong to public- 
spirited organizations is undergoing a test. Many bear testimony that 
the Sierra Club makes a better return for value received than any other 
club of the kind. But we ardently hope to build up a membership that 
will not rate the question of individual benefit above the honor of shar- 
ing in the valuable public service which the Sierra Club is constantly 
rendering. Had it not been for the watchful protection which the club 
has exercised over the national parks and monuments of California, in 
particular, both present and future generations would long ago have 
been robbed of treasures of scenery that are now, and, we hope, will 
ever remain the pride and the inspiration of the West. In order to in- 
vade the national parks, wool and mutton men are sure to dress up their 
hope of private gain in the form of a public necessity. We need the 
support of all our members in any impending fight for the protection of 
our country’s heritage of natural beauty. Let there be no slackers in 
our ranks! Maintain your membership! W. F. B. 


324 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Two Arctic A time when nearly the whole world is at war offers little 
EXPEDITIONS encouragement to the enterprise of explorers. Two notable 

Arctic expeditions, however, were undertaken before the 
outbreak of the war. The safe return of members of both exploring par- 
ties last summer is a fact of great interest to students of the earth’s sur- 
face. The Crocker Land Expedition carried a survey along the south- 
eastern coast of Ellesmere Island, northwest of Greenland. That these 
explorers found a great increase of glacial activity throughout the north- 
ern regions, since the middle of the nineteenth century, is a fact of con- 
siderable climatic importance. In one place an enormous new glacier has 
formed as a result of the progressive refrigeration of the country. The 
land is said to be fairly buried in ice, which flows over and around the 
headlands and fills all the fiords. In view of the fact that the seasonal 
cold broke all records for one hundred and nine years in New England 
last spring, and the further fact that this increase of cold has been 
noted in the temperate zone of the entire northern hemisphere, one is 
tempted to raise the question whether another northern ice period is ap- 
proaching. 

At Cape Isabella Mr. Macmillan, the leader of the expedition, was 
fortunate enough to find the records left by Sir George Nares of the 
British expedition of 1876, and mail for the Discovery and the Alert left 
a generation ago by Sir Allen Young of the Pandora. The latter vessel, 
renamed the Jeannette, was commanded by George W. De Long when 
he set out in 1879 from San Francisco on his fateful expedition. 

The southern party of the Canadian Arctic Expedition made its way 
northward around Alaska to the point where the Canadian-Alaskan 
boundary line touches the Arctic Ocean. From there they explored the 
coast eastward for a thousand miles, consuming three years in the 
achievement of this task. Their discoveries are of great interest and im- 
portance. Among them is the cafion of the Croker River, deeply eroded 
from dolomite. The collections, both of plants and of animals, include 
specimens of groups never before encountered in the western Arctic 
area. The ethnologists found brand new material for study in the Cop- 
per Eskimos, whose language, folklore, and social customs were investi- 
gated by one of the anthropologists who lived and wandered about with 
them for half a year on the little known Victoria Island. These Eski- 
mos make their tools of native copper, which was found there in nug- 
gets weighing in some cases forty pounds. The geologist of the party 
estimated that two billion tons of the ore were in actual sight. 

Reports of the discoveries made by the northern party under the di- 
rection of the noted explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson are now being 
awaited eagerly. He had not been heard from for a year and a half, but 
the Navy Department has, just as we are going to press, received word 
of the safe arrival of his party at Fort Yukon. Stefansson undertook to 
explore the Beaufort Sea region west of the Parry Archipelago and 
north of Alaska and Yukon Territory. 


Editonals 325 


The interests common to Alpinists and explorers of the Arctic regions 
receive new recognition in the fact that Mr. Macmillan has been invited 
to give an account of his explorations at the annual dinner of the Amer- 
ican Alpine Club. W. F. B. 


MountTAINEERS More than fifty of our members are now in the army 
AND War or navy or in hospital service. Nearly as many again 

have sacrificed their business interests to devote them- 
selves to civilian work directly related to the war. Still others, un- 
counted numbers of them, whose names will never appear on war-ser- 
vice records, are doubling already heavy burdens of work and respon- 
sibility in order that home enterprises of far-reaching importance may 
still be carried on. 

In their mountain life mountaineers gain a democratic simplicity, a 
vigorous hardihood, that should stand them in good stead now. They 
learn there to respect discipline, to sacrifice individual desires to the good 
of the communal whole, to live cheerfully with little besides the three 
B’s of mountaineering—bed, boots and bread. Indispensable knowledge 
this for a soldier. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear that high hon- 
or already has been paid one of our new officers. A group of drafted 
men training under him, given the opportunity to enter a reserve off- 
cer’s training camp, declared that if they could be assured of going to 
France and fighting with him, they would prefer to remain in the ranks. 
This officer had learned, like the French officers, that leadership and 
comradeship may go hand in hand. We believe that when the war is 
over we shall be able to point with pride to more than one of our trail 
comrades, who in his hours of recreation amid the peace and beauty of 
our mountains has gained the strength, the self denial and the resource- 
fulness that will make him a gallant and trusted leader in the grim bus- 
iness of war. M. RP: 


REPORTS OF COMMITTEES 
> 


REPORT OF THE TREASURER FOR THE YEAR ENDED May 5, I917, 
CARRIED FORWARD TO DECEMBER 31, 1917 


At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club held May 5, 
1917, it was voted that the fiscal year of the club be changed to the cal- 
endar year. Among other reasons for this change was the fact that un- 
der the old system the report of the treasurer, rendered in May, could 
not be published until the following January. The report ended May 5, 
therefore, has been carried forward to December 31, and henceforward 
will be rendered each year upon the latter date and published in the 
January BULLETIN. 

At an earlier meeting it was voted by the directors that the fund de- 
rived from the bequest of the late Edward Whymper ($254.12) should 
be expended in reducing the debt on the Parsons Memorial Lodge situ- 
ated on the Tuolumne Soda Springs property, this being a permanent 
improvement equally valuable to all members of the club. 


SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES YEAR ENDED MAY 5, I9Q17 


Total wrecetpts ie ee a a Mas Ue ve a $5,724.66 
Total expenditures yee Tia ee Wt oN Aca de 5,506.35 
Excess: of ‘receipts: over ‘expenditures... ...00 0. ee ae 158.31 
Cash ‘on ‘hand (Miay.6;TOIG 60501 fee. Lee 2,036.55 
Balance May iSiitOUz oie i ila cs 6 coc ea baile: oleae Oe Lene eat Up aaa $2,194.86 


RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES FOR NINETEEN MONTHS ENDED 
DECEMBER 31, IQI7 


MAY 6, 1916, TO DECEMBER 31, 1917 


Receipts 
Dizes fromimemDersii.j2s ei SW te Ne A On ean $7,230.00 
PROG rN Gs co 11g hye GIRS UN a 210.00 
NAVETtISEMeNtS CO GO OO MAE Ena 475.00 
Sale Of MBULEETINS (5 )/3) Ce ee a NS en ae one 26.45 
Sale (of Mins ee ei ea ON CU AOR ea a 11.00 
Tntereston, bank ‘accounts. 120.44 
Sundry smalhi receipts ie el NN eae eae 4.03 
Total receipts). ae $8,026.92 


Reports of Committees 327 


Expenditures 
Bent ofr room 402 Mills Building. .......0...000¢6....... $1,200.00 
TON ASSESUATIL No p64) cicvs Wests le!) asc gralar etaliaie aly wiblene ol aye 1,200.00 
(oy CES SSR ya ta ED One 8 ao Ue re 710.48 
SSP ea A EE ES a 527.65 
Melrephnone’ and telegraph 2 .).3 ee 179.38 
Bees maintenance he Co ee egal Win alle, 98.79 
aero and Photographs 3). soi ee ieee a as 114.66 
Publishine and delivering BULLETIN..........0.000... 1,925.21 
CRIN, AP PGLACHIG eri. esis fic te cies ole dy eit hc vsie ae elses 168.22 
RPGS POS) he ig ed ea 222.88 
eee OOS es Ui lei asia w @ojaialaba tarda dheieuets 216.82 
PENNE LAN ec ieee cial u ale bialehaca ed ale losSutyale be eleral eialle thas 20.00 
preparer cl SO CEION 6 ee eV eu ale sou oie cele a wise ae els 450.00 
Penne and Equipment ./.06 ce ile oan we wes 31.90 
EPID OEE GlIDS os eee adieicd ald Bee ee Gales 36.24 
Beets IG ITISIIFATICE tile sls ale seas Silele Gels big oop ead» 183.25 
PRIA ASSISEATICE 2) eis ye Wie esis sk So deo wile alasiee eo eia'e 22.75 
MATIC CRCMAN OE sh ec wile dwindle e as ces meee een 21.25 
MN ee eM U HN ery Ulla aie wis dS ahi ewe ala ea 32.70 
MaRS EEC NUS clu sutat's Wiel a slate dic'lg gidla'a ls ele # a alal > 32.10 
ren SIHAll (EXPENSES, Co. oo lw wie bas ke bee ce wea ews 10.62 
Silene EM MEMEIELITES oy iia atch eee leg) allele bold wale tasae alee $7,404.90 
Excess of receipts over expenditures...............0.0 cee eee 622.02 
SN Or MANGA ©) TOTO, ia) s aie eee lel be cs sve s ec wae ce eae 2,036.55 
Mac On mand December 31, TOT (icc ec ka bcc cc ce ele eels $2,658.57 
Made up as follows: 
PGCE UN Me tH ere tsetse Nahas a ro $ 25.00 
IESE NATIONAL XAT ssl Suan Wie bi uis dieses eld cree 213.11 
Savines Union Bank & \Drust: Co... sos. 1,671.41 
Sectrity Savings Banke vn OL oe 749.05 
NOC LGN ARR net Mh GAA oT SPN a Ae $2,658.57 
Permanent Fund 
rm re AN TOTO ii iste e eu le wciltis ied Slalelyle claletecs $1,574.92 
MO IEICE ol VIL oe fale ie aie lale cilia ste e cid gies 400.00 
RR i Oe ON SN NUNN cr ca NA it MN 132.50 
Balance—December 31, 1917, in Security Savings Bank........ $2,107.42 


Marion RANDALL PARSONS, 
| Treasurer 


328 Sierra Club Bulletin 


REpoRT ON LE ConTE MEMORIAL LODGE 


The lodge was opened to the public on May 23rd. During the first 
part of the season the cold and damp weather necessitated a large fire 
being kept constantly burning for the comfort of the guests. For this 
purpose a quantity of wood was donated to the lodge by the Govern- 
ment officials. During the early part of the season we had an average 
of fifteen visitors a day, but as the summer advanced the number in- 
creased until, during the latter part of June, we often had several hun- 
dred. In July the number decreased again quite materially. 

The guests seemed to enjoy the books on the valley, including those 
on the birds and flowers, and the daily papers, more than any of the 
other attractions. They were also much interested in the maps and 
studied them diligently. On the hot days of July, they discovered that 
a cool, comfortable spot could always be found in the lodge, and soon 
took advantage of this, spending the whole afternoon within it, which 
made the one comfortable rocking chair constantly in demand. 

We renewed many of the older specimens of the herbarium, brighten- 
ing up the collection. There are many more specimens which we col- 
lected for this purpose but left unmounted on account of lack of room. 
A catalogue of the books was made this summer for the library, there 
being about 350. Two cards were made for each, so that any book may 
easily be found by knowing either the author or title. 

We desire to express our sincere appreciation to the Sierra Club for 
the privilege of spending a summer in the valley as custodians of the 


lodge. Docta I. PATCHETT, 


Rose B. WRIGHT, 
Custodians 
J. N. Le Conte, Chairman, 
R. M. Price, 
Marion RANDALL PaRSONS, 
Committee 


REPORT OF 1917 OUTING 


Owing to conditions brought about by the war, the ambitious plans of 
the Outing Committee to take the club into the San Joaquin and Middle 
Fork of the Kings regions had to be abandoned until after the war. A 
substitute outing was taken into the Tuolumne Meadows, where a main 
camp was established on the Soda Springs property which is under the 
control of the club, and from this central camp trips were taken to the 
many surrounding points of interest. About 150 members participated 
and the outing proved thoroughly enjoyable from every standpoint. This 
was the first opportunity that members of the club have had generally 
to enjoy the Parsons Memorial Lodge. Every one had great praise for 


ACTOS). ete ee Use Oo} uci 
Uol}10d poaino oY} WOIT SUIMOIS 
SYUNI} YZIAdN 9914} 9} OJON ‘SMOPRIT 9UUINIONT, ‘ayxe'] Yyyoqezi[y Mojaq adojs uo payeso07T 


HLMOUWD ANId MOVUYVNVL ANOINA 


"[ADD ALVTd Of “% a ‘*X “IOA ‘NILATITNAG ANTO VAUTIS 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCVII. 


yy 


we 
EE 
ee Ue Lis 


i 


ges 
Sie Goes 


ONE OF THE EXQUISITE LAKES IN TEN LAKE BASIN 
Yosemite National Park 
Photo by William E. Colby 


Reports of Committees 329 


its architectural beauty and its appropriateness to the surroundings. 
Several of the camp-fires were held in the lodge itself. The fire was 
built in the large fireplace and the building easily accommodated 150 at 
one time. Large parties climbed Mt. Lyell and Mt. Dana, and smaller 
expeditions went as far as Rodgers Lake and Dunderberg Peak. A small 
knapsack party visited the Ten Lake Basin region with a view of gain- 
ing information for the outing of 1918. The party returned to Yosemite 
by way of Merced Lake and Little Yosemite, many members availing 
themselves of the opportunity to climb Half Dome with the aid of the 
rope that has been placed along the dangerous portion of the ascent. 

Because of the continuance of the war and the desire on the part of 
many to be within easy reach of telephone and rail communication, the 
outing for the coming summer will be taken to the same headquarters in 
the Tuolumne Meadows, through Yosemite, and for the last three weeks 
of July as was the case last year. The total expense of the outing from 
San Francisco for the three weeks will be in the neighborhood of $70.00 
or $75.00 for those going from San Francisco, and approximately $80.00 
for those leaving Los Angeles. This is as close a calculation as is possi- 
ble at the present time, and detailed information will be sent out during 
the spring as usual. 

In order to make the trip as interesting as possible to those who have 
visited the Meadows on previous occasions, it is planned to take a side 
trip down to Mt. Ritter and vicinity during the first two weeks of the 
outing, and the entire party will be taken into Ten Lake Basin during 
the last week. The region about Mt. Ritter is one of the most striking 
and spectacular from the standpoint of mountaineering in the Sierra, 
while Ten Lake Basin contains one of the most exquisite groups of 
lakes that are to be found in the whole range. In all probability a knap- 
sack party will go down the Tuolumne Cafion to Pate Valley and rejoin 
the main party in Ten Lake Basin. On account of the strenuous condi- 
tions created by the war, the committee had some thought of discon- 
tinuing the outings for the coming summer at least, but so many re- 
quests have been made that an outing be undertaken in order to afford 
those who have been hard at work during the year an opportunity for 
complete rest and recreation, that the trip as outlined above will be 
undertaken, but because of these conditions the committee requests that 
all possible assistance be rendered by giving immediate notice in writing 
to the club of the intention of those who desire to participate. This ap- 
plication will not be considered binding, but it is quite necessary in or- * 
der to give the committee an opportunity to prepare for the requisite 


number. Very respectfully, 


Wm. E. Corsy, Chairman, 
J. N. Le Conte, 
Ciair S. TAPPAAN, 


330 Sierra Club Bulletin 


SECRETARY'S ANNUAL REPORT 
May 6, 1916, TO May 5, 1917 
To the Members of the Sierra Club: 


The club can be justly proud of the work accomplished the last year. 
Many of its members have entered the service of the Government in one 
capacity or another as will be indicated in part, at least, by the roll of 
honor published in another portion of the BuLtetin. The club is so 
large that we have not been able to ascertain all of the names that 
should be placed on this list, and will appreciate assistance in making it 
complete. It is a source of pride and satisfaction to learn from many 
of the active members who became officers in the various training camps 
established by the Government that a considerable portion of their suc- 
cess in these training camps was attributed directly to the experience in 
outdoor life and ability to handle personal equipment derived while on 
Sierra Club trips. 

The club also did a splendid work in securing passage of another bill 
in the last State Legislature appropriating an additional $10,000 to be 
used toward the completion of the John Muir Trail. Great credit is due 
Senator A. H. Breed for his tremendously effective assistance in this 
behalf. At the suggestion of the club the Legislature also amended the 
Golden Trout Law so that it is now possible to catch these trout com- 
mencing the Ist of July instead of the 1st of August, as was formerly 
the case. This condition virtually debarred any opportunity for the club 
members to catch golden trout on any of their outings, and was not 
supported by any valid reason. 

The club also entered a vigorous protest against allowing cattle to 
enter the national parks unless a compelling necessity were shown. Some 
good citizens became quite hysterical on the subject, and without ade- 
quate information were demanding that the parks be thrown open in- 
discriminately to grazing. Instead of a shortage of feed as predicted, 
there never was a better grazing year known in the Sierra than that of 
last summer, and the urgent demand on this score was traced directly 
to cattle interests that have been trying to get permits to enter the park 
ever since parks were established. Under pressure, the Department of 
the Interior did allow a limited number of cattle to enter the Yosemite 
National Park north of the Tuolumne River and in the region about the 
headwaters of the South Fork of the Merced. Even this is to be regret- 
ted, for when these interests once get a hold on the park it will be dif- 
ficult to dislodge them. The Sierra Club, under the guidance of John 
Muir, fought for years to get the sheep and cattle out of the Yosemite 
Park, and while the Sierra Club would not for a moment stand in the 
way of a real and compelling necessity, it would be derelict in its duty 
if it did not do all in its power to keep the parks from being ruined as 
the result of a specious demand. 

We are indebted to Dr. E. P. Meinecke, of the U.S. Forest Service, 


Reports of Committees 331 


for the gift of a large number of Alpine journals and publications, form- 
ing quite complete sets, many of which were bound. 

The 1st of May the total membership of the club was 1951, of which 
number 239 were new members, making a net increase of 155 members, 
but there were at that time 275 delinquent members who had been 
dropped for non-payment of dues, and who were given another oppor- 
tunity to be placed in good standing. A good many members have re- 
signed from the club since that date because of war conditions, or been 
dropped for non-payment of dues, and it therefore behooves the loyal 
-members to work actively in increasing the membership so that it may 
not show a considerable loss at the end of another year. While the 
Board of Directors has not met so as to act directly upon the matter, it 
is unquestionably the concensus of opinion that dues of those members 
who are in active service of the Government will be remitted during 


the period of the war. Respectfully, 


Ww. E. Cotsy, Secretary 


NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 
Edited by WiLL1AM E. CoLsy 


> 
SOUTHERN SECTION NOTES 


FroM PINE TREES TO PALM GROVES 


[An account of a four-day trip of the Sierra Club, Southern Section, through the 
San Jacinto Mountains to the Colorado Desert.] 


There is no finer alpine region in Southern California than the San Ja- 
cinto Mountains with their extensive meadows. Rising abruptly from 
the western border of the Colorado Desert, at places below sea level, 
Mount San Jacinto reaches an altitude of 10,805 feet. The new and at- 
tractive Government “Recreation Map” of the Cleveland National For- 
est mentions this peak as among the most rugged of our State. Last 
spring, from the heights of Catalina Island, members of the Sierra Club 
viewed this snow-crowned peak with his brothers, San Gorgonio and 
San Bernardino, nearly one hundred and fifty miles away, and they were 
eager for the ascent. 

A delighted party of forty left Los Angeles the latter part of August, 
1917, on a “Sierra Club Special Electric’ for San Bernardino, sixty 
miles distant. Here they transferred to two powerful auto stages which 
carried them via Hemet to about a mile above the mountain resort at’ 
Idyllwild. In Strawberry Valley, amidst a friendly group of pines and 
incense cedars, the first night’s camp was made. The party soon dis- 
persed into prearranged commissary groups of five to seven persons 
each and the evening meal was prepared. At the camp-fire the interest 
centered about the legends of Tahquitz. This wicked Indian chief so 
enraged his people that they put him to death by fire, but his evil spirit 
escaped, and even until today it is said the Saboba Indians approach 
these mountains only with fear and trembling because of the mysterious 
rumblings around Tahquitz Peak. These rumblings were experienced 
by our party, but the thunder clouds overhanging the desert were held 
in suspicion. 

Next morning breakfast was prepared at daybreak, lunches put in 
knapsacks, and dunnage bags left for the packers. By noon the party 
had ascended to Tahquitz Peak, 8826 feet in elevation. This granite 
mountain of vertical cleavage and rugged piles of weather-worn boul- 
ders affords a view of Hemet Lake, with the extensive areas of pros- 
perous citrus and deciduous groves below. The trail now descends to 
Tahquitz Valley, with its fine forest of yellow, Jeffrey and sugar pines, 
also incense cedar and white fir. Wild fuschias (Zauschneria Califor- 
nica), scarlet penstemon, purple aster and goldenrod lent color to the 
scene, while on the drier desert slope below were fields of that fascinat- 
ing member of the mint family, Desert Ramona, growing in clumps of 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCVIII. 


SUMMIT OF MOUNT SAN JACINTO (10,805 FEET ) 
Photo by C. J. Fox 


PLATE CCIX. 


GROVE OF PALMS AT MOUTH OF ANDREAS CANON, AN OLD INDIAN 
CAMP GROUND 


Photo by C. J. Fox 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCX. 


SPEARHEAD 


Found by John P. Dexter, July 27, 1914, in Hetch Hetchy, near Rancheria Creek. 
Presented by him to the Sierra Club. The original spearhead 
is an inch longer than the reproduction 


Notes and Correspondence | 333 


soft gray foliage, in charming contrast to the royal purple flowers in 
large but delicately interrupted whorles. 

The trail now leads past Hidden Lake, a small well-concealed basin 
of water without outlet, on to Tamrac Valley, with its numerous tall 
and stately tamrac pines, a beautiful camping place. Due largely, how- 
ever, to a great dearth of signposts during the day’s walk of fifteen 
miles through this national forest, with its many diverging paths, it was 
after dark before all the party were all accounted for in camp. No pack 
train had arrived and the scouting party formed by our good leader, 
Ernest Dawson, failed to reveal any trace of it. It were better we had 
heeded those rumblings of Tahquitz! However, some venison obtained 
from some hunters this first day of the deer season was roasted, some 
dried figs were. discovered in someone’s knapsack, and a box of after- 
dinner mints completed the delusion. A cache a mile distant, belonging 
to packers, was commandeered and each of us rolled up in a single 
blanket around the campfire. 

But the night was not long as the more hardy were up by three o’clock 
for the climb of Mount San Jacinto, only two miles distant. The full moon 
made the cold white rocks stand out almost phosphorescent as we 
climbed through the bent and broken Murray and limber pines to well 
above the timber line. The sun rose a brilliant ruby red out of the mists 
of the Colorado Desert. Down in the west the great mountain peak 
cast its shadow over the little farms nestled against the foothills, and 
beyond, though not visible, were the orange groves of Riverside. Over 
8000 feet almost directly below was the San Gorgonio Pass, joining 
these two landscapes of such striking contrast. Southeast were the San- 
ta Rosa Mountains, and to the south Palomar, Cuyamaca, and the La- 
guna mountains. 

Soon after return to camp one most welcome pack animal arrived with 
provisions and the party was soon off in fine spirits for the day’s hike of 
six miles. The sheer view we had at midday from the ridge at Hidden 
Lake down over the Coachella Valley and on toward Salton Sea was 
impressive. A short dark line moving slowly across the floor of the 
desert, dotted with creosote bushes, proved by our glasses to be a South- 
ern Pacific train. Early next morning dunnage was left for the packers 
to return to Los Angeles by parcel post, and the party began the ten- 
mile descent to “the land of the palm.” Ours was the first large party 
to use this trail, lately completed by M. S. Gordon at his own expense. 
We soon descended from the pines through manzanita and mountain 
mahogany into the elfin forest of “ribbon woods,” with their shreds of 
reddish bark hanging about the branches. This is the chamise of the 
higher zone (Adenostoma sparsifolium), and for a mile we journeyed 
amongst its sweetly fragrant white blossoms. 

But as the trail descended the thermometer certainly ascended. How- 
ever, a half-hour’s shower proved most refreshing, and we were ready 
for lunch in the grove of magnificent native fan palms (Washingtonia) 


334 Sierra Club Bulletin 


at the mouth of Andreas Cafion. This grove a hundred years ago, ac- 
cording to Pablo, an Indian, was the annual meeting place of the Agua 
Caliente Indians, a few of whom may be seen today around the hot 
springs below. Mortars and hieroglyphics can still be seen in the near- 
by caves. Last year the club had camped here and explored five nearby 
cafions, tropical with thousands of these palms. Farther from the stream 
there is only cactus, greasewood and mesquite. The “barrel cactus” 
grows nearly head high, and by cutting out the top with a hand ax and 
crushing the pulp with the handle, a cup of watery juice can soon be 
extracted which easily allays thirst on the desert. 

But again is heard the honk of the mountain buses, and we gather the 
stragglers of the group to wave adieu to the most varied scenes of this 
four-day trip, and after a stop at Palm Springs to test the mud baths 
and see the Desert Inn, the enjoyment and the hardship of the outing 
mingle in pleasant memory. 


CLuB GATHERING 


Wishing to bring more of the spirit of informality into the annual in- 
door reunion of the Southern Section of the Sierra Club, an informal 
supper was given in the municipal club house at Echo Park, Los Ange- 
les, on November 24th. Arrangements were made with a cafeteria for 
the hot food and the Sierra Club members did all the rest. At six-thirty 
there was a real Sierra Club line-up for supper, and nearly two hundred 
hungry hikers took their plates and cups to the long tables which had 
been set in the main hall. 

After supper the tables were removed and, naturally, a very informal 
social time ensued while changing the room into an assembly hall. A 
very good program followed, Mr. Tappaan officiating. This included an 
informal talk on the High Sierra by Chester Versteeg, illustrated by 
beautiful natural-color views, mostly by Mr. Ink. Then a little informal 
dance and it was time to leave, every one feeling that this was the most 
successful indoor gathering ever held by the Southern Section, and at 
just half the expense of the more formal affairs, thus keeping in line 
with the universal purpose of conservation and the avoidance of useless 
expenditure. 


Murr Lopce 


The Muir Lodge reunions in the spring for John Muir’s birthday cele- 
bration, and in October for the dedication anniversary, are events long 
anticipated and largely attended. But Muir Lodge means more than 
that. Almost daily, along the high, winding trail come members of our 
big mountain family to rest in their own mountain home. It is a well- 
observed code of honor to leave Muir Lodge a little cleaner and the fire- 


Notes and Correspondence 335 


wood a little more abundant than one found it. The additional dress- 
ing- and locker-rooms and women’s out-door sleeping quarters have 
temporarily solved a difficulty for which the steadily increasing patron- 
age demanded a solution. By its thousands of visitors Muir Lodge has 
abundantly justified its existence. 


LocAL WALKS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SECTION OF SIERRA CLUB 


Although some faces are missing from our local walks since the war, 
nearly every week sees an enthusiastic band of climbers starting out for 
a one-, two- or three-day outing. Once in a while, by the help of a for- 
tunate holiday date, we even manage a four-day trip. In the summer of 
1917, those who could not stretch their vacations to cover a High Sierra 
trip enjoyed a week’s outing among the mountains of the San Gabriel 
Divide. Our itinerary ranges from San Jacinto and San Gorgonio in 
the southeast to Pinos far in the northeast, and from Gleason and Pa- 
cifico overlooking the desert on the north to the hills along the coast. 

On the recent trip to Liebre Mountain the club was royally enter- 
tained by Mr. Collins at Oak Ridge Ranch. Milk, fruit and melons 
were furnished ad libitum, and he even built a Dutch oven for their spe- 
cial use. His “good-by” was accompanied by a cordial urging to come 
again. 

Some particularly attractive trips are now being planned by the Local 
Walks Committee. 


MunIcIPpaAL MouNTAIN CAMP 


Realizing the benefits of a mountain vacation, Los Angeles City Play- 
ground Commission has established a summer camp in Seeley Flats in 
the San Bernardino Mountains. The camp has grown until now there 
is permanent equipment for two hundred and seventy-five campers, and 
four hundred have been accommodated at once. As each one renders 
some slight assistance every day, the small amount of $7.50 gives a 
happy, healthful vacation of two weeks, transportation included, and 
everyone feels part of the big family. 

The camp is reached by automobile stage, and the road winds aiouee 
beautiful country and climbs to an elevation of about forty-five hundred 
feet. The cabins are arranged in a semi-circle, with the lodge, dining 
quarters and ball courts completing the circle. Across the creek and a 
little to one side is the plunge. 

The commission is now building a second municipal camp on a site of 
eighty acres, near Seven Oaks. This gives practically everyone a chance 
to “Go to the mountains and get their good tidings.” 


336 Sierra Club Bulletin 


TRAIL BUILDING 


At a late meeting of the Southern Section committee, it was decided to 
use all money collected from the five-cent fees on the local trips for 
trail building and sign posting exclusively. The Southern Section has 
lately expended one hundred dollars with a like sum from the Govern- 
ment in building a trail near Mount Islip. They are also expending fifty 
dollars with an equal sum from the Government in the much needed 
sign-posting of the San Jacinto Mountains. They are also doing some 
trail work at Iron Mountain. 


INVASION OF OuR NATIONAL PARKS 


Sheep owners want to graze sheep in national parks. This would despoil 
the parks without greatly increasing the supply of wool and mutton 


What are our national parks for—to be enjoyed by people or to be de- 
spoiled by cattle and sheep? 

“The invasion of the enemy,” is an expression that need not be lim- 
ited to war usage. It exactly fits a condition of internal affairs here in 
the United States that is far removed from battlefields and warring men. 
. The territories being invaded are the national parks. If the invasion 
continues these regions which belong to all the American people will be 
monopolized by a few individuals. 

Certain interests, individual and collective, are constantly endeavoring 
to use these parks for their own commercial benefit. The friends of the 
people’s playgrounds have again and again thwarted efforts that were 
being made to use these wonderlands for stock pasture. Now there are 
people who are taking advantage of the present need for increased food 
production, to secure permission to graze cattle and sheep in our na- 
tional parks. Last summer certain stock men seized the opportunity 
offered by the urgent national need of food and undertook to get the 
Federal Government to permit grazing in parks. In California the 
friends of parks acted quickly and saved most of Yosemite. The stock 
men did succeed in getting possession of two comparatively small areas. 
Increased efforts are being made to pasture the parks in 1918. 

We all know that more mutton and more wool are needed, and that 
the sheep industry should be increased. Grazing grounds are essential, 
but there is ample opportunity for grazing outside of the national parks. 

The Department of Agriculture says, “There remain practically no 
lands in the public domain (unreserved public lands) that are fit for any 
other use than for the grazing of livestock. They should therefore be 
used for that purpose.” Does it seem reasonable to graze sheep in the 
national parks when there is government land not in use that is fitted 
for that purpose? 

Then there are the national forests, covering an area of approximately 
one hundred and seventy-five million acres. Of this about five-eighths 


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NONV)D NOIZ 


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. 


Notes and Correspondence B27, 


is classed as grazing land—and is not forested as is commonly sup- 
posed. These grazing acres were reserved for grazing purposes and are 
being so used. But a part of these remain that are not now being 
grazed. Would it not be reasonable to make full use of this land before 
even considering the national parks for grazing? 

A national park is an area that has been so created by Congress be- 
cause it possesses unusual scenic attractions or features of scientific in- 
terest. The purpose of a national park is recreation, education, enjoy- 


ment, and the general welfare of the men, women and children of the 


land. The statesmen who created these parks did so because they re- 
alized that grazing or other commercialization would spoil them for use 
by the people. To graze national parks would prevent the use for which 
they were created and would ruin their scenic resources. The grand 
total area of the national parks is small. The total grazing area in na- 
tional parks is exceedingly limited, and if all this grazing area were used 
it would produce only a small per cent of the wool and mutton needed. 

By encouraging the grazing of sheep in available sections east of the 
Mississippi River and in the extensive unused lands in the South, a large 
increase in sheep production would result. By making the fullest use of 
the public domain, utilizing the national forests—which are mostly graz- 
ing land, and increasing sheep production east of the Mississippi and in 
the Southern States, there will be ample sheep to supply the demand. 
A. C. Bigelow, president of the Philadelphia Wool and Textile Associ- 
ation, says: “There is only one source left open now from which we 
can obtain an increase of sheep production, and that is in the farming 
sections east of the Mississippi River, and in the unused land areas of 
the South.” 

At the present time the use of our national parks for grazing is in- 
excusable. Sheep ruin parks for the use of people. They destroy one 
of the greatest attractions of the outdoor world—the wild flowers. But 
the sheep isn’t to blame. It is his nature to eat wild flowers, and not 
only the blossoms, but the plants and then the roots. At Crater Lake 
National Park there isn’t a wild flower to be seen. Years ago sheep 
grazed within the boundaries, and although they have not been in the 
park for years, the ground is barren of flowers. 

There is a stock man in the West who is making every effort to get 
permission to graze thousands of head of sheep in Mount Rainier Na- 
tional Park. This park is the most wonderful wild-flower garden in all: 
the world. This man, together with others of his kind, is asking for 
grazing privileges “during the period of the war.” It is an old, insidi- 
ous plan under the guise of patriotic motives. With wool and mutton 
bringing higher prices than ever before, we find sheep owners willing to 
use national parks for pasture for sheep at ten cents a head for the sea- 
son. Is this patriotism? 

During these war times the American people need their national parks 
more than ever before. And after the war the need will be still greater. 


338 Sierra Club Bulletin 


The parks are needed as nature made them—not despoiled by cattle and 
sheep. 

The strength of a nation lies in the mental attitude of the people. And 
the right mental attitude is very largely acquired by wholesome recre- 
ation in the outdoor world—especially in places of scenic beauty. Such 
places as national parks help us to maintain our strength and courage 
and to gain a clearer vision of the problems and the emergencies of life. 
The English people admit that they made a serious mistake in the early 
stages of the war by neglecting outdoor recreation. 

Early last summer there was some doubt in the minds of the people 
as to whether or not the national parks would be open on account of the 
war. Secretary Franklin K. Lane emphatically announced that they 
would be open as usual, and said: “It is even more important now than 
in times of peace that the health and vitality of the nation’s citizenship 
be conserved. Rest and recreation must materially assist in this con- 
servation of human tissue and energy, and the national parks offer op- 
portunity for just this thing.” During this same summer, the busy war 
year of 1917, five hundred thousand people found much-needed rest and 
were inspired to greater patriotism by visiting these wonderlands. 

It would be a national calamity if the warring enemy could destroy 
the natural beauty of the United States. Grazing cattle and sheep in 
our national parks is a distinct step in this direction. The grazing of 
national parks discourages outdoor recreation. If livestock are in these 
parks there are thousands of people who would not go to them. And 
there are other thousands of people who, because of the presence of 
livestock, would naturally conclude that these natural wonderlands could 
be of no great merit for people if they were used for cattle and sheep. 
Our national parks—the world’s unrivaled wonderlands—are the great- 
est places for outdoor recreation. Grazing in national parks would be 
the death blow to their supreme use. This would weaken us as a na- 
tion. You might let your senators and congressmen know that you 
value national parks. These men are so occupied with war matters these 
days that it may not occur to them that there is even a possibility of an 
invasion of this kind. Let them know that you are eager to defend our 


public playgrounds. Mrs. Joun D. SHERMAN 


OPENING OF ZION CANON—UTAH’s SCENIC WONDERLAND 


Nearly two generations have passed since the Mormon pioneers trekked 
southward along the west base of the Wasatch Mountains and made 
their first settlement in Southern Utah. Following up the waterway of 
the Rio Virgin in the location of their settlements, these pioneers passed 
eastward over the rim of the great “Hurricane” Fault, that has since 
been termed by geologists the greatest known break in the earth’s sur- 
face, and, making their way to the upper reaches of the stream, came to 
the point where the Rio Virgin was formed by the conflux of two creeks 


Notes and Correspondence 339 


—one flowing from the east and the other from the north. From the 
tribes of the Piutes that then inhabited the country, the Mormons 
learned that the creek flowing from the east was called Paranuweap, 
and the one flowing from the north was known in Indian lore as Muk- 
oontuweap. They were likewise told that where this northerly creek 
cut down through the mountains was a most beautiful cafion, embla- 
zoned in many colors. 

Later the great leader of the Mormon church, President Brigham 
Young, in one of his frequent visits to Utah’s “Dixie,” was told of the 
cafion’s wonders and made what was then a most strenuous journey 
that he might view them. Standing at the southern portal of this geo- 
logical marvel, between the two towering domes that mark its southern 
entrance, this religious enthusiast stood spellbound before the scenic 
splendor that faced him. With uncovered head, gazing far northward 
into the depths of the cafion proper, he declared to those accompanying 
the expedition, “This is Little Zion.” To the Mormon zealots the 
christening by their leader was to them the final word, and from that 
time down through the years this great cleft on the southern spur of the 
Wasatch range has been known as Zion Cajfion. 

Located in this most remote section of Utah, far from the point where 
it might be reached by railroad travel, this American scenic marvel has 
remained practically unknown, only visited from time to time by some 
extreme enthusiast who had heard a faraway murmur of its grandeur. 
In 1913, Governor Spry’s official attention was directed to the marvels 
of Zion Cafion, and after a personal visit, he decided that the highway 
division of his administration should accomplish the construction of a 
highway to the border of the National Monument, that had been set aside 
by President Taft to include Zion Cafion and its closely adjacent terri- 
tory. In 1916, the United States Government, under the influence of Senator 
Reed Smoot, appropriated $15,000.00 for the construction of a highway 
connecting the heart of Zion Cafion with the southern boundary of the 
National Monument, to which point the State planned to carry its own 
highway. An east and west county road, from the station of Lund on 
the Salt Lake Route, had already been constructed, connecting with the 
State highway. With these connecting highways, the completion of the 
Government road into the cafion gave uninterrupted passage for auto- 
mobile travel between the Salt Lake Route and Zion Cajfion. 

Even before the completion of the highway, a well organized trans- 
portation service between Lund and the cafion proper was arranged for, | 
and in the very heart of the cafion itself there was a “Wylie Way” camp 
well under construction, founded upon the same plan for the entertain- 
ment of tourists and visitors that rendered the “Wylie Way” camps in 
the Yellowstone among the most successful enterprises of their kind in 
America. Thus was the opening of Zion Cafion brought about, and now 
the visitor may reach its wonders by a most interesting automobile ride 
of an even one hundred miles, starting at the station of Lund, on the 
Salt Lake Route, and proceeding over a splendid highway. 


340 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Over KEARSARGE Pass IN 1864 


[NoteE: On October 12, 1917, at Independence, Cal., Guy C. Earl, W. H. Spauld- 
ing and Chaftee E. Hall spent the evening with Thomas Keough, a boyhood friend 
of Mr. Earl in Owen’s Valley. Mr. Keough has lived in Owen’s Valley since 1863, 
and gave us some very interesting accounts of the early history of the valley, in- 
cluding the following story of a prospecting tour through the Southern High Sierras. } 


On July 4, 1864, eleven of us started from Independence on a prospect- 
ing trip through the Sierras. Our first task was to build a trail up Little 
Pine Creek on the east cliff of the mountains. I have sometimes heard 
it said that the trail over what is now called “Kearsarge Pass” is an old 
Indian trail. The fact is, however, that our party built this trail in order 
to get our animals up over the top of the Sierras. It might have been 
possible for a man to work his way on foot up over this pass, but there 
was no sign even of a foot-path until we built the trail in the summer of 
1864 when we started on this prospecting tour. We called the pass 
“Little Pine Pass,” after Little Pine Creek, which heads near the pass. 
It was a rough trail we built, but it sufficed for our purposes and we 
got our animals up over it. In the party were John Bubbs, Tom Car- 
roll, John Beveridge, Tom Hill, Henry Kettleston, Sullivan, Pugh and 
myself, with three others whose names I cannot recall. When we got 
up over the pass five decided to return, leaving six of us to go on. 

We went westerly down the South Fork of the King’s River until the 
cafion became impassable. In the cafion we met a number of scientists 
headed by Professor Brewer. They named Mt. Brewer after him. Prof. 
Brewer was trying to find a way across the mountains, and we told him 
how to get into Owen’s Valley over the pass by the trail we had just 
built. 

We kept in the cafion of the King’s River to a point far west from 
where a large tributary flows in from the south. This tributary is called 
“Bubbs Creek.” It was named for John Bubbs, who was one of our 
party. He was a cattle man and, afterwards, made his home in Visalia. 

When the cafion of the King’s River became impassable, we crossed 
the river and struck up the south wall of the cafion into the meadows, 
where we came across those mammoth trees—now called the Sequoias. 
I have no doubt those are the trees in what is now called the General 
Grant Park. We went around the trees and examined them, but made 
no marks on them. I have read an account of how these trees were 
“discovered” later and how one of them was called “General Grant,’* 


but this discovery occurred a number of years after our journey. From . 


the plateau where we found these trees we traveled west until we came 
down into the valley where we found some placer miners. They were 


[Note: In Prof. Brewer’s party was Clarence King, whose ‘“‘Ascent of Mt. Tyn- 
dall”” described in thrilling fashion some of the experiences of the Brewer party on 
their explorations during this summer of 1864. Prof. Brewer in his account of the 
trip says: “A day and a half was required to make the distance of twelve miles 
which lay between Camp 179, in the south fork cafion, and the summit of the Sierra; 
although the labor of crossing was much facilitated by the fact that a party of pros- 
pectors had crossed here not long before and had done a good deal toward making 
a passable trail.’’ California Geological Survey. Vol. I. Geology, p. 394.] 


* These trees were not, however, discovered by Mr. Keough’s party. They were 
known some years before this date.—J. N. Le C. 


PLATE CCXIII. 


> 
. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. 


ZION CANON—THE THREE PATRIARCHS 


Courtesy of the Salt Lake Route 


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SHOUVIALVd SHL AO LANOO—NONV) NOIZ 


“AIXOD ALVTd *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANTO vVaUNaIS 


Notes and Correspondence 341 


the first people we laid eyes on from the time we left Independence, ex- 
cept for Prof. Brewer. and his party of exploring scientists. These 
placer mines down near the San Joaquin Valley were not showing up 
well. We, ourselves, tried it out and cleaned up only thirty-eight cents, 
so we decided to strike out to the northeast. We went north by the old 
Jackson ranch into Squaw Flat, across Squaw Flat and up into the 
mountains until we struck the South Fork of Joaquin River about 35 
or 40 miles east from Middleton, an old mining camp on the San Joa- 
quin. Then we followed the river, you might say, to its very head in 
the main Sierra Nevada. There we had for dinner the last of our stock 
of provisions. Beveridge and I took our pans and went over to a red’ 
hill where we got a good prospect; but we were out of grub. We struck 
east, hoping to find a way over the Sierras and down again into Owen’s 
Valley, but we could not get any further east—got into the main moun- 
tains atid then had to back out and work south. We worked south until 
we got down on to the North Fork of King’s River. It was a terrific 
task working around granite cliffs and over great boulders with our 
horses. Beveridge and I got down on to the North Fork one day about 
sun-down with the animals. The rest of the boys had gone ahead and 
had been fishing all day, but could not catch any. Beveridge and I com- 
ing into camp with the horses asked the boys what they had got for us 
to eat, and they pointed up to a rattlesnake hanging on a limb that they 
had skinned for supper for us. I looked at John and asked him what 
he thought of it. I said, “It looks pretty tough,” and John says, “Yes, 
I can’t go that.” Just while we were talking it over, two grouse lit in 
a tree. I grabbed the shot gun and brought down both of them. We 
made a little fire and after awhile scraped the fire away, dug a hole in 
the hot sand and put in the two grouse just as they were, feathers and 
all, piling the ashes and fire on the top of them. After about two and a 
half hours, we took them out and they were done to a turn. John Bev- 
eridge ate one of the grouse and I ate the other. Then we held a coun- 
cil and the next day slaughtered one of the horses. It was John Bever- 
idge’s horse, called “General Grant,” an old horse about twenty-five 
years old. We made a rack out of green willows and jerked a lot of 
him and roasted a lot more of him in front of a big log fire. After we 
got everything ready we divided up the jerky and roast meat in our 
haversacks and struck south. We picked our way along with the ani- 
mals, but the country kept getting rougher and rougher—deep cafions 
and precipices, a terribly rough, bouldery country—all bare granite. One 
of our party got part way down a cliff where he could neither get up 
nor down, and we had to tie our blankets together and let them down 
and pull him up. It was a several thousand-foot drop down below 
where he was on the cliff. We never could understand how he got down 
there. For two days we tried to work south. Finally we got into a 
cafion full of boulders, where we could neither get our horses one way 
or the other. They were so worn out and hungry that we finally killed 


342 Sierra Club Bulletin 


them. They would have starved to death in that barren granite. We 
left our saddles and everything, and took only our clothes and necessary 
blankets and went on afoot. We lived entirely on horse meat. I don’t 
know how horse meat might be with a little salt, but it certainly is not 
very nice without salt. It is just a sweet, sickening kind of meat with- 
out salt, and we tried to chew it as we traveled along, but the meat 
would keep swelling up in your mouth like a sponge until you could not 
work your jaws. 

Traveling without the animals was easier, but the country kept getting 
even more impassable. In working down into one cafion, thousands of 
feet deep, we had to slide down a water-run. Sometimes we would 
slide thirty feet and fetch up on a bench, throwing our blankets on 
ahead. We camped down in one of these cafions one night and then, 
the next morning, started east in the hope of reaching the summit of 
the Sierra Nevada at a place where we could go down the easterly cliffs 
into the Owen’s Valley. By night we had reached the summit at a place 
they now call “Taboose Pass,” about eighteen miles north of Indepen- 
dence, and the next day we worked our way down the east cliff of the 
Sierras along Taboose Creek into Owen’s Valley. 

We had no map of the country, and none of the streams or moun- 
tains were named at that time, except the San Joaquin and the King’s 
rivers. The first peak named, I think, was Brewer, named by the party 
of scientists we met. 

The rest of our party, who left us soon after we climbed up over 
Little Pine Pass, found a gold mine near the pass on their way home 
which they called the “Cliff Mine.” This mine developed into quite a 
rich ledge, and it was through this discovery that the pass came to be 
known as “Kearsarge Pass.” Down in Owen’s Valley, south of Inde- 
pendence, there is a low lying range of hills. In the early 60’s the 
Hitchcock boys discovered a mine in these hills which they called the 
“Old Abe” mine, and they called their district the “Alabama District.” 
They were Rebels and in those days “Old Abe” was a term of ridicule. 
But they named the district in honor of the Confederate cruiser “Ala- 
bama.” These hills are now called the “Alabama Hills.” Our crowd, 
however, were all Union men, and when the news came that the Kear- 
sarge had sunk the Alabama, our boys named the district where the Cliff 
Mine was the “Kearsarge District” to taunt the Rebels. The little town 
which grew up at the mine was called “Kearsarge City,” and the pass 
came to be called the “Kearsarge Pass,” and the mountain just to the 
north of the pass “Kearsarge Mountain.” 


EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO Horace M. ALBRIGHT 
April 16, 1917 


Dear Mr. Albright: While I have it in mind, there is one matter that we 
of the Sierra Club are very anxious that the National Park Service 


Notes and Correspondence eel: 


should undertake without delay, and that is the building of a trail from 
Hardin Lake on the Tioga Road down into Pate Valley, which is a Yo- 
semite-like valley in the Tuolumne Cafion about ten miles above Hetch- 
Hetchy. Cross the Tuolumne River at this point and continue the trail 
on up to connect with the main Rogers Lake, Pleasant Valley Trail, on 
the other side of the Tuolumne. This trail is of immense importance 
for the development of the northern portion of the Yosemite National 
Park, and now that the Hetch-Hetchy crossing is to a great extent 
eliminated and undesirable, it has become doubly important that this 
trail should be opened up without delay so as to make the northern por- 
tion of the park accessible, and this will be the shortest route into it 
from the Yosemite, as well as making the finest portion of the Grand 
Cafion of the Tuolumne accessible. I had intended taking this up with 
Mr. Mather, but appreciate that it would mean too great a delay. This 
trail is mentioned on page 251, “National Park Notes,” in a foot-note, 


to which note I call your attention. Very sincerely yours, 


Wo. E. Cosy 


Report OF WorK DoNEIN Muir TRAIL, 1917 


After my trip last year with Mr. McClure, the State Engineer, I was 
impressed with his belief that under no consideration should any but a 
Class A trail be constructed. | 

With this in view, I issued the following to Deputy Supervisor Jor- 
dan and Ranger Hughes before they entered upon the work: 


“The State Engineer insists on a Class A trail, and you will be 
governed by the specifications laid down in the trail manual for 
this type of trail. Tread should never be less than 15 inches, more 
if necessary to meet the situation. In location work the trail should 
be laid off in sections of like type, each section measured and 
numbered, and a record made of costs chargeable to each. Pack- 
ing, grub and cook costs will be kept separate, to be pro-rated 
later. 

I want to impress upon both of you the importance of locating 
the trail properly, and I know that I can depend upon you to turn 
out a trail that we will be proud of.” 

This, of course, was supplemented by a thorough discussion of 
the whole project, so that we started on the work with our ideas 
of construction unified. 

The work accomplished, although higher in cost than last year, 
is of a higher standard than ever before attempted on this forest, 
and will be, I am sure, a work that will bear the inspection of the 
most critical. 


COSTS 
As last year we divided construction work into three types, as 
follows: 
Class A is solid rock, from 10 per cent to I00 per cent slope. 


Class B is talus, consisting of small and large broken slides, 
and are at present impassable and require blasting. 


344 


Sierra Club Bulletin 


Class C is general; dry and wet meadows, talus covered with 
earth, solid rock under Io per cent, that requires only 
roughening, gravel and dirt slopes that do not re- 
quire blasting, scattered boulder strewn flats and 
benches. 


Cost 
Type Miles Total Cost per Mile 

TUNG itey arudha Ne oleae ata .19 1550.80 7784 
BAS tse Tee eae tele ee ee ice AI 310.73 758 
CoD aN ROE MrIES ERMA DBPL Ce 0 Fe 2333.14 320 
Mo Cae ita cate ais cesta ene eens 7.9 4200.67 
Bridges ting: vo Aen ae Part of two 709.08 
MOtalVCOSt how t a ates ee eae Stra 4909.75 


The following costs were prorated in the above: 
Transportation, including wages of packer hire, of horses, 


lossof ‘one animal,and: teed. ei ie $ 965.00 
Subsistence, including wages of cook.......... Sy E237 O 
Moving: in and out, and/ moving, campi.i.,..cenaees 443.74 

otal ie Ven ee ee e ae $2645.93 


The cost record shows $237.80 more charged against it than the 
expenditures. This is accounted for by: 


Powder used, left over from last year....... $137.80 
Grubjused; left over irom last year. 2.2 100.00 
$237.80 


A few outstanding bills have not as yet been received, but they 
are figured into the cost record. 

We have on hand practically enough equipment for next year. 
Powder on hand, 500 Ibs. Will need 300 lbs. 20 per cent stumping 
for next year. 

The greatest difficulty was experienced at Barrier Rock, some 
few miles below Muir Pass, on the Kings River side. This reef 
rises abruptly from the stream bed on both sides, and it was nec- 
essary to blast almost a half tunnel in order to get through it. Mr. 
McClure will, however, understand this, as he viewed this place 
on our trip last year. 

This year was a difficult labor season, for even under normal 
conditions it is hard to keep men at these high altitudes. 


FUTURE PLANS 


I want to strongly recommend the use of all present and future 
appropriations on the Sierra Section, from Muir Pass north until 
completed. I base this recommendation on the fact that we are 
now fairly well organized, and have the equipment on the ground 
to continue, and it seems to me to be poor economy to divert 
small or large sums to start work on other portions that are per- 
haps in better shape to handle temporary travel than we are. The 
section from Palisade south can wait till the last, as travel can go 
down Kings to Simpson Meadow, and over to the South Fork by 
fairly good trails, while north the route is in bad shape. 


q 
‘ 
! 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE €GXV. 


LOOKING UP SOUTH FORK OF SAN JOAQUIN RIVER 
Toward Mount Goddard, from near Hell-for-Sure Trail 
Photo by H. H. Bliss 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCXVI. 


Vip Ss pe 
ig Meee. ss 5 fat H 


Cis aa Ve an t8f 0. 
Dhopde 29 Ct At Bectle 13a 


RECORD OF U.S. COAST & GEODEDRIC SURV 


Left by party under Professor George Davidson on the summit of Mount 
Conness, 1890. Removed from the mountain by Walter L. Huber, July 
24, 1917; now deposited in the official records of the Sierra Club 


hw, 


Notes and Correspondence 345 


Next year I plan to start the crew at the bridges on the South 
Fork of the San Joaquin, and then work up to Muir Pass via 
Evolution as the season advances. To work to good advantage, 
the low country must be worked early, and when the snow goes 
off sufficiently on the higher elevations, stop work low down and 
attack the higher portions. There is usually only about 30 days 
you can work elevations of 11,000 feet or over, so we must get at 
them when the opportunity presents itself. 

If we finish the Evolution Section, we can continue work from 
the Piute Bridge to Seldon Pass. I would, of course, plan to re- 
serve enough money to get started in 1919 pending an additional 
appropriation. 

I sincerely hope some better method of payment can be de- 
vised. It is impossible to. keep men and maintain credit if bills 
are not paid more proinptly. 

I want to take this opportunity to commend very highly the 
work of Mr. Hughes as foreman of the crew. He has carried the 
work under some very difficult conditions in fine shape, and I 
hope he can again be assigned to it. 

I attach map, photographs, and memo of Ranger Hughes on the 
season's work, M. A. BENEDICT, 


Forest Supervisor 


FOREMAN’S MEMORANDUM OF SEASON’S WORK 


The trail crew for this year’s work left Cascada on June 24, and June 
26 they reached Aspen Meadow, 1% miles above the Piute Creek bridge. 
‘On June 27, camp was established and the tools assembled. On June 28 
work was commenced at the bridge, working from there southeast up 
the South Fork of the San Joaquin. The foreman and Mr. Jordan, who 
went in with the crew to help lay out the trail, were impressed with the 
idea that this year we were going to build a better trail than we had 
ever built before, and the lowest percentage of grade obtainable was to 
be carried, and it must not exceed a maximum of 15 per cent. 

A survey was made from Piute Bridge to the foot of the hill, at the 
mouth of Evolution Creek, a distance of 3% miles. A very good grade 
was obtained, only in one place was 15 per cent used, and that only for 
a few rods, the average grade for the entire 3% miles being less than 
6 per cent. 

It was proposed to build the trail up the South Fork, keeping on the 
north side of the river, and bridge Evolution Creek, and thereby avoid 
crossing the South Fork twice. 

A good trail could have been built from the ford up, but it was found: 
impractical to bridge Evolution Creek, and not even a good ford could 
be found, so this idea had to be given up. 

The ford across the South Fork, below the mouth of Evolution Creek, 
has proved to be a very dangerous ford during high water. A man was 
drowned there last summer, and prior to that several head of stock had 
been drowned. This year we lost a pack mule on this same ford, for 
which the State has to pay. 

Below the ford some good bridge sites are available, but the expense 


346 | Sierra Club Bulletin 


of building a trail up the river from them would be prohibitive. A site 
was selected a short distance above the ford, well out of the path of 
snowslides. A good foundation of solid rock, well above high water, 
was obtained on the north side. On the south side a reef of rock came 
down to the river, but had to be supplemented by a rock crib eight feet 
high. Cement was used to chink between the rocks on the side facing 
the river, and about four feet on each side. The span measured 68 feet 
and the stringers five by eight, with an average length of 40 feet, were 
hewed out, tent posts, caps, and mud sills were framed in extra lengths, 
the hangers were cut and flooring was split out, and everything was 
piled so that it would not warp. 

From the lower bridge site to the upper one, a distance of 68 chains, 
the old trail ran through a meadow, and some very soft places had to be 
crossed that would have to be corduroyed, so a new route was surveyed 
around the meadow on the south side on an average grade of three per 
cent, which will always be high and dry. 

The upper bridge site is a short span of 32 feet. It is about one-quar- 
ter mile above the mouth of Evolution, and as Evolution Creek carries 
about as much water as does the South Fork above it, there is much less 
water to cross than at the lower bridge. On the south side of the river 
we have a good foundation of solid rock well above high water. On the 
north side a bent 32 inches high, set on solid rock, can be used. All 
timbers for this bridge are framed and properly piled, with the excep- 
tion of some flooring. No timber is available here that can be split, and 
poles will have to be used. 

Some trouble was experienced in keeping men. A spirit of unrest 
seemed to be in the air, and four men quit. They claimed that there was 
no sense in working in so isolated a region when better wages and con- 
ditions could be had for the asking in places nearer to civilization. 

A different system of packing was used this year; the pack train was 
kept with the crew and not allowed to stay over in Cascada any longer 
than was necessary to load the pack animals. The main part of the sup- 
plies were packed in during June and in the early part of July, and 
stored at Aspen Meadow. Extra stock had to be hired for this, and two 
men sent with the pack train, as the streams were too high for one man 
to safely handle the stock. 

On August Io this piece of work was completed, no very difficult places 
were encountered, and most of the blasting was done around two points, 
one below and one above Aspen Meadow. An average tread of 30 inches 
was maintained on this piece of trail. 

On August 10, the camp was moved to the Muir Pass, and a camp es- 
tablished four miles below the top of the Pass at the last lake below 
Lake Helen; on the Kings River side work was commenced at Barrier 
Rock by the drillers, and the graders worked towards the Pass. 

Notes were taken in the Pass of soft spots and places where the snow 
was lying, and a preliminary route was marked out. Below the pass, 


Notes and Correspondence 347 


from Lake Helen down, the country was thoroughly looked over, and it 
was decided to abandon all the old trails and build the new trail up the 
river. Several switchbacks had to be used to get up on the first bench, 
and then for half a mile a very good piece of trail was built, about half 
of which is on a seven per cent grade, and the rest is 15 per cent. From 
here for about one-quarter mile around the shore of a lake it is level. 
From the upper end of this lake to the crossing below Lake Helen some 
short pitches of 15 per cent and several switchbacks were used, but a 
majority of this trail will not exceed Io per cent. 

Just below Lake Helen it will be necessary to cross a patch of snow, 
which will always be there. From Lake Helen to the top of the Pass, a 
distance of 11%4 miles, a good trail was built, and an effort was made to 
avoid all soft spots and build the trail away from places where the snow 
lies longest. One-quarter mile is 15 per cent, the rest averages less than 
Io per cent. 

At the top of the pass we stopped; no work was done on the west side. 

Barrier Rock proved to be a very difficult piece of work. The rock 
laid in floors, tapering to a feather edge on the overhanging side, and 
when a tread was blasted out these floors would slide off. This was re- 
peated several times before a tread was obtained that would hold, and a 
short pitch exceeding 20 per cent had to be used. 

During the month of August thunderstorms were numerous, and dur- 
ing the latter part of September the nights were very cold. The crew 
were dissatisfied and trouble was experienced in getting them to stay 
with the work. Three months of this class of work is too long for an 
average crew to stay, and as no men could be hired to continue the work 


the crew had to be disbanded. Joun M. Hucues, 


Foreman Muir Trail 


BEQUEST TO THE LE ConTE MEmortIAL LODGE 


Mr. James B. Wade, who died in 1916, bequeathed the sum of twenty- 
five dollars to the Joseph Le Conte Memorial in Yosemite Valley, to be 
used in the maintenance of the lodge. 


FoLLowING JOHN Mutrr’s CassIAR TRAIL 


After leaving Mount Robson last summer, Miss Nettleton and I re- 
turned to Prince Rupert and continued up the Inside Passage to Skag- 
uay. We were unfortunate in having cloudy weather, and except for 
one glorious day at the Taku Inlet, the high mountains remained per- 
sistently hidden. Even under such conditions, however, each day 
brought a succession of beautiful pictures that made the trip one long 
to be remembered. At Skaguay we took the White Pass Railway as far 
as Lake Bennett. We had planned, earlier in our trip, to return afoot 


348 Sierra Club Bulletin 


over the old trail of ’98, but were so discouraged by reports that bridges 
were out and the trail obliterated, that we gave up the idea. Much to 
our disgust, we found too late that this was only the usual wet-blanket- 
ing that every traveler suffers who attempts to set foot off the beaten 
track. From the car window we could follow the trail almost every 
step of the way, and though slides had occurred and a bridge was gone, 
in August, at least, neither stream crossing nor trail presented any real 
difficulty to any one accustomed to trail travel. 

At Skaguay I parted with my traveling companions and took an Amer- 
ican boat down to Wrangell. Five years ago, when Mr, Muir began 
work on “Travels in Alaska,’ my aspirations were turned toward the 
Stikine River, and I determined to take the first opportunity to follow 
his old trail. Opportunity came this year when I met Mrs. Winifred 
Hyland, trader, fox-farmer, outfitter for big-game hunters, and adviser 
and court of appeal to at least a hundred Indians. On her invitation I 
promptly abandoned family and friends and started trustfully alone on 
the hundred-and-fifty-mile journey up the wild and lonely Stikine. A 
boat runs up once a week during the scant five months of the year when 
the river is open. Mine was a tunnel boat about forty feet long, with a 
powerful gasoline engine which forced her slowly but surely up against 
the powerful current. It took us from Tuesday morning at ten until 
Thursday morning at nine to go up, though we made the return journey 
in ten hours. Travel is not heavy on the Stikine now. Forty years ago, 
Mr. Muir says, nearly two thousand miners went up the river in a single 
summer. This year I doubt whether there were more than fifty people 
in all. Despite the war, eleven big-game hunters went; one family from 
Oregon settled up river; one mine was in operation with six men from 
“outside”; two or three soldiers came back from the war; a new school- 
master and a new doctor arrived. I myself represented the whole bulk 
of tourist travel—considerably less than a hundred and fifty pounds I 
hasten to say. 

The river trip is marvelously beautiful. Mountains, all of them snowy 
and glacier-hung, tower from four to eight thousand feet above the river. 
The shores are densely forested, for the most part with hemlock and 
tideland spruce. The most remarkable of the glaciers, the Great Gla- 
cier, breaks off at the river brink in a colossal wall three miles in width. 
Telegraph Creek, trading post and center of population for a district of 
some fifty thousand square miles, I made my headquarters. The whole 
district at present numbers only about thirty whites—it has sent twenty- 
nine men to the front. During the first part of my stay here I made 
day trips in all directions and two short camping trips—one across the 
Stikine, the other thirty-five miles downstream, near the Jackson cabin. 
Captain Conover, a neighbor on the Clearwater, seven miles away, who 
has lived on the river for twenty years, offered himself as guide, and 
with him I went canoeing through rapids, mountain climbing, and big- 
game hunting with a kodak. We saw six bears and eleven goats, but 
unfortunately secured no pictures. 


Notes and Correspondence 349 


During my last three weeks in the country, with a half-breed girl as 
companion, I traveled with three Indians and a Hudson’s Bay Company 
packtrain over the old miner’s trail to Dease Lake, seventy-five miles 
northeastward from Telegraph. We crossed the Arctic-Pacific Divide 
into Mackenzie River headwaters, journeyed by scow thirty miles down 
the lake, and then afoot took a “knapsack” trip some twenty-five miles 
further, packing our outfits on the backs of three dogs. To carry a pack 
upon one’s own back would be to lose caste utterly in the eyes of the 
Indians. We visited the one mine now in operation on Thibert Creek 
and continued on with our novel packtrain to the base of Defot Moun- 
tain. I had planned to climb it for the view to northward of which Mr. 
Muir speaks, but a snowstorm prevented and we had to hasten back to 
Dease Lake the next day to meet the last outgoing packtrain of the sea- 
son, I was the first white woman, so they told me at the mine, who had 


r r el i. be 66 2 
ever traveled in that region “for fun MGW RANT ATD scons 


Economic DESTINY OF THE NATIONAL PARKS 


[Passage from an address by J. Horace McFarland delivered at the National Park 
Conference, Washington, D. C., January, 1917] 


I insist the time must soon come when instead of having national parks 
created by accident or through the devotion of some interested man, we 
must have a system of national parks all over the land in order to ac- 
complish the upbuilding of patriotism. . . . Congress now has spent a 
gigantic sum on the national parks—nearly a quarter of a cent per per- 
son a year. If it would spend a half cent per year per person for parks, 
I think Mr. Mather would think the millennium had arrived. And if 1 
cent per person per year was provided, he would be unable to compre- 
hend all that could be done for our national parks. Yet Philadelphia 
spends $1.40 per person for park purposes; Milwaukee, 93 cents; Pitts- 
burgh, 53 cents. Why should not the United States spend a whole penny 
for each of us annually in our national parks? 

Let me put it in another way. The United States spends the gigantic 
sum of $700 a day on its vast areas of marvelous natural wonders; 
Philadelphia $655 on her little bit of most inadequate park area; Mil- 
waukee gets away with $1,076; and even smoky Pittsburgh spends $862 
per day on her parks, which Pittsburgh knows is better than extending 
cemeteries and providing more policemen. 

We need extension of the sort of national park promotion we have 
recently had. Indeed the kind of management that has been going on 
the last eighteen months in the National Parks Service is so near busi- 
ness management that I do not see how it can have happened in Wash- 
ington. Here are Mr. Mather and Mr. Yard, business men, actually 
managing national parks as if they were a business enterprise. It is ex- 
traordinary; but I wish it might be extended, and that we might have a 
whole lot more of it, and that they might be given money, much real 


350 Sierra Club Bulletin 


money to do the job, such as Mr. Schwab would give them if they were 
working for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. 

I am not throwing mud at Congress, because Congress does the best 
it knows how, and we who elect its members are the responsible persons. 
When we get around to having a budget in the United States and work- 
ing with it like any business man, then we will get plenty of money for 
parks; but I do not want to wait so long. This appropriation of 1 cent 
apiece for every inhabitant of the nation ought to come right away, this 
session; and it should be an automatic, continuing, annual appropriation 
of I cent apiece. That would mean the automatic increase of the sup- 
port in proportion to the population... . 

“The economic destiny of national parks” is to promote patriotism; 
but there is another aspect to it. If we want to be a little bit calculating 
—and Americans are sometimes said to be a little sordid—then, the 
economic destiny of the national parks is to bring a tremendous amount 
of money into the United States from abroad. I wonder if you realize 
that the one great natural wonder of the United States which is most 
attractive, and which is not yet safe until it becomes a big national park 
—Niagara Falls—is estimated to produce $30,000,000 a year of travel 
revenue outside of any power use that has been taken from it. Niagara 
Falls is easily accessible and is visited by 1,500,000 people each year. 
There is one truly tremendous travel revenue possibility for the United 
States—a possibility beside which the doings of Switzerland in attract- 
ing visitors might sink into insignificance. Indeed, Switzerland could 
be lost in Rocky Mountain Park. If we are willing to provide the con- 
ditions and facilities, the handling of the national parks becomes a pure- 
ly economic proposition; an investment, not an expense. 

But the greatest of all park products, Mr. Chairman and ladies and 
gentlemen, is the product of civilization, the product of patriotism, the 
product of real preparedness, the product of manhood and womanhood, 
unobtainable anywhere else than in the broad, open areas which alone 
the nation can provide. There, ladies and gentlemen, is a product 
which we must promote and which we must have, and everything we can 
do and everything we can spend which will increase the facilities of the 
United States for intensifying our all too feeble national spirit for in- 
creasing the fervor and vigor of our spirit of devotion to the country— 
every such thing we can do is thoroughly worth while. That is then, 
ladies and gentlemen, the “economic destiny of the national parks” of 
the United States. 


Hon. J. ARTHUR ELSTON, 
House of Representatives, 
Washington, D.C. May 8, 1917. 
Dear Sir: At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club 
held in San Francisco on May 5, 1917, the secretary was requested to 


Notes and Correspondence 351 


state to you its position in regard to certain proposed changes in the 
boundaries of and administration of the Yosemite National Park. 

It has been brought to the attention of the board that a petition has 
been presented to the park authorities which, if adopted by Congress, 
would cut out of the park a large section, about 100 square miles, throw- 
ing the same into the forest reserve. This includes the region in the 
vicinity of Moraine Meadows and Buck Camp, and in fact includes the 
entire upper basin of the South Fork of the Merced River, part of the 
basins of the Illilouette River and main Merced. The object of this pe- 
tition is to open the area to grazing. The Board of Directors of the Si- 
erra Club is unalterably opposed to any changes in the present boundary 
of the park, and considers the present proposed change particularly ob- 
jectionable, as it eliminates some of the finest alpine regions, and also 
because the suggested boundaries follow section lines only, and not nat- 
ural barriers which could be properly patrolled. 

It has also come to the attention of the Board of Directors that a 
movement is on foot this year to have the United States Government 
throw open the Yosemite National Park to stockmen for the grazing of 
sheep and cattle, due to the possible shortage of foods consequent upon 
war conditions, and particularly because of the shortage of feed in Cali- 
fornia this year. The directors feel that no sentiment should stand in 
the way of so vital a matter as the food supply in the face of so ma- 
mentous a situation as now confronts the people of this country, and 
would not oppose such a movement, disastrous as it might be to our 
great park, if it were absolutely necessary. But they are not convinced 
that it is absolutely necessary this year. The whole forest reserve is 
now open to grazing, and the small region within the boundaries of this 
national park, which has been carefully preserved for the past twenty- 
five years, could not appreciably affect the situation. There are certain 
stock-grazing interests which for years have been trying to get these 
privileges within our national park, and are using the present crisis as a 
leverage to accomplish their purpose. 

The directors beg of you to look into these matters with great care, 
for once the precedents are established it will be difficult to change them. 


Very truly yours, 
WILLIAM E. CoLsy 


THE ASSOCIATED MOUNTAINEERING CLuBs OF NortH AMERICA 


In May, 1916, nine clubs and societies with common aims associated 
themselves in a bureau, with headquarters in New York. The member- 
ship now numbers ninety-two, comprising about 16,000 individual mem- 
bers, as follows: 

American Alpine Club, Philadelphia and New York. 


American Civic Association, Washington. 
American Museum of Natural History, New York. 


352 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Appalachian Mountain Club, Boston and New York. 

British Columbia Mountaineering Club, Vancouver. 

Colorado Mountain Club, Denver. 

Explorers’ Club, New York. 

Field and Forest Club, Boston. 

Fresh Air Club, New York. 

Geographic Society of Chicago. 

Geographical Society of Philadelphia. 

Green Mountain Club, Rutland, Vermont. 

Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, Honolulu. 

Klahhane Club, Port Angeles, Wash. 

Mazamas, Portland, Oregon. 

Mountaineers, Seattle and Tacoma. 

National Association of Audubon Societies, New York. 

Prairie Club, Chicago. 

Rocky Mountain Climbers’ Club, Boulder, Col. 

Sage Brush and Pine Club, Yakima, Washington. 

Sierra Club, San Francisco and Los Angeles. 

United States National Parks Service, Washington. 
Among the common aims, aside from the exploration and mapping of 
mountain regions and the ascent of leading peaks, are the creation, pro- 
tection, and proper development of National Parks and Forest Reserva- 
tions, the protection of bird and animal life, and of trees and flowers. 
Many of the clubs and societies issue illustrated publications on moun- 
taineering, exploration, and conservation, and are educating their mem- 
bers by lectures to a deeper appreciation of nature. 

The bureau publishes an annual bulletin giving the officers, member- 
ship, dues, publications, lantern slide collections, outings, and other mat- 
ters of interest of each club. Data on mountains and mountaineering 
activities are supplied in response to inquiries. 

Acquaintance with the literature of a subject is essential to efficient 
work in the field, and the bureau sends many important new books on 
mountaineering and outdoor life to its members free of charge. A large 
collection of mountaineering literature has been gathered in the central 
building of the New York Public Library, and the American Alpine 
Club has deposited its books therein, providing a permanent fund for 
additions, A bibliography of this collection has been published by the 
library. An extensive collection of photographs of mountain scenery is 
being formed and is available to anyone wishing to supplement the liter- 
ature of a region with its scenery. 


Le Roy JEFFers, Secretary 
476 Fifth Avenue, New York 


THE TEHIPITE VALLEY AND THE Ki1ncs RIveR CaNon, GREATER SEQUOIA 
Address delivered at the Washington, D. C., National Parks 
Conference by Robert Sterling Vard 


When I began to study our national parks in preparation for the great 
work we had undertaken, the glories of the Sierra stood out before my 


Notes and Correspondence 253 


mental vision perhaps in more stupendous relief than any other feature. 
At this time I was drawing my knowledge from books and men; as yet 
I had visited no national parks; and the men were enthusiasts. 

Almost from the first I learned of the great country between Yosemite 
and Sequoia, which ought to be a national park some day. In fact that 
is what I called it, the Ought-to-be-Sequoia, before the name Greater 
Sequoia was devised. Before I knew anything definite about any other 
valley in our national parks besides the Yosemite Valley, I was familiar 
with the fact that the Kings River Cafion and the Tehipite Valley were, 
next to Yosemite, the grandest valleys on this continent. My teacher 
was Robert Bradford Marshall, Chief Geographer of the United States 
Geological Survey, and chief lover of national parks. His splendid en- 
thusiasm kindled the fires in me. 

Few whom I had then met had yet seen these valleys, and few I have 
met since have seen them. They are almost unknown today outside of 
California, and little known there. Not even Muir, so far as I know, 
described them, though I have found various references to both in his 
writings. Yet they are destined to become celebrated next to Yosemite’s 
incomparable valley. I expect to see the day when the three shall in- 
evitably be mentioned together. 

Both originate in the everlasting snows of the Sierra summits. The 
Middle Fork and the South Fork of the Kings River, respectively, have 
carved them from the living granite. Each lies east and west, a short day’s 
journey, as the trail winds, apart. It was my great fortune to see both 
last summer, and I can best picture them by reading brief extracts from 
a record of that trip. (Reads:) 

Time will not dim our memory of Tehipite or the august valley or the 
leaping, singing river as we saw them on that charmed day. Well short 
of Yosemite, in the kind of beauty that startles and bewilders, the Tehi- 
pite Valley nevertheless far excels it in bigness and power and majesty. 
Lookout Point, a couple of miles south, afforded our first sensation. 
Here the rising trail emerged upon a broken mass of rock standing well 
out over the head of the cafion and 3000 feet above it, disclosing Tehipite 
Dome in full relief. It is one of the great views, in fact it is one of the 
very greatest of all our views, and by far the grandest valley view I have 
looked upon, for the rim view into Yosemite by comparison is not so 
grand as it is beautiful. The cafion revealed itself to the east as far as 
Mount Woodworth, its lofty diversified walls lifting precipitously from 
the heavy forests of the floor and sides, and, from our high viewpoint, 
yielding to still greater heights above. Enormous cliffs abutted, Yosemi- 
telike, at intervals. South of us, directly across the cafion, rose the 
strenuous heights of the Monarch Divide, Mount Harrington towering 
1000 feet higher above the valley floor than Clouds Rest above the 
Yosemite. 

Down the slopes of the Monarch Divide, seemingly from its turreted 
summits, cascaded many frothing streams. Happy Gap, the Eagle Peaks 


354 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Blue Cafion Falls, Silver Spur, the Gorge of Despair, Lost Cafion— 
these were some of the romantic and appropriate titles we found on the 
Geological Survey map. And, close at hand, opposite Mount Harring- 
ton and just across Crown Creek Cafion, rose mighty Tehipite. We 
looked down upon its rounded, glistening dome. The Tehipite Dome is 
a true Yosemite feature. It compares in height and prominence with El 
Capitan. In fact it stands higher above the valley floor and occupies a 
similar position at the valley’s western gate. It is not so massive as El 
Capitan and, therefore, not so impressive; but it is superb. It is better 
compared with Half Dome, though again not so impressive. But it has 
its own august personality, as notably so as either of these world- 
famed rocks; and, if it stood in the Yosemite, would share with them 
the incomparable valley’s highest honors. 

From the floor the whole aspect of the valley changed. Looking up, 
Tehipite Dome, now outlined against the sky, and the neighboring abrupt 
castellated walls, towered more hugely than ever. We did not need the 
map to know that some of these heights exceeded Yosemite’s. The sky- 
line was fantastically carved into spires and domes, a counterpart in 
gigantic miniature of the Great Sierra of which it was the valley climax. 
The Yosemite measure of sublimity, perhaps, lacked, but in its place was 
a more rugged grandeur, a certain suggestion of vastness and power 
that I have not seen elsewhere. The impression was strengthened by 
the floor itself, which contains no suggestion whatever of Yosemite’s ex- 
quisiteness. Instead, it offers rugged spaciousness. In place of Yose- 
mite’s peaceful woods and meadows, here were tangled giant-studded 
thickets and mountainous masses of enormous broken talus. Instead of 
the quiet, winding Merced, here was a surging, smashing, frothing, cas- 
cading, roaring torrent, several times its volume, which filled the valley 
with its turbulence. 

Once step foot on the valley floor and all thought of comparison with 
Yosemite vanishes forever. This is a different thing altogether, but a 
thing in its own way no less superlative in its distinction. The keynote 
of the Tehipite Valley is wild exuberance. It thrills where Yosemite 
enervates. Yet its temperature is quite as mild. 

The Kings contains more trout than any other stream I have fished. 
We found them in pools and riffles everywhere; no water was too white 
to get a rise. In the long greenish-white borders of fast rapids they 
floated continually into view. In five minutes watching I could count a 
dozen or more such appearances within a few feet of water. They ran 
from 8 to 14 inches. No doubt larger ones lay'below. So I got great 
fun out of picking my particular trout and casting specially for him. 
Stop your fly’s motion and the pursuing fish instantly stops, backs, 
swims round the lure in a tour of examination and disappears. Start it 
moving and he instantly reappears from the white depth where no doubt 
he has been cautiously watching. A pause and a swift start often tempt- 
ed to a strike. These rainbows of the torrents are hard fighters. And 


Notes and Correspondence 355 


many of them, if ungently handled, availed of swift currents to thresh 
themselves free. You must fish a river to appreciate it. Standing on its 
edges, leaping from rock to rock, slipping thigh deep at times, wading 
recklessly to reach some pool or eddy of special promise, searching the 
rapids, peering under the alders, testing the pools; that’s the way to 
make friends with a river. You study its moods and its ways as those 
of a mettlesome horse. And after a while its spirit seeps through and 
finds your soul. Its personality unveils. A sweet friendliness unites 
you, a sense of mutual understanding. There follows the completest 
detachment that I know. Years and the worries disappear. You and 
the river dream away the unnoted hours. 

The approach to Granite Pass en route from the Tehipite Valley to 
the Kings River Cafion was nothing short of magnificent. We entered 
a superb cirque studded with lakelets. It was a noble setting. We 
could see the pass ahead of us on a fine snow-crowned bench. We as- 
cended the bench and found ourselves, not in the pass, but in the en- 
trance to another cirque, also lake-studded, a loftier, nobler cirque en- 
circling the one below. 

But surely we were there. Those inspiring snow - daubed heights 
whose sharply serrated edges cut sharply into the sky certainly marked 
the supreme summit. Our winding trail up sharp rocky ascents pointed 
straight to the shelf which must be our pass. An hour’s toil would carry 
us over. The hour passed and the crossing of the shelf disclosed, not 
the glowing valley of the South Fork across the pass, but still a vaster, 
nobler cirque, sublime in Arctic glory! 

How the vast glaciers that cut these titanic carvings must have swirled 
among these huge concentric walls, pouring over this shelf and that, pil- 
ing together around these uplifting granite peaks, concentrating com- 
bined effort upon this unyielding mass and that, and, beaten back, pour- 
ing down the tortuous main channel with rendings and tearings unimag- 
inable! Granite Pass is astonishing! We saw no less than four of 
these vast concentric cirques, through three of which we passed. And 
the Geological Survey map discloses a tributary basin to the east in- 
closing a group of large volcanic lakes and doubtless other vast cirque- 
like chambers. We took photographs, but knew them vain. 

A long, dusty descent of Copper Creek, which McCormick correctly 
diagnosed as something fierce, brought us, near day’s end, into the ex- 
quisite valley of the South Fork of the Kings River—the Kings River. 
Cafion. Still another Yosemite! 

It is not so easy to differentiate the two cafions of the Kings. They 
are similar and yet very different. Perhaps the difference lies chiefly in 
degree. Both lie east and west, with enormous rocky bluffs rising on 
either side of rivers of quite extraordinary beauty. Both present carved 
and castellated walls of exceptional boldness of design. Both are heavily _ 
and magnificently wooded, the forests reaching up sharp slopes on either 
side. Both possess to a marked degree the quality that lifts them above 


356 Sierra Club Bulletin 


the average of even the Sierra’s glacial valleys. But the outlines here 
seem to be softer, the valley floor broader, the river less turbulent. If 
the keynote of the Tehipite Valley is wild exuberance, that of the Kings 
River Cafion is wild beauty. The one excites, the other lulls. The one 
shares with Yosemite the distinction of extraordinary outline, the other 
shares with Yosemite the distinction of extraordinary charm. The 
greater of these two cafions is destined to become famous under the 
name of its part, the Tehipite Valley; the lesser will have the undivided 
possession of the title, Kings Cafion. Tehipite is as distinctive and un- 
usual a name as Yosemite. But the Middle Fork of the Kings is by far 
a greater stream from every point of view than the beautiful South 
Fork. Looking ahead, this cafion of the South Fork seems destined to 
the quicker and the greater development. It is broader, flatter, and 
more livable. It lends itself to hostelries, of which two already exist. 
It is more easily reached and already has some patronage. Moreover, 
from its name and position, it is the natural recipient of whatever pub- 
licity grows out of both. Tehipite has to build from the ground up. 

There are few nobler spots than the junction of Copper Creek with 
the Kings. The Grand Sentinel is seldom surpassed. It fails of the 
personality of El Capitan, Half Dome, and Tehipite, but it only just 
fails. If they did not exist, it would become the most celebrated rock 
in the Sierra, at least. The view up the cafion from this spot has few 
equals. The view down the cafion is not often excelled. When the day 
of the Kings River Cafion dawns, it will dawn brilliantly. We loped 
and ambled and galloped down this gorgeous valley, filled to the brim 
with the joy of its broad forested flats and its soft invigorating air. The 
walls were glorious. Those in shadow were clothed in purple, streaked 
and blotched with yellows and many dark ochers. Large areas were 
frosted with grays of many shades, some on abutting cliffs shining like 
silver. The walls in sunlight showed interesting differences. The pur- 
ples of the shaded side now became dark grays; the light grays, white. 
The yellows faded or acquired greenish tints. Here and there in broad 
sunlight appeared splotches of vivid green, probably stains of copper 
salts. 


A Trip To CRATER LAKE ON SKIS 


Crater Lake has always proved a powerful magnet in drawing me there 
at different seasons, and I have made my pilgrimages in various ways— 
by wagon, horseback, mule-team, auto and snow-shoes. I decided last 
March to attempt the trip on skis. . . 

Mr. Frank I. Jones and I left Klamath Falls March 12, 1917. It was 
a cold, clear day. We followed the shore of Upper Klamath Lake, Mt. 
Shasta and Mt. McLoughlin, better known as Mt. Pitt, appearing across 
the broad white expanse, for the lake was a solid sheet of snow-covered 
ice, 


Notes and Correspondence 357 


At Chiloquin we bundled into a straw-filled sleigh; thirteen persons 
occupied the seats, with a big red rooster in a crate as rear guard and 
superstition chaser. . . . The snow had gradually deepened to over four 
feet as we neared Fort Klamath. . . . The outlook Tuesday morning 
was not promising. Over a foot of snow had fallen during the night. 
It was still snowing, and the heavy gray sky gave no assurance of any 
immediate change for the better. . . . From the Copeland place we 
continued our way on skis. Our packs averaged over thirty-five pounds 
each. . . . In addition to the provisions and personal effects, we had 
snow-shoes strapped on our packs for emergency use. . . . We pushed 
on through the soft snow, taking turns breaking trail through the pine 
forest. Another snowstorm about mid-afternoon shut out the sun and 
we looked for mile-posts or signs. Cheered by the sight of a blue en- 
ameled sign on a nearby pine, we turned aside to investigate. After 
poking the snow away I unearthed, or rather unsnowed, an ice-cream 
sign. For the first time it failed to awaken a responsive chord. About 
five o’clock a peaked snow mound, rising slightly above the level, an- 
nounced our destination. A shovel thrust in the snow under the peak 
gave us the means to clear an entrance, and we soon ferreted below and 
entered the cabin of the Wildcat ranger station at the park entrance. ... 

Wednesday morning promised fair, sunshine and blue sky following a 
starlit night. We left our snow-shoes behind as useless luggage and 
started up the road, tall, high-crested yellow pines casting long shadows 
on a spotless floor of white. Soon we neared the rim of Anna Creek 
Cafion, frequently enticed to the very edge for the enchanting view of 
the stream, a green twisting ribbon far below. White slopes alternated 
with sheer walls of colored rock, columns and spires upthrusting here 
andthere. . . . After eight hours of continuous plodding we reached 
the deep-set curve where a timber-cribbed opening under a deep floor 
of snow showed us Bridge Creek, the only bridge on the road. We 
found out later that this was five and three-quarter miles from Wild 
Cat. . . . It was after sunset when we reached Headquarters, where we 
were most cordially welcomed by H. E. Momyer, acting superintendent 
of the park. Fourteen feet of snow on the level necessitated going down 
a snow stairway to the front door. Mr. Momyer was monarch of all he 
surveyed, his only companions, bluejays, feathered camp robbers, and a 
pine marten, all so tame that a robber ate from his hand, and the mar- 
ten overcame all caution in his eagerness to secure scraps of the fresh | 
meat we had brought. His dark lithe body appeared like a shifting sil- 
houette against the snow stairway... . 

Thursday morning registered seven degrees above zero—clear, cold 
and snappy. . . . Friday afternoon we went up the low gap where the 
old road meandered to the rim, and came out on the lake at the base of 
Castle Crest. The sun was setting, giving a warm glow to the snow in 
the light, and cold gray to the snow in shadow. In the shadow below 
lay Wizard Island, a white cone; The Watchman, Glacier and Llao rose 


358 Sierra Club Bulletin 


on the western rim, kindled by the last rays, which in turn brought out 
Thielsen in sharp relief to the north, with blue sky above. The scene 
was sublime, one feature only missing—the marvelous blue of the lake. 
To our great surprise, the lake was frozen, fully three-quarters of its 
surface being ice-covered. We had been told that the lake never froze, 
and could not freeze, because of its phenomenal depth, constant tem- 
perature and surface-ruffling winds. . . . Shasta and Union peaks ap- 
peared to the south, from different points on the road leading westward 
along the rim towards the Watchman. The sun frequently burst through 
the white clouds to reward our patience... . 

Sunday found a slight snow falling, giving a cushion for the skis and 
smoothing out irregularities. Reluctantly bidding our host farewell, we 
started down to Fort Klamath. Our skis needed no urging and no guid- 
ing. Down the broad road and around the broad curves on a gently 
descending grade they kept the deep grooves, so arduously made on the 
ascent, and nothing could ever be more wonderfully enchanting and 
exhilarating. R. L. GLIsANn 
(Quoted from Mazama, December, 1917.) 


Hon. FRANKLIN K. LANE, 
Secretary of the Interior, Washington, D.C. 
Seattle, Washington, January 18, 1918 

My Dear Sir: As president of The Mountaineers, Incorporated, I am 
requested by that organization to communicate with you in regard to the 
proposal to pasture sheep in the Mount Rainier National Park. 

I approach the subject with care for I know the ease with which the 
thought or the expression of “Obstructionist” may arise when anyone 
calls in question any suggestion that seems to aim at the increase of 
food. Our organization is patriotic and not obstructionist in any sense. 
We are proud of our service flag of twenty-eight stars and more to be 
added. When the call of digitalis came our members organized crews. 
They are still gathering large quantities. The women of the club are 
working with the Red Cross in producing sphagnum moss bandages. 
We have nearly emptied our treasury in buying Liberty Bonds. 

If we thought the wonderful wild flowers of the Mount Rainier Na- 
tional Park were necessary to produce more wool and mutton for the 
use of the nation, we would endure the sacrifice in silence. We do not 
believe that such is the case, and we respectfully request that you exer- 
cise firmly your power to safeguard this great park from the destruction 
that is impending. 

Everyone knows how completely these large bands of sheep destroy 
the flowers and verdure of the wild places overrun by them. Every 
year our members, visiting mountains where sheep grazing is permitted, 
encounter new barren places, made barren and desolate by heavy sheep 
grazing. Mount Rainier National Park should certainly be saved from 
that sort of devastation. 


Notes and Correspondence 359 


While the matter was up for discussion, several of our members de- 
clared that they would gladly pasture sheep on their city lawns if by so 
doing they could save the National Park. We believe that thousands of 
city folks would gladly make that kind of sacrifice to save the park. 

As we see the threatening problem, you are the one officer in the na- 
tion who can solve it. You can surely save the Mount Rainier National 
Park and devise other ways of meeting the needs for wool and mutton. 

In a spirit of patriotism, not only for the time of this crisis of war, 
but for all the years to come, we appeal to you to protect Mount Rainier 
National Park from the destruction now pressing towards it. 

Yours faithfully, 
EpMonp S. MEANY, 
President of The Mountaineers, Incorporated 


Wellcroft, Helensburgh, Scotland, 
December 30, 1917 
Dear Mr. Colby: 

You may remember me as a guest of the Sierra Club in 1913,a brother 
of your “Mountain Goat.” I want you to give my name and address to 
any of your young soldier friends (especially Sierrans) who intend to 
head for Scotland when they’re taking leave from killing the enemy 
Boches. I’ll be pleased to put them up here to the extent of two at a 
time. If twenty came at once, I’ll hand out digging tools and they can 
construct a dugout in my back garden, and Ill see the Food Controller 
about extra rations. 

Time was when I did a lot of drill in the “Territorials’ on my feet. 
Now I’m called a “Volunteer” and do my drill on my stomach like a 
snake. They cheer me up by calling it machine-gun drill, and assuring 
me I shall be quite useful for home defence. 

I shall get a small “Old Glory” ready for the coming of your friends. 

Yours truly, 
J. RENNIE 


Sopa SprINGS Property, TUOLUMNE MEADOWS 


To the Members of the Sierra Club: 

Those members of the club who camped last summer on the Soda 
Springs property in the Tuolumne Meadows, which is now under the 
control of the club, appreciated more than ever the wonderful value of 
this property as a club asset. A more appropriate building than the 
Parsons Memorial Lodge could hardly be conceived, for with its stone 
walls and heavy log roof, it is entirely in harmony with the natural sur- 
roundings. While the lodge has been kept open during the summer and 
information given to the public, a more permanent headquarters should — 
in time be established there so that our members can make it a central 


360 Sierra Club Bulletin 


camping place from which to take side trips, and where their property 
can be taken care of in their absence. 

The necessity for making a new arrangement for financing this prop- 
erty will arise in the near future, as only about one-third of the owner- 
ship is now vested in the club itself. Many members have donated their 
shares to the club; a few shares have been purchased by special arrange- 
ment, and during the past year two were exchanged for life member- 
ships. The latter plan appears the most feasible as far as the club itself 
is concerned, but we would like suggestions from members as to what 
shall be done in the future in the way of acquiring the remaining inter- 
ests. Very respectfully, 

Wo. E. Coxsy, 
President 


THE GREATER SEQUOIA 


Recent Facts Point to Middle California as the Future Summer 
Home of Many Thousands of Campers Out 


Growing public interest in the plan of the Department of the Interior 
for the enlargement of the Sequoia National Park undoubtedly had 
much to do with last summer’s enormous increase in the patronage of 
this fascinating reservation on the west slopes of the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains in central California. This increase amounted to more than 
seventy-two per cent of the attendance the year before; and last year’s © 
attendance, be it noted, was an increase of forty per cent over the figures 
of the exposition year preceding. That these two enormous increases 
cover the precise period since the plan for “the Greater Sequoia” was 
made public is at least significant. 

Last summer’s increase consisted largely of campers in and near the 
Giant Forest. Many of them remained for weeks, some all summer, 
much to the profit of the local business channels through which they 
purchased their supplies. 

The Sequoia is fast becoming the greatest camping out locality in the 
country, and if the magnificent groves of the present Sequoia Park are 
supplemented by the immense scenic valleys it is proposed to add to the 
park, valleys now unknown to the public, there will be drawn to the 
park many thousands of campers yearly from far distant States. 


A SIERRA CLUB FUND FOR THE RELIEF OF STARVING CHILDREN 


A growing feeling among many of our members that we as a club 
should undertake some form of service induced the San Francisco local 
walks committee to start a weekly collection on the Sunday walks as a 
nucleus for a war-relief fund. Contributions to the Holland Seaside 
Fund, which provides for the health rehabilitation of starving children 


Notes and Correspondence 361 


from Belgium and northern France, would seem to be a particularly 
appropriate work for our club members. To be of the greatest value 
our contributions should be made regularly, so that each month we 
could undertake the support of a certain number of children. For in- 
stance, fifty members paying five cents apiece each week would provide 
for the permanent care of two children. Though most of us can afford 
to give more than this, even the nickels and the pennies count. 

The movement was started on the San Francisco local walk of Janu- 
ary 13, and the response was very generous. . Less than forty members 
were out, but, nevertheless, over six dollars were contributed. On Jan- 
uary 20 we received over five dollars. 

While it is particularly fitting that we who enjoy our weekly outings 
should pass along some of the benefits we derive from them to helpless, 
war-stricken children, we hope that other members will feel impelled to 
make small but frequent contributions to this fund. Mr. Fred R. Par- 
ker has consented to take charge of it, and all contributions should be 
sent to or left at the clubrooms in his name. 


NATIONAL PARK NOTES 
- 


THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 


The National Park Service was organized as the ninth bureau of the 
Department of the Interior immediately upon the approval of the de- 
ficiency appropriation act of April 17, 1917, which made funds available 
for its establishment. To quote from the act, the functions of the new 
service are to: 
. . . promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as 
national parks, monuments and reservations hereinafter specified 
by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental pur- 
pose of said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is 
to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and 
the wild life therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same 
in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired 
for the enjoyment of future generations. 

The officers of the new service are: Director, Stephen T. Mather of 
Illinois; assistant director, Horace M. Albright of California; chief 
clerk, Frank W. Griffith of New York. Seventeen national parks and 
twenty-two national monuments are now under the jurisdiction of the 
National Park Service. In acreage the national parks total 6,254,568 
acres; the national monuments, 91,824 acres. 

Before quoting from the extensive and admirable “Report” for 1917 
made to the Secretary of the Interior by Horace M. Albright, acting di- 
rector, we would like to call the attention of our members to the scope 
and difficulty of the task that has confronted Mr. Albright this year. A 
serious and prolonged illness of Mr. Mather’s threw the whole burden 
of organization and management upon Mr. Albright’s shoulders, at a 
time, too, when every executive department and every branch of Gov- 
ernment service was concentrated upon the war. In expressing our great 
happiness in Mr. Mather’s recovery and return to the work into which 
he has put so much thought and energy, we wish also to congratulate him 
upon his assistant, and to hope that they may continue to work together 
in the park service through many administrations yet to come. 


REPORT OF THE DirRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, 1917 
TRAVEL 


The total travel to the National Parks for the season was 487,368... . 
I shall not comment upon the national monument travel further than to 
state that it has materially increased. . . . The enormous increase in 
National Park patronage does not represent merely an increase in local 
travel; that is, travel from various park States and immediately adja- 


National Park Notes 363 


cent territory. It represents an increase in both local travel and in pat- 
ronage of tourists from distant States and foreign countries. The tour- 
ist traffic of the railroads possibly did not increase, but it is not prob- 
able that it decreased appreciably. Many of the railroads enjoyed an 
increased tourist patronage. Private automobile traffic increased tre- 
mendously in every park... . 

Our travel reports also disclose an astounding increase in what we 
choose to call park-to-park travel. Hundreds of parties during the past 
summer visited more than one National Park; just how many it is im- 
possible, of course, to ascertain, and scores visited groups of parks, such 
as the parks in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Coast parks, the north- 
western parks, the southwestern members of the system, etc... . 

Many pages might be written on the automobile routes to the various 
national parks and the accommodations that have been provided for the 
traveler along the way. . . . The efforts of the automobile clubs, high- 
way associations, and other organizations to accurately and completely 
sign the roads, leading over mountain and plain, are worthy of extended 
comment, and the projects of the State highway commissions, involving 
extension and improvement of road systems, are closely related to the 
subject of motoring in the parks, and I regret sincerely that they can 
not be outlined here. Briefly, I may state that the highways in National 
Park States have been greatly improved during the past year... . 

The National Parks Highway Association, with headquarters in Spo- 
kane, has this year assumed the leadership in this movement, and dur- 
ing the spring mapped and sign-posted a route from its terminus of last 
year in Mount Rainier National Park to Crater Lake, thus connecting 
Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake National Parks 
by what is known as the National Parks highway. In connection with 
the latest link added to this important system the beautiful Columbia 
River highway has been marked as a side trip, and I believe that all of 
the parties that have traveled over the National Parks highway this year 
have not overlooked the opportunity to see the wonderful scenery of the 
Columbia River gorge. This park-to-park highway should now be ex- 
tended and marked in California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Color- 
ado, and Wyoming and the circuit completed. When the work of desig- 
nation has been accomplished all interested in the development of travel 
to the National Parks can join hands in securing the improvement of 
the highway. In more than one sense this road will become a national 
“Se ae 

Conditions for motoring in the parks themselves during the 1917 sea- 
son were most favorable. With one possible exception the park high- 
way systems were in better condition than ever before. Every effort was 
made to safeguard travel on the roads. When automobile traffic was 
particularly heavy, extra traffic rangers were assigned to regulate the 
movement of cars, and all traffic on dangerous grades was carefully 
checked to eliminate all possibility of accident. Free automobile camp 


364 - Sierra Club Bulletin 


service in several of the National Parks was extended during the sum- 
mer, and it shall be our policy to make still further additions to and im- 
provements in this service. These free camps are specially cleared 
areas, provided with water, and are located at convenient distances from 
supplies of fuel. Where shelter for cars is needed, buildings for this 
purpose are erected. Toilet facilities are provided, and the installation 
of grates for cooking purposes is proceeding rapidly... . 


APPROPRIATIONS AND REVENUES 


It is unquestionably the policy of Congress to appropriate an amount 
equal to the park revenues for park purposes in addition to funds for 
new construction work and general maintenance of improvements. Un- 
der ordinary circumstances, the park that is well developed will yield a 
large revenue, but, on the other hand, a park that is not developed can 
not possibly yield revenue of consequence... . 

The remarkable increase in National Park travel has naturally in- 
creased park revenues materially. At this date it is too early to com- 
pile the complete tables of revenues for this season, but we are already 
aware of the fact that the parks will yield a larger revenue this year 
than ever before. And the revenues will grow larger each year, even 
though it may appear advisable later to revise some of the fee schedules 
downward, thus reducing auto taxes and rates for service in the parks 
affected. Each year several schedules require adjustment. I believe the 
time will soon come when Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Se- 
quoia, and General Grant National Parks, and probably one or two more 
members of the system will yield sufficient revenue to cover costs of ad- 
ministration and maintenance of improvements. An appropriation for 
extension of improvements and new construction work will be all that 
these parks will require. There probably never will be a time when all 
of the parks will not require appropriations over and above the revenues 
for one purpose or another, and it would not be proper and just to re- 
quire these great national playgrounds to yield sufficient revenue to cover 
all the costs of operation, any more than it would be fair and reasonable 
to expect Rock Creek Park, in Washington, to pay all costs of its oper- 
ation as a public recreational area. It seems that the National Parks 
and the Federal Government that controls them must jointly provide the 
necessary funds for their administration, protection, and improvement 
after the Federal Government has advanced their development to a point 
where they can yield revenue without placing a burden upon the tourist. 
. .. The appropriation for the current fiscal year for the park system 
is $524,780; for the monuments, $5000. The revenues for the 1918 fiscal 
year already reported are $132,675.87. A comparison of the appropria- 
tions of the fiscal years 1917 and 1918 with those of preceding years will 
indicate clearly that Congress is heartily in sympathy with the develop- 
ment of tourist travel to the parks and is ready to cooperate by making 
both the parks and the monuments fully accessible. The appropriations 
that are now being made for many parks, however, are inadequate, and 


National Park Notes 365 


no funds whatsoever were made available for the following National 
Parks recently established: Hawaii National Park in the Territory of 
Hawaii, Lassen Volcanic Park in California, Mount McKinley National 
Park in the Territory of Alaska... . 


THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK 


The Rocky Mountain National Park enjoyed a larger tourist patron- 
age during the 1917 season than any other National Park. The organic 
act creating this park contained the following inhibition on appropria- 
tions for its protection, improvement, and maintenance: 

Provided, That no appropriation for the maintenance, super- 
vision, or improvement of said park in excess of $10,000 annually 
shall be made unless the same shall have first been expressly au- 
thorized by law. 

On account of this provision no more than $10,000 a year has been avail- 
able, and as this amount has been just about sufficient to properly protect 
the park,it has been impossible to undertake any improvement project. The 
fact is, the appropriation of $10,000 is barely sufficient for protective 
purposes now. The act of February 14, 1917, added to the park the re- 
gion mentioned above as the Estes Park area, the Twin Sister Moun- 
tains, and other territory, in all 25,265 acres, thus increasing the area to 
be protected to 254,327 acres, and adding problems of traffic control, 
camp stipervision, sanitation, and a multitude of other similar problems 
requiring an increase in the ranger force and the assumption of other 
financial obligations. There was no part of the appropriation available 
for improvement purposes this year, and yet the obligation remained to 
care for all visitors to the region. Our records show that prior to Oc- 
tober 12, 117,186 visitors entered the park boundaries... . 


YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 


The reorganization of the concession system of the park was the most 
important accomplishment of the year. There had been numerous cor- 
porations and individuals engaged in furnishing transportation service, 
hotel and camp accommodations, photographic supplies, etc., and many 
of them had for years rendered indifferent service to the public. . 
There naturally followed constant friction among so many groups of 
concessioners. This was particularly true of the transportation compa- 
nies. Many of the concessions in the park were operated in an uneco- 
nomical manner, and the cost of this inefficiency in management was. 
borne by the traveling public, not in the form of exorbitant charges for 
service, but in unsatisfactory and insufficient service... . 

The department finally concluded to grant a single transportation con- 
cession. The grounds upon which this decision were based were: 

First. Because it would be uneconomical to permit the establishment 
of more than one transportation line on the Yellowstone roads with each 
touching the same point, just as it would be uneconomical to run more 
than one street-car line on a single street; also because each would re- 


366 Sierra Club Bulletin 


quire a separate management, a separate overhead expense account, and 
a separate operating supply base; likewise because there would neces- 
sarily be duplication in the establishment of garages, gasoline stations, 
etc. 

Second. Because more than one line would be difficult to control by 
the park authorities, as questions of right of way on the roads would 
constantly arise for adjustment; and because there would be friction at 
railroad terminals, hotels, and other starting points in the handling of 
passengers. 

Third. Because with more than one competing transportation system 
the tourist would be subjected to importunities and harassment at rail- 
road terminals by rival solicitors, chauffeurs, and information clerks; 
and because the economic waste involved in the operation of the sev- 
eral systems would increase the cost of park tours. 

Fourth. Because the investment required to establish a satisfactory 
transportation line in Yellowstone Park, with necessary operating bases, 
supply stations and garages, would be very large, and it would be doubt- 
ful if more than one line could be operated at a profit. 

Having determined the principles that would guide the motorization 
of the transportation service, reorganization of all of the important con- 
cessions was necessary before the new transportation concession could 
be granted. This was finally accomplished by mutual agreement be- 
tween the various transportation, permanent-camp, and hotel interests. 
A money consideration accomplished the elimination of one transporta- 
tion company and the motor line operated from Cody, Wyoming. An 
adjustment of property interests and another cash consideration passing 
to a party that wished to withdraw from the camping business made pos- 
sible the abandonment of the transportation features of the permanent 
camping business and the combination of the two important permanent 
camping companies. The third camping company was denied a renewal 
of its franchise. 

When the reorganization reached the stage where there remained but 
one hotel company, one transportation company, and two camping com- 
panies that had disposed of their transportation privileges and combined 
their other property interests with the consent of the department, the 
policy of permitting the establishment of a single hotel enterprise, a 
single permanent camping business, and a single motor transportation 
line, as three Government-regulated public-utility monopolies, was 


adopted. GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 


The outstanding features of the Glacier National Park season are: 
First, the vast improvement in the road and trail system that has been 
effected under congressional appropriations; second, the increase in tour- 
ist patronage; third, the growth in popularity of the park as a summer 
resort, as evidenced by the return for another season of a large number 
of visitors of previous years and a substantial increase in the average 
length of time spent in the park by its visitors... . 


National Park Notes 367 


The appropriation available for the last fiscal year was $110,000; for 
the current fiscal year, $115,000. With these funds it has been possible 
to improve the road systems on both sides of the park. The system on 
the east side has been largely rebuilt. The crossings of the river bot- 
toms and lowlands have been filled to a sufficient depth to lift the road 
out of the mud and water in stormy weather. Bridges and culverts 
have been constructed, curves have been eliminated, grades realigned, 
and many miles of the system have received a graveled surface. . . . 

The extensive trail system has also been improved and several miles 
of new trails have been constructed. The important new trail connect- 
ing Glacier Hotel on Lake McDonald with Granite Park Chalet was 
completed during the season. The construction of a new trail connect- 
ing Granite Park Chalet with Sun Camp, via Logan Pass, and a con- 
necting trail to the Glacier Hotel, was begun and will be finished next 
summer. Several other important new trails will be completed this au- 
tumn. Many new foot trails leading from the various hotels and cha- 
lets to scenic points in their immediate vicinity were built and made 
available for use this year. The most important of these trails lead 
from the Granite Park Chalet to points where thrilling vistas of the 
finest mountain scenery may be obtained. One of them proceeds for a 
considerable distance (two and one-half miles to Gould Mountain) along 
the Garden Wall on the very crest of the Continental Divide, and from 
it one may step directly onto the Grinnell Glacier, one of the safest and 
most interesting glaciers of the park. It is proposed to continue this 
trail along the Garden Wall for several miles... . 


MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK 


Striking improvements in Mount Rainier Park are in evidence all around 
the mountain, First in importance is the fine new hotel in Paradise Val- 
ley. Next may be mentioned the picturesque new camp at the snout of 
the Nisqually Glacier. A new hotel has been built on the patented land 
at Longmire Springs, and this alienated tract has been cleaned up and 
improved in a manner that makes it impossible to recognize the old 
Longmire property. This hotel does not have as many facilities for ac- 
commodating guests as the National Park Inn across the road on Gov- 
ernment land possesses, but it is a comfortable hostelry. .. . 

The National Park Service has concentrated its improvement work 
entirely upon the road and trail system during the past year. Under an 
appropriation of $75,000, the largest ever made by Congress for this ° 
park, the entire road system, including the Storbo road, has been im- 
proved. The road from the southwestern gateway to Nisqually Glacier 
has been widened, graded, and surfaced, several new bridges have been 
constructed, and new culverts installed. The road beyond the glacier to 
Narada Falls and Paradise Valley has been somewhat widened, curves 
have been eliminated, parapets have been constructed, and the road 
throughout its length graveled and made entirely safe for automobile 
traffic. . . . The trail system around the mountain has been much im- 


368 Sierra Club Bulletin 


proved during the year. Miscellaneous construction work, including the 
erection of a residence for the supervisor at the southwestern or Nis- 
qually River gateway, was accomplished... . 


CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK 


Wild animals are becoming more numerous in the park, and it was ob- 
served this summer that a very few wild flowers are returning. There 
have been no wild flowers in the park since it was established, the sheep 
that ranged over this region before the creation of the park having ut- 
terly destroyed the wild-flower growth. 


SEQUOIA AND GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS 


The most important work accomplished in Sequoia National Park dur- 
ing the past year has been the assumption of control of the Giant Forest 
lands by the National Park Service and the preparation of these lands 
for the use of the traveling public, especially the camper and angler. ... 
During the past season the park enjoyed an astonishing increase in pat- 
ronage. The largest increase was in the number of people visiting the 
park in private automobiles. . . . The road which is just being extended 
to the Marble Fork River should be continued in the next year or two 
to the north boundary of the park, where connection may be made with 
the road which Tulare County is now building to connect the General 
Grant Park with the Sequoia Park. I inspected the county road during 
the past summer, and found that an excellent highway is being con- 
structed between the two parks. The road traverses a scenic region, and 
the engineers who are building the highway are disturbing natural con- 
ditions as little as possible. When this county road and the Federal con- 
nection in Sequoia Park are completed, the circle route through the two 
National Parks will afford one of the most interesting scenic trips of 
the National Park system. Few park roads will enjoy a larger patron- 
age than this new road because every party that goes into either Gener- 
al Grant or Sequoia Park will visit both before leaving this scenic re- 
gion. I cannot too strongly recommend the continuance of the Govern- 
ment road work in order that the two National Parks may be connected 
by the automobile highway as soon as possible. 

Summarizing travel to the Sequoia Park for the 1917 season, there 
were 18,510 visitors to the park as against 10,780 last year; 2334 auto- 
mobiles this year as against 736 last. The revenues for the year were 
higher than ever before, $10,326.60, as against $5,169.86 for 1916. 

Travel to the General Grant National Park this year is 17,390, as 
against 15,300 last year. Automobile travel was also heavier, 2158 cars 
having entered the park as against 1778 last year. 


YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK © 


The following Yosemite Park notes are quoted from the report of the 
supervisor, Mr. W. B. Lewis. If space permitted we should quote still 


[Crater Lake National Park was created in 1902. Fifteen years of protection 
have not sufficed to bring back the flowers.—Editor’s note. ] 


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SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. 


ISION OF FORESTRY, 


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A CORNER OF THE WOOD TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY, DIV 


ERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


7 


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UNIV 


’ 
SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCXVIII. 
REMAINS OF THE COAST & GEODETIC SURVEY’S OBSERVATORY 
On the summit of Mount Conness 
Photo by Walter L. Huber 
PLATE CCXIX. 
oo Explonttions ange SUT veys We est of the 100th Meridian 
i SENOS a ese eee PE OSD ihe oF 2 
Name of Be od “— VO7)7 1 ESS y, 
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RECORD OF ASCENT OF MOUNT CONNESS 
Left by Lieutenant M. M. Macomber, September 25, 1878. Removed from the mountain 
by Walter L. Huber, July 24, 1917; now deposited in the 
official records of the Sierra Club ’ 


National Park Notes 309 


more fully, as Mr. Lewis has made a very complete résumé of the work 
accomplished in this park and of its needs for the future. We call par- 
ticular attention to his fearless stand upon the grazing question. 


ROADS AND TRAILS 


During the fiscal year 1917 the service maintained approximately 104 
miles of road, as follows: Floor of Yosemite Valley, 22 miles; El Por- 
tal road, 8 miles; Big Oak Flat road, 13 miles; Wawona road, 4 miles; 
‘ roads in Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, 10 miles; and Tioga road, 47 
miles. As indicated in former,reports, all of these roads, with the ex- 
ception of a few miles on the floor of Yosemite Valley, are dirt roads 
which were originally built as wagon roads and which have been grad- 
ually improved until reasonably safe for automobile travel. All of these 
roads, however, are built on heavy grades and with sharp, dangerous 
curves, and the roadbeds themselves vary from Io to 15 feet in width. 
The result is that automobiles, especially those of lighter construction, 
travel these roads only with considerable difficulty and with a consider- 
able element of danger. That these conditions exist is unfortunate, and 
every effort should be made to take up the work of their improvement 
in order that automobilists may travel these roads with safety and with 
greater degree of ease and comfort. 

It is a well-known fact that for the best interest of the park as a 
whole disproportionate publicity has been given to the waterfalls and 
other features of Yosemite Valley, with the result that travel to other 
portions of the park has been minimized. Although it is realized that 
Yosemite Valley itself will always be the most important feature of the 
park, both because of its accessibility and because of its many features 
of attraction for the recreationist, and as it is also realized that the bulk 
of moneys expended in development work in the park should be ex- 
pended in and around Yosemite Valley where it will be of the most good 
to the most people, it is, however, important that a certain amount of 
development work be done in the outlying portions in order to attract 
visitors and thereby make known to the public something more of the 
opportunities for campers and outdoor people in those areas. 

During the past year a trail was built from the White Cascades down 
the Tuolumne River to a point near the top of the first Water Wheel 
Fall. This has resulted in a large increase in the number of visitors to 
the Water Wheel Falls during the past year. In order, however, to com- 
pletely accomplish the object for which the trail was started, namely, 
that of reaching all of the Water Wheel Falls, it is necessary that the 
trail be continued some two miles down the cafion to Return Creek, a 
tributary of the Tuolumne River. With this trail completed the Water 
Wheel Falls country would be easily accessible by horseback, and the 
trail would be extended to a point from where at some future time, 
should travel warrant it, it could be extended down the entire Tuolum- 
ne Cafion to Hetch Hetchy. This latter proposition is not one for con- 
sideration at this time, but should be given consideration in connection 


370 Sierra Club Bulletin 


with plans for the future development of the trail system. On July 1, 
1917, funds were made available for the construction of a new trail, 
some eight miles in length, between the McClure Fork of the Merced 
River and Tuolumne Pass, by way of Babcock and Emeric lakes. The 
completion of this trail will shorten the distance between Merced Lake 
and the Tuolumne Soda Springs by some three or four miles, and will 
eliminate that portion of the present trail which passes over Vogelsang 
Pass and which, because of its high elevation, is late to open, danger- 
ous, and extremely hard to maintain in a passable condition. 


PATENTED LANDS 


During the past year an important step has been taken toward acquisi- 
tion by the Government of privately owned lands within the park. Dur- 
ing the year exchanges of land and timber were effected with the Yo- 
semite Lumber Co. by which the Government acquires title to nearly 
7000 acres of land and 150 acres of timber only. Of this total amount, 
790 acres include the timber and were acquired for purposes of protect- 
ing roads within the park. The remaining lands are either cut-over 
lands or lands upon which reservation of the timber has been made. In 
addition to this, an exchange was effected with the city and county of 
San Francisco whereby the Government acquires title to 360 acres of 
land in the vicinity of Hog Ranch. In each case, in return for such 
titles, the Government has granted timber rights on lands in localities 
where the loss of the timber will not in any way affect the scenic fea- 
ture of the park. By these two exchanges the Government has acquired 
nearly 40 per cent of the privately owned lands in the park. Privately 
owned lands in the park still exist to the extent of about 11,000 acres, 
but in view of the fact that the Government has no accessible timber 
which could be disposed of without affecting the scenic features of the 
park, it will be impossible to acquire further private holdings by this 
method of exchange. The problem, therefore, of securing funds for the 
purchase of such lands is one that should be given consideration and at- 
tention. . 
VISITORS 

Visitors to the park during the period October 1, 1916, to September 30, 
1917, reached a total of 34,510. The fact that the majority entered the 
park in private automobiles, and the further fact that the number of 
people so entering was far in excess of the number traveling by this 
method during the previous year, is evidence that it is this class of trav- 
el that must be given the bulk of consideration in future park develop- 
ment work, both on the part of the Government and the concessioners 
operating within the park. Roads and public parking places must be 
given special consideration by the service, and garage facilities and hotel 
and camp accommodations which appeal to this class of travel must be 
maintained by the concessioners. . . . The total number of automobile 
visitors utilizing the free public camps during the season of 1917 was 
10,598. This compares with 4038 for the season of 1916... . 


National Park Notes eu 


GRAZING 


Shortly after the declaration of war in April, 1917, with its accompany- 
ing propaganda on the conservation of food supplies, the question of 
opening the park to grazing was taken up on a large scale. All possible 
influence was brought to bear by the stockmen operating in the regions 
around the park. Their arguments in favor of such action by the ser- 
vice were based upon the alleged shortage of feed in the foothills and 
their alleged patriotic desire to do all possible in assisting in carrying 
out the policy of conservation of food supplies. Although there was no 
objection on the part of this office to opening certain areas of the park 
during the period of emergency, it was evident, however, that upon nei- 
ther of these principles was based the real reason for the insistence on 
the part of the stockmen that the park be opened; but, rather, it was 
evident that advantage was taken of the emergency to open up the ques- 
tion with the hope of getting a permanent footing on the park lands, 
feeling that the acquisition of permits for this year would strengthen 
the claim for similar privileges in years to come. 

When, in 1801, the park was created, grazing was already established 
throughout the area without Government regulation or authorization. 
It took more than 20 years of constant effort to eliminate it, and it was 
only by the rigorous application of force and more or less arbitrary rul- 
ing by the Army that the task was accomplished, and in the end the park 
lost several hundred square miles of territory through the readjustment 
of its boundaries. Even then the fight was continued on a small scale, 
with the result that in 1913 permission was given to certain persons to 
allow cattle to graze upon the park lands when being driven from one 
private holding to another, or from the park boundary to private hold- 
ings. This privilege was given contingent upon action by Congress on 
certain bills pending at that time, the object of which was the purchase 
by the Government of private holdings within the park. Although this 
legislation was never passed, these individuals have assumed these priv- 
ileges to be sufficient authorization for the continuation of grazing over 
some 40,000 acres of park lands in the western portion of the park up 
until the present time. It is very evident that none other than these few 
individuals have benefited by the use of these lands. It might also be 
pertinent to state that in any arrangement the service may make permit- 
ting grazing on this portion of the park, these men and no one else will 
reap the benefit. 

In view of the strong demands made the service saw fit to open cer- 
tain portions of the park to grazing, and during the spring of 1917 per- 
mits were issued for the grazing of some 5000 head of cattle. The bulk 
of the area upon which grazing was allowed lies in the western and 
northwestern portion of the park, north and south of the Tuolumne 
River. In addition to this a small area in the southeastern portion of 
the park was opened to grazing. 

When this question comes up another year, as it undoubtedly will, I 


372 Sierra Club Bulletin 


would suggest that grazing be allowed within the park on private lands 
only, and on these under fence. In case it should appear necessary to 
continue grazing of larger areas, because of the necessity of war condi- 
tions, I would suggest that the rate for this service be increased to not 
less than $5 per head, in order that the Government may get its share of 
the benefit rather than to allow practically all to go to the few individu- 
als holding permits, as is the case under the present arrangement, where- 
by the Government charges the sum of 50 cents per head per season.... 


SUPERVISORS OF NATIONAL PARKS 


For information regarding our National Parks write to 

Casa Grande Ruin, James P. Bates, Custodian, Florence, Ariz. 

Crater Lake, Alex. Sparrow, Crater Lake, Oregon. 

Glacier, George E. Goodwin, Acting Sup., Belton, Montana. 

Hot Springs Reservation, Dr. Wm. P. Parks, Sup., Hot Springs, Ark. 

Mesa Verde, Thomas Rickner, Sup., Mancos, Colo. 

Mount Rainier, D. L. Reaburn, Ashford, Wash. 

Plati, R. A. Sneed, Sup., Sulphur, Okla. 

Rocky Mountain, L. C. Way, Ranger in Charge, Estes Park, Colo. 

Sequoia and General Grant, Walter Fry, Sup., Three Rivers, Cal. 

Sully’s Hill, Samuel A. M. Young, Acting Sup., Fort Totten, N. Dak. 

Wind Cave, Thomas W. Brazell, Sup., Wind Cave, via Hot Springs, 
S. Dak. 

Yellowstone, Chester A. Lindsley, Acting Sup., Yellowstone Park, Wyo. 

Yosemite, W. B. Lewis, Sup., Yosemite, Cal. 


FORESTRY NOTES 


By WALTER MULForRD 
- 


Wark 


War! Only these three letters are needed to spell what has chiefly oc- 
cupied the minds and hearts of most of the forestry folk of California 
during the past field season. The stars and stripes have called thou- 
sands of men to cut timber from the French forests for the trenches, 
the railroads and the camps of the American expeditionary forces. The 
same stars and stripes have demanded the services of tens of thousands 
of men in the American forests to supply lumber for vehicles, aero- 
planes, boats, cantonments, and boxes and crates in which to ship food, 
ammunition and army supplies. Our flag has required the services of 
scientific experts in determining the best woods to meet the demands 
raised by the war, and the best methods of treating these timbers. It 
has asked each remaining member of the greatly depleted forestry or- 
ganizations to put his regular work on one shoulder and to balance the 
load on the other shoulder by assuming the duties of a brother who has 
been called away. 

The result in California: the logging camps and sawmill crews are 
straining every nerve to make the forests contribute their just share of 
the nation’s need for raw materials, but they are utterly unable to meet 
the demands made upon them; the Forest Service has been handicapped 
in handling a severe fire season because of the loss of men, and at the 
same time it has had to meet the demands. made by increased stock 
grazing, more timber sales and much war work of other kinds; almost 
all the forestry students and part of the forestry faculty at the Univer- 
sity of California have joined the colors. 

War! It is unpleasant to intrude the all-pervading word into the 
journal of the Sierra Club, the club which helps people to get away 
from strife. But the fact is that the peaceful forests of California, al- 
most on the opposite side of the world from where the struggling lines 
are drawn taut, are themselves feeling the shock to some extent. More 
timber is being cut, less help is at hand for controlling fires, more cattle 
and sheep are being grazed, less money and labor are available for 
building trails, bridges and telephones. War! May the vigorous Se- 
quoia, with a thousand years of useful life yet to come, never again 
hear the word as a thing of reality! 


War Work OF THE FOREST SERVICE 


The California members of the United States Forest Service have taken 
their full share of war work. Coert Du Bois, district forester, and 


374 Sierra Club Bulletin 


many members of his staff are serving in various branches of the army. 
Last spring the Forest Service made a quick survey of the points in the 
California forests the destruction of which would benefit an enemy. 
Maps of these localities were prepared and furnished to the War De- 
partment. In the dangerous first weeks of the war the Forest Service 
cooperated in the protection of these properties, and no loss occurred. 
A military census of all members of the Forest Service was prepared, 
thus helping to place each man where he could be most useful. Soon 
after war was declared a survey made by the College of Agriculture of 
the University of California showed that the forage and feed crops of 
the State were only 65 per cent of the normal. Immediately the Forest 
Service engaged in far-reaching and painstaking work to make every 
acre of forage on the national forests fully available for the production 
of beef, mutton, leather and wool. The result was that on June I there 
were 23,000 more cattle and 71,000 more sheep on the national forest 
ranges of California than there had been in any previous year. The 
Forest Service took a large part in the draft registration under the se- 
lective draft act throughout the mountain sections of twenty-two coun- 
ties. The Forest Service has also actively cooperated in many ways 
with the Committee on Resources and Food Supply of the State Coun- 
cil of Defence. 


A CONTRIBUTION TO RECREATION 


During the summer of 1917 four hundred thousand people entered the 
Angeles National Forest for recreational purposes. ‘Three cheers for 
the Angeles, and three more for the multitudes who have the good sense 
to use it! During the past year the Forest Service built sixty miles of 
new trail on the Angeles, and it expects to build fifty miles during the 
coming year. The Southern California Section of the Sierra Club con- 
tributed one hundred dollars toward the reconstruction of the old Buck- 
horn Trail, now renamed by the Forest Service as “Sierra Club Trail.” 
There are now twelve hundred miles of trail within the forest, and it is 
expected that by the summer of 1918 there will be signboards at every 
trail intersection. Approximately one thousand summer residence per- 
mits are outstanding on the Angeles. Because of the existence within 
the forest of two of the largest game refuges in the State, deer are in- 
creasing rapidly. 


TAHOE- YOSEMITE TRAIL 


During the 1917 field season the Forest Service completed the Tahoe- 
Yosemite trail from Upper Echo Lake to the lower end of Echo Lake. 
This brings the trail out to the Lincoln Highway. The work was done 
in codperation with the Western States Gas and Electric Co., which fur- 
nished most of the labor. The trail built in 1917 is standard and of the 


Forestry Notes 295 


same general description as that built in 1916, which is described in the 
SrerrA CLus BULLETIN of January, I917. 


New REcREATION Maps 


During the past year the Forest Service has issued new recreation maps 
of the Angeles, California, Cleveland, Inyo and Mono National For- 
ests, and a highway map of California showing the National forests. 
These can be obtained free from the District Forester, U.S. Forest Ser- 
vice, 114 Sansome Street, San Francisco. 


THE LUMBER INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA 


“Probably the most important point of contact between the pine lumber 
industry in California and the Government in the present crisis is the 
manufacture of box shooks. California is so situated that many of its 
food products are marketed thousands of miles away from where they 
are produced. In most cases wooden boxes are essential for proper 
transportation. The National Food Administration is urging the most 
complete utilization of food products, and the lumber industry is being 
called upon to produce the box shooks. 10918 presents a problem that 
cannot be fully appreciated at the present time—the volume of crop 
production, demands upon the industry for men for the army, labor un- 
rest, supply of cars for shipment, cost of raw materials and many other 
factors.” (Comment by C. Stowell Smith.) 

In spite of labor shortage, the cut of California timber was apparently 
greater in 1917 than in 1916. Taking seven mills in the pine region as 
an example, the season’s cut in 1916 up to September 1 was 259 million 
board feet; in 1917, up to September 1, it was 270 million. 

The Diamond Match Company has recently undertaken to cut its tim- 
ber conservatively in order to keep its lands productive for future op- 
erations. Only trees above a certain diameter are cut, the smaller trees 
being left to grow to larger sizes; all merchantable timber is utilized 
well into the tops; the slashings are systematically burned after the first 
heavy rains and all dead snags on the logged lands are felled. A tim- 
ber cruise of about 170,000 acres of timberland in Butte and Tehama 
counties, owned by this company, was completed last summer by the 
company’s forest adviser, Frederick E. Olmsted. 

Several lumbermen owning timber in the Sierra made strong efforts 
during the past summer to induce the Federal Government to make 
large appropriations for controlling the ravages of pine beetles. 


CALIFORNIA WHITE AND SUGAR PINE MANUFACTURERS’ ASSOCIATION 


An important step in the development of the lumber industry of Cali- 
fornia was taken on July 1, 1917, when the scope of the California 


376 Sierra Club Bulletin 


White and Sugar Pine Manufacturers’ Association was greatly enlarged 
and C. Stowell Smith was appointed secretary-manager. Mr. Smith 
was formerly in charge of the branch of forest products in the San 
Francisco office of the Forest Service. The Association, which was 
formed on May 15, 1916, now includes twenty-two pine lumber manu- 
facturers. 

There is great potential significance for the future of California for- 
ests in the formation of a strong lumbermen’s organization such as this. 
Under unscrupulous management, it could be a powerful agent for un- 
necessary forest destruction. In good hands it can be one of the most 
effective of agents for perpetuating forests by proper use. Such an as- 
sociation increases the opportunity for the effective execution of a “get- 
together” policy between the lumbermen, the stockmen, the United States 
Forest Service, the United States National Park Service, the State For- 
ester’s office, the Sierra Club and all other agencies having vital inter- 
ests in California’s forests. 

At present the association is concentrating most of its effort on one 
important point—the standardizing of the grades of soft pine lumber, 
which is a benefit to the consumer of lumber as well as to the producer. 
A book of rules describing the grades has been published and widely 
distributed to both manufacturers and consumers, and a traveling force 
of inspectors is employed. 

The association is directly helping the government in the organization 
of forestry troops, having been authorized to select officers for the 
Twentieth Reserve Engineers (Forest) and to enlist privates for that 
regiment. Up to November 1, about 1000 men from the Pacific Coast 
had been selected, of which about 800 are from California. Orders have 
been issued to increase the regiment by about 6000 additional men. 


THE DIVvISION OF FORESTRY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


In July, 1917, the Division of Forestry of the University of California 
moved into the newly completed Hilgard Hall, and thereby took its 
place among the well equipped forest schools of the country. The build- 
ing houses seven divisions of the College of Agriculture. The forestry 
quarters include a classroom, a large general laboratory for all under- 
graduate courses, three special research laboratories for forest utiliza- 
tion and wood technology, three small special laboratories for advanced 
students in other branches of forestry, a large logging engineering labor- 
atory, drafting room, blue print room, instrument room, herbarium 
room, lecture demonstration materials room, store room, club room and 
six Offices. 

The students of the Forestry Club of the University of California 
have issued seven numbers (May to November, 1917, inclusive) of a 
new magazine, “California Forestry.” Its aim is “to unify the forest 
interests of the West.” As American war plans developed, all the mem- 


= 


Forestry Notes 377 


bers of the editorial and managerial staff joined the colors. An entirely 
new second staff was then chosen. Not only this entire second staff, but 
also, with a single exception, every other forestry student at Berkeley 
above the sophomore year joined the army. It was therefore necessary 
to suspend publication. 


Forest INDUSTRY COM MITTEE 


An encouraging sign of the increasing desire of the various Califor- 
nia forestry interests to pull together for the good of all is seen in the 
recent formation of a Forest Industry Committee. The members are: 
G. M. Homans, State Forester, chairman; Roy Headley, Acting District 
Forester, representing the United States Forest Service; R. E. Danaher, 
president of the R. E. Danaher Pine Co., representing the lumberman’s 
viewpoint; C. Stowell Smith, secretary-manager of the California White 
and Sugar Pine Manufacturers’ Association; and Woodbridge Metcalf, 
representing the Division of Forestry of the University of California. 
The committee was formed on October 13, 1917, at a forestry meeting 
at the new quarters of the Division of Forestry at Berkeley, which were 
being formally dedicated on that day. The committee holds regular 
monthly meetings. Originally planned to assist in meeting the fire situ- 
ation in the forests, the grain fields and the grazing ranges, the scope 
of the activities was at once widened as indicated in the name “Forest 
Industry Committee.” 


Forest FIRES 


A forest fire bill again failed to become law at the 1917 session of the 
California legislature. In 1915 two forest fire bills were presented to 
the legislature. At a loss to choose between them, the two committees 
of the legislature to whom the bills were referred requested Henry S. 
Graves, chief forester of the United States Forest Service, to outline a 
bill for them. Mr. Graves was in California at the time and, although 
hard pressed by other duties, he devoted a week to study of the prob- 
lem and the drafting of definite suggestions. The committees then 
drafted a bill following Mr. Graves’ suggestions. The bill passed the 
legislature, but was vetoed by the governor. In 1917 the bill which had 
passed in I915 was again introduced, with a few modifications, and 
passed the legislature with almost no discussion. It was again vetoed 
by the governor. In fire protection outside the national forests and 
national parks, California is sadly behind her sister States with equal 
interests at stake, and it is to be hoped that a fire bill fairly satisfactory 
to all parties can become law in 19109. 

The summer of 1917 was the worst fire season in California since 
1910. It is estimated that there were about 1500 fires reported on the 
California National Forests during the summer, of which about 150 were 


378 Sierra Club Bulletin 


severe. About 15,000 to 18,000 acres of timberland were burned over 
(this does not include brush land). The two largest fires were on the 
Santa Barbara National Forest in June, burning over 48,000 acres of 
brush land, and destroying human life, farm buildings, orchards and 
cattle. Lightning was responsible for about 500 of the fires. 

In the Pacific Northwest during the 1917 season, 7688 forest fires were 
reported. In that region about $1,825,000 were spent for fire prevention 
and fighting in 1917 by the lumbermen, the Government and other 
agents. 

The California Forest Protective Association conducted a publicity 
campaign in April, 1917, against forest, field and brush fires. 


TAMALPAIS FIRE ASSOCIATION 


The Tamalpais Fire Association, which controlled matters connected 
with fire prevention on and about Mt. Tamalpais from 1914 to 1917, 
turned over its work to the recently formed Marin Municipal Water 
District in March, 1917. 


ForRESTRY IN THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB 


The Commonwealth Club of California has recently organized a Com- 
mittee on Forestry and Wild Life. Everyone who would like to work 
on this committee is requested to write to the secretary, Commonwealth 
Club, 153 Kearny Street, San Francisco. 


BOOK REVIEWS 


Edited by MARION RANDALL Parsons 


» 
“THE Cruise In the summer of 1881 Mr. Muir accompanied his friend, 
OF THE Captain Calvin Hooper, on a long Arctic cruise in search 


Corwin”* of the Jeannette and Captain De Long’s exploring party. 
Captain De Long had sailed into the Arctic in the sum- 
mer of 1879, and grave fears were entertained for his safety. As a mat- 
ter of fact, at the very time that the Corwin was beginning her search 
the Jeannette sank, crushed in the ice, a thousand miles to northwest- 
ward. Her captain and twenty of her men never returned. The Corwin 
was also searching for traces of two missing whaling ships. Coasting 
along the Siberian and Alaskan shores, making enquiry at all the Chuk- 
chi and Esquimo villages, gave Mr. Muir a wonderful opportunity to 
study the glaciation and plant life of the Arctic. The young Mr. Nel- 
son, whose enthusiastic pursuit of birds and “other game”—such as the 
dead natives in the cemeteries and the “ivory spears, arrows, stone ham- 
mers . . . which formed the least ghastly of his spoils’—so amused Mr. 
Muir, is now the director of the U.S. Biological Survey. 

The book is based upon a series of letters written during the cruise 
for the San Francisco “Bulletin.” Certain passages from his journal 
containing material omitted from the letters have been included in chron- 
ological order to complete the record. Mr. Muir’s valuable and inter- 
esting report on the “Glaciation of the Arctic and Subartic regions vis- 
ited during the cruise,” and his “Botanical Notes,” published in 1883 as 
a part of Treasury Document No. 420, likewise have been included in 
an appendix. The botanical report on the flora of Herald Island and 
Wrangell Land, says the editor, “still remains, after thirty-six years, 
the only one ever made on the vegetation of these remote Arctic regions.” 
The editor’s work throughout is admirable. An interesting introduction 
completes the story of the Jeannette, and gives a brief account of sub- 
sequent exploration in that region. 

The narrative of the voyage dwells not alone on the features which 
were Mr. Muirt’s especial object of study, but on the characters and cus- 
toms of the natives as well. The voyage was not without its danger. 
More than once they risked being crushed by the ice, narrowly escaping, 
indeed, the fate of the lost Jeannette. Mr. Muir was a member of the 
first party ever to land on the ice-bound shores of Wrangell Land. He 
also made the first ascent of Herald Island. “The midnight hour,” he 
says, “I spent alone on the highest summit—one of the most impressive 

* The Cruise of the Corwin. Journal of the Arctic Expedition of 1881 in search 
of De Long and the Jeannette. By Joun Muir. Edited by Witt1amM Frepertc BADE. 


Illustrated with photographs and sketches by Mr. Muir. Houghton Mifflin Company, 
Boston and New York. 1917. Pages, 272. Price, $2.50. 


380 Sierra Club Bulletin 


hours of my life. The deepest silence seemed to press down on all the 
vast, immeasurable virgin landscape. The sun near the horizon red- 
dened the edges of belted cloud-bars near the base of the sky, and the 
jagged ice-boulders crowded together over the frozen ocean stretching 
indefinitely northward . . . it was to the far north that I ever found 
myself turning, to where the ice met the sky.” Written in the full flush 
of a new and absorbing experience, this book has a bright, spontaneous 
charm that, coupled with the almost universal appeal of Arctic explor- 
ation, is sure to make it a favorite. M.R.P. 


“Two SUMMERSIN To stand where the foot of man has never trod, 


THE IcE WILDS particularly at this period of the earth’s history, is 
OF EASTERN an inspiring and memorable experience. It does not 
KARAKORAM ’* happen as often as some writers would have us 


think. Many a lesser explorer, believing himself 
the first ever to penetrate a region, has come upon some such record of 
human occupation as the cairn of rocks found by Mrs. Workman high 
up on the Rose Glacier. But to Dr. Hunter Workman and Mrs. Bul- 
lock Workman the conquest of virgin peaks of almost incredible height 
and the exploration of great glaciers is already an old story, as readers 
of their earlier writings know. The present volume describes two ex- 
peditions during the summer of I9II and 1912, including explorations 
of the Hushe and Kondus Glacier Systems of the Eastern Karakoram in 
Kashmir. The story of the first summer, told by Dr. Workman, con- 
fines itself largely to the scientific aspects of their discoveries. Mrs. 
Workman’s narrative of the 1912 journey, on the other hand, has a more 
lively tone, richer in human incident. The story of months-long camp- 
ing above 16,000 feet in altitude; of the first ascents of peaks 21,000 feet 
high; of caravan troubles with coolies, such as the pilfering of supplies 
and wanton extravagance with precious wood; of the two lives claimed 
by the glacier—all is told with vigor and a fine sense of values. Mrs. 
Workman was the originator and leader of the second expedition. Dr. 
Workman was “photographer and glacialist”; and with them also went 
Mr. Grant Peterkin, surveyor, and Sarjan Singh, a native plane-tabler. 
Three guides, Cyprian Savoye, Quazier Simeon, and Rey Adolf, and 
two porters, Rey Julian and Chenoz Césare, who later lost his life in a 
crevasse of the Bilaphond Glacier, were also a part of the expedition. 
The third part of the book is made up of discussions of the physio- 
graphical features of the Bilaphond, Siachen (Rose) and Kaberi basins 
and glaciers by Dr. Workman. The illustrations throughout the book 
are very numerous and of exceptional beauty. The “geographical re- 


*Two Summers in the Ice Wilds of Eastern Karakoram. The Exploration of 
Nineteen Hundred Square Miles of Mountain and Glacier. By Fanny BULLOCK 
Workman and WItLiam HuNTER WorRKMAN. With three maps and one hundred 
and forty-one illustrations by the authors. E. P. Dutton & Company, New York. 
Pages,296. Price, $8.00. 


Book Reviews 381 


sults of this expedition” are partially summed up by Mrs. Workman as 
follows: “About 850 square miles of mountain territory were mapped 
with plane table. Forty or more peaks were measured in different ways, 
many by triangulation, by Mr. Grant Peterkin. The Rose Glacier was 
first explored from end to end, and surveyed to its tongue in the Nu- 
bra Valley. The north and east Siachen sources . . . were discovered 
and first visited, and the relation of the Eastern Karakoram and Indus 
watershed to that of Chinese Turkestan at these points established. .. . 
A new group of high snow peaks was discovered beyond the east Rose 
wall on the Turkestan side. The King George V group was first seen 
and identified as such, and its three highest peaks triangulated. A new 
pass, 18,700 feet, was discovered and crossed and a first descent made 
from it to the head of the twenty-mile-long Kaberi Glacier, which was 
followed down its whole length to its tongue. M.R.P. 


“VoyvaGes The “Call of the Wild” leaves an unpleasant taste. It 
ON THE raises the question: How strong a force is civilization? 
YuxKon’* Must a new country be not only a place of hardship, but 

also one of crime and lawlessness? Fortunately our “story- 
book writers” have not the last word, and I agree with Hudson Stuck 
that Jack London has not left any “literary memorial” of the greatt 
stampede to Alaska, and that but one side of that period has been pre- 
sented in his much read book. Hudson Stuck’s book, “Voyages on the 
Yukon and its Tributaries,” is more valuable to the reader who desires 
to know Alaska than a cartload of extravagant and highly-colored stor- 
ies. It is a sane, well-balanced account of travel in the interior of Alas- 
ka. Climatic, topographic and sociological conditions as well as histori- 
cal notes are covered in an interesting way. In contrast with the au- 
thor’s “Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog-sled,’ the book deals with 
summer travel, and this is synonymous with river travel. Part I is an 
account of the Yukon from the upper headwaters to St. Michael and the 
Bering Sea. Part II describes the Porcupine, the Chandalar, the Tan- 
ana, the Koyukuk, the Innoka and the Iditarod rivers and the Changeluk 
Slough. One must not expect a scientific and exhaustive treatise, for 
Stuck writes in a cursory and easy style and sees more with the eye of 
an ordinary observer than that of a scientist. For the general reader 
interested in travel, for the business man who wishes to understand the 
general conditions of life in and the future possibilities of Alaska, and 
for the sociologist who is interested in primitive conditions, I heartily 
recommend the book, Grorce J. Younc 


* Voyages on the Yukon and its Tributaries. By Hupson Stucx. Charles Scrib- 
ner’s Sons. Price, $4.50 net. 


382 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“ON THE An unusually interesting narrative of a thousand mile 
HEADWATERS canoe trip through one of the most remote and un- 
OF PEACE RIVER’* explored regions of British Columbia—“beyond the 

farthest camping ground and the last tin can.” Leav- 
ing the railroad at Prince George, on the Fraser River, Mr. Haworth, 
with Joe Lavoie, his canoeman, for his sole companion, paddled as far as 

Giscome Portage, where their outfit was carried over the low divide to 

Arctic waters. At Summit Lake the long canoe journey really began— 

down the Crooked River to McLeod Lake, and down the Pack River to 

the Porcupine, whose junction with the Finlay forms the mighty Peace. 

As far as Fort Grahame on the Finlay, and for some miles beyond, the 

voyage was along traveled ways, as travel goes through the “immensity 

of that mighty mountain mass called British Columbia”’—Indians, trap- 
pers, prospectors and Hudson’s Bay Company men, occasionally a big 
game hunter or a party of scientists. The headwaters of the Finlay, 
however, are practically unexplored, and on some of its tributaries, nota- 
bly the Quadacha, Mr. Haworth and Joe undertook long “backpack” 
trips, climbing mountains and noting great ranges and glaciers as yet 
unmapped. On the return journey they proceeded down the Peace in 
their canoe as far as Hudson’s Hope, where they took a gasoline boat to 
Peace River Landing and the railroad. The narrative is told with spirit 
and many touches of human interest. The hunting experiences are plen- 
tiful enough to add zest, but do not usurp too much space. The whole 
book has the stamp of sincerity and shows a deep love of wilderness 
life, the more so, perhaps, that Mr. Haworth does not hesitate to record 
his moments of disillusionment when he longs for “hotels and ladies and 
electric lights.” Many of us have known such moments. He leaves with 
us, however, a vivid impression of those memorable days when he 
“climbed beyond the barrier ranges and looked upon a world that was 


39 


ne M. R. P. 


“REPORT OF THE In our National Park Notes we have quoted exten- 
DIRECTOR OF sively from this admirable report, but it contains so 
THE NATIONAL much that is of interest to our members that it should 
PaRK SERVICE’{ be mentioned here also. The maps, showing railroad 

routes, automobile roads, trails, improvements and 

accommodations, make it an extremely valuable guidebook for travelers 

afoot, horseback, or motoring. A copy is on file in the Sierra Club 

rooms. We have not been informed whether the report can be obtained 
from the Superintendent of Public Documents. M Rar: 

* On the Headwaters of Peace River. A Narrative of a Thousand Mile Canoe 


Trip. By Paut Letanp HawortH. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 1917. 
Price, $4.00 net. Illustrated. 


+ Report of the Director of the National Park Service to the Secretary of the 
tae for the year ended June 30, 1917. Government Printing Office, Washington, 
I EOL. 


Book Reviews 383 


“GREEN TRAILS What a book for the shut-in, for the war-wearied or 
AND UPLAND  war-wounded mortal! Here is a real and living bit of 
PASTURES ’’* New England spread out before our western eyes; a 
country commonplace and unpretentious to us western- 
ers, used as we are to the great inland valleys, the endless expanses of 
desert and the sky-piercing mountains of our Pacific Coast. It takes a 
Walter Prichard Eaton to disclose the charm of the Berkshires, and a 
Walter King Stone to picture it for us. Ordinary hill pastures take on 
dainty beauties of form, color and vista under Eaton’s loving gaze. Pad- 
dling a canoe down a little stream is fraught with all the wonders and 
mysteries of a trip up the Amazon. Even though only a few yards from 
a well-traveled road, you are utterly alone in a beautiful world, flower- 
fringed, tree-shaded. No gardener can equal a river, Eaton tells us. It 
understands the art of border, draping its banks with “wild grape-vines, 
a little feathery clematis and great masses of wild balsam, apple. . . 
The current is the gardener who keeps the edge in line, the beautiful 
sweeping line of the bend.” 

Rivers have their fascination, but so too do the stone walls on the 
New England country. These “artless hedgerows” in Eaton’s glowing 
phrase “march in feathery beauty between a thousand fields, up hill and 
down, bright at their base with mulleins and milk-weed, with roses and 
goldenrod, harboring chipmunks within the old wall which is their spine, 
and white-throats flitting in their branches.” 

Flashes of lightsome humor liven Eaton’s simple conversational style. 
Occasionally, however, its grace and humor is marred by self-conscious- 
ness. He pleads guilty to dropping into the fallacy of personifying na- 
ture, and discourses on his lapse at such length that we feel the tire- 
someness of the discussion a greater sin than the original; for the chief 
commandment to an author is “Thou shalt not bore.” 

Only once does Eaton leave his beloved home country. Then he sud- 
denly transports us to Glacier National Park. Here, as we would ex- 
pect, his spirit expands and soars to meet the awe-inspiring beauty of 
the Rockies. Perhaps it was from this visit to the national parks of the 
West that Eaton received his inspiration as to the future for his beloved 
but neglected New England hills. Back of his love for them one feels 
all the time the question: What is to become of all this neglected coun- 
try; these outworn farms, abandoned hamlets and villages? Country 
roads and canals are too distant to help open up this country again, the 
railroads have passed so far off that they are of no use. All the ener- 
getic and younger people have gone to the cities; it is not likely they will 
return. No, we can not look for a return of the vigor of pioneer days in 
these lonely hills; but why not convert this country into a playground 
for the people teeming in the cities of the Atlantic Coast? Why not 
make a great national forest out of the Berkshires? Many, I suppose, 


* Green Trails and Upland Pastures. By Wa ter Pricuarp Eaton. Doubleday, 
Page & Co. 1917. Price, $1.60 net. 


384 Sierra Club Bulletin 


will shake their heads over the practical difficulties of such a scheme, 
but who knows? The dreams of today are often the deeds of tomorrow. 


FLORENCE E. ATKINSON 


“LIGHTS AT One evening during the outing of I912, at a Sierra Club 
Dawn’* campfire near the foot of Mount Whitney, a young Greek 
student stood up and described his experiences of the pre- 
ceding night, spent at the summit of the loftiest mountain in the coun- 
try. Those who heard Aristides Phoutrides that evening will remember 
his enthusiasm and his glowing words as he described the colors of the 
sunset. They will also recall that he told of singing ““America,” inspired 
by the grandeur of the scene before him. The experiences of that night 
on the mountain top made a deep impression on Phoutrides, for they 
stirred the two dominant emotions of his life—a passionate love of the 
harmonies of nature, and an ardent patriotism. 

Anyone knowing Phoutrides would expect poems from him. His joy 
in the splendors of natural scenery is very real, impelling him to ex- 
pression in song. His patriotism is of that fine type that looks for its 
inspiration not to any particular place or people, but to the spirit of free- 
dom and liberty. Thus it is quite natural to find in his “Lights at 
Dawn” verses reflecting now the brightness of the California Sierra, 
now the soft color of the mountains of Greece, poems inspired by the 
triumph of liberty in the new Greece and the promise of America. 

The poems cannot be rightly understood without some idea of the 
writer’s experience. It is hard to believe that they were written by one 
who came to America only ten or twelve years ago, a stranger from an 
old-world country, with but a few words of English at his command. 
Born in the island of Icaria, near Samos, in the 7gean Sea, under Turk- 
ish sovereignty, Aristides Evangelus Phoutrides was Greek by race and 
spirit. His mother and sister did much for his early education before he 
attended the gymnasium and university at Athens. Later he studied in 
Cairo, and about 1906 came to America to continue his studies. After a 
year learning the English language and American ways, he entered 
Harvard College, and in 1911 was graduated “summa cum laude.” He 
continued at the university, receiving the degree of Master of Arts 
and teaching in the department of the classics. In 1913 he was made a 
Travelling Fellow of Harvard University, going to Berlin and other 
German cities for research work and later to Italy and Greece. He re- 
turned to Cambridge after the outbreak of the European war and re- 
ceived the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1915. It was during the 
period of his graduate studies, at Harvard that he spent a summer vaca- 
tion in California and joined the Sierra Club outing in the Kern. 

Last summer Phoutrides gave up his studies and his teaching and en- 


* Lights at Dawn. Poems. By Aristipes E. Puoutripes. The Stratford Co., 
Boston, 1917. Price, $1.25. 


Book Reviews 385 


tered the officers’ training camp at Plattsburg to prepare for whatever 
service he might be able to render in the world struggle for freedom 
and democracy. F.PF 


“Your NaTionaL No such comprehensive work on national parks has 
Parxs”* yet been given to the public as this latest book by 
Mr. Mills. In it the traveler will find information 
concerning all of the national parks and monuments of the United States 
and Canada. The more important parks, such as Yellowstone and Yo- 
semite, are described in detail—their topography and geological forma- 
tion, their flowers, forests and wild animals, and interesting incidents 
in the history of their discovery and exploration as well. In addition 
the book contains valuable chapters on “Park Development and New 
Parks,” “Wild Life in National Parks” and “National Parks, the School 
of Nature.” In “The Spirit of the Forest,’ “In All Weathers,” “The 
Trail,’ and in the preface Mr. Mills gives freer rein to the more imagi- 
native style that we have come to regard as his own. An appendix by 
Laurence Schmeckebier containing definite information about routes and 
prices, and other statistical tables regarding national parks, adds greatly 
to the value of what is no doubt destined to become one of the most 
popular books on this subject. MRP. 


“THROUGH THE No more charming book has come to our attention this 
YEAR WITH season than this sympathetic study by our fellow moun- 
THOREAU’ taineer, Herbert W. Gleason. What John Muir is to a 

Californian, Henry Thoreau is to a New Englander. 
Mr. Gleason is an adopted Californian, it is true, but his deepest feeling, 
undoubtedly, is for the “architecture of the snow,” the “beauty of wild 
apples,” the “waving rye-fields” and “old, unfrequented roads” of Thor- 
eau’s country. An introduction, all too short, and interesting notes are 
contributed by Mr. Gleason, besides the very beautiful and artistic photo- 
graphs that carry us through the seasons with Thoreau. The subjects 
of the quotations and pictures range from flowers and birds to cobweb 
drapery, early morning fogs and icicle “organ pipes.” Long and patient 
study and infinite love must have gone into the making of such a book. 

Such a picture, for instance, as the “orientation of young pine shoots” 

is not easily come by. MRP. 


* Your National Parks. A Guide to the National Parks. By Enos A. Mitis. With 
detailed information for tourists by Laurence F. Schmeckebier, and with illustrations 
and maps. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1917. Pages, 532. 
Price, $2.50 net. 


+ Through the Year with Thoreau. Sketches of nature from the writings of 
Henry D. Thoreau with corresponding photographic illustrations. By Hersert W. 
GLEASON. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1917. Price, $3.00 
net. 


386 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“THE Birp Mr. Pearson has written a book of general interest. 

Stupy Boox”* He presupposes no knowledge of birds or of zoology; 

nor does he attempt to identify species. His problem is 

to treat the bird branch of our population in such a way that we shall 

become conscious of their existence, their rights, their value to their 

human neighbors, and their sufferings; and he also describes the meth- 
ods which are being employed to protect them from destruction. 

After describing the life of birds at different seasons of the year, he 
gives a resumé of the work which has been done in Economic Orni- 
thology, especially by the Biological Survey. When one realizes that 
injurious insects cause an annual loss of $60,000,000 to the cotton crop 
in the United States, of $53,000,000 to hay, $2,000,000 to cereals, and 25 
per cent to the crop of the market gardens, one understands why the 
protection of birds has become a national problem. 

The Audubon Association, of which Mr. Pearson is secretary, is the 
Bird’s Red Cross Society, working for the relief of the wild feathered 
population of our country. Largely through the efforts of the Audubon 
Society workers, all but eight of the States have adopted the Audubon 
law protecting non-game birds. The Federal Migratory Bird Law, be- 
side protecting game birds, completed this campaign of the Audubon 
Society by protecting song and insect-eating birds at all times, thus ex- 
tending the work into States which had not adopted the Audubon law. 
And in 1916, a treaty with Canada covering the provisions of the Mi- 
gratory Bird Law was ratified by Congress. In addition to this pro- 
tective legislation, the nation has set aside seventy bird reservations, and 
the Audubon Society protects about 500,000 breeding water birds and 
twenty heron colonies. 

A campaign of education is being carried on systematically through 
the medium of the schools. Junior Audubon societies now number al- 
most 600,000 members, and these members are being taught to know 


and to protect the birds. AMELIA S. ALLEN 


‘“MouNT Probably no other single mountain in the United States is 
RAINIER”’t so worthy of having a volume devoted to it as Mount Rain- 
ier. Not alone for its beauty does it stand supreme, but be- 

cause around it centers so much of the early history of the Northwest. 
In this very interesting volume it is the historical side that Professor 
Meany has made paramount. In gathering together the personal narra- 
tives of the explorers and climbers he has given the book much greater 
value than in merely chronicling their attempts. Particularly vivid is 
the story of the “First Attempted Ascent,” by Lieutenant A. V. Kautz. 
* The Bird Study Book. By T. G1iLBert PEARSON, secretary National Association 


of Audubon Societies. Illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Will Simmons, 
and sixteen photographs. Doubleday, Page & Company, 1917. Price $1.25 net. 


+ Mount Rainier. A Record of Exploration. Edited by EpMonp S. Meany. The 
Macmillan Company, New York. 1916. Pages, 325. Price, $2.50. 


Book Reviews 387 


Chapters on the glaciers, the rocks, the flora and the place names and 
elevations add to the scientific value of a book that every lover of the 
mountain should own. MRP. 


“CANADA,THE In this book Lilian Whiting, best known for her books 
SPELLBINDER’* on Italy and a certain type of religious mysticism, en- 
ters a literary field in which she is less at home. The 
title is somewhat misleading, for one would expect to find a more com- 
prehensive description of Canada’s scenic resources than is here pre- 
sented. But for the most part she writes only of the long strip of Can- 
ada which she has seen from the car windows of the Grand Trunk Rail- 
way System. “Railroad literature” is not to be condemned by its name, 
though usually it is of a somewhat hectic character. Miss Whiting has 
done her task well, and has put into the pages of her book much in- 
formation about the urban populations and industrial aspects of Canada 
not ordinarily found in books of this character. Her literary interests 
come to expression in a chapter on “Canadian Poets and Poetry.” There 
is an excellent folding map of Canada and numerous photographic illus- 
trations, especially of the Mount Robson country. One who proposes to 
cross Canada on the Grand Trunk Railroad will find this book an en- 
tertaining guide. W.FEB. 


“GLACIER ‘The publishers announce this book as the “first comprehen- 
NATIONAL sively descriptive guide to the recently opened Rocky Moun- 
Park’ t tain wonderland.” But one who intends to visit Glacier 

National Park must not let this appraisal prevent him from 
taking along also the pamphlet entitled “General Information Regarding 

Glacier National Park,” issued by the Department of the Interior in 

1914, which is a gem of condensed facts. Equally indispensable remains 

Marius R. Campbell’s “Origin of the Scenic Features of the Glacier Na- 

tional Park,” published by the same department. The book we are now 

discussing appears under the joint authorship of Mathilde Edith Holtz 
and Katharine Isabel Bemis. One could wish that the style were a bit 
less exclamatory in places, but the reader will find in it entertaining 
information about the hotels, trails, lakes, glaciers, and wild flowers of 
the park, and even something about Blackfeet Indian legends and names. 

A topographic map of the park is conveniently printed on the inside of 

the front and back covers and the fly-leaves, and there are twenty excel- 

lent photographic illustrations. The book is to be recommended to any 
* Canada, the Spellbinder. By Lit1an Wuitinc. E. P. Dutton & Company, New 
York, 1917. With many illustrations in color and monotone. Price, $2.50 net. 


+ Glacier National Park, its Trails and Treasures. By KatHarine Bemis and 
Matuitpe Hortz. George H. Doran Company, New York, 1917. 263 pages, octavo. 
Illustrated. Price, $2.00 net. 


388 Sierra Club Bulletin 


one who is planning a trip to Glacier National Park. ‘The preface 
quotes John Muir’s advice, “Give a month at least to this precious re- 
serve. The time will not be taken from your life. Instead of shorten- 
ing, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make truly immortal.” 


W. F. B. 


“CANOEING This is a book for boys written by Warren H. Miller, 
AND SaILING’* editor of Field and Stream. It contains excellent di- 
rections for the building of boats, for the sailing of the 
batteau, sail dory, duckboat and skiff, and for the handling of catboats 
and knockabouts. Part II is devoted to canoeing and cruising, with a 
full discussion of canoe fittings. Part III discusses motor boat manage- 
ment and construction in the following chapters: Choosing Your Mo- 
tor Boat, Motor Boat Fittings, Cabin and Interior Furnishings, Yacht 
Plumbing, All About Your Engine, The Galley of the Power Cruiser, 
Going Into Commission, Hauling Out for the Winter, and Building a 
Power Cruiser from Knockdown Frames. There is a long list of illus- 
trations which helps out admirably the directions contained in the text. 
It is an excellent book to place in the hands of boys with a love of the 
water and a mechanical turn of mind. The construction does not call 
for expensive materials. W.EB. 


“CAMPING AND ‘The second volume of this manual of outdoors has for 
WoopcraFr’} its aim instruction in the craft that enables one to be 

independent of equipment and to gain self reliance. 
We quote a few of the chapter headings to give some idea of the scope 
and usefulness of the book. “Getting Lost,” “Pathfinding,” “Nature’s 
Guide Posts,” “Trips Afoot,”’ “Packs for Pedestrians,” “Concentrated 
Foods,” “Living Off the Country,” “Accidents and Emergencies.” 

M. R. P. 


“In Canapa’s In Canada’s Wonderful Northland, by W. Tees Curran 
WonpberRFUL and H. A. Calkins, is a book with a purpose which is 
NorTHLAND’ = best expressed in the last paragraph of the introduction 

by Mr. Curran himself, “It is hoped that some of the 
readers of the following chapters may catch the spirit of conquest that 
actuated their ancestors in raising the American continent to its position 
in the world today, and assist in opening up this great treasure house, 


*The Boys’ Book of Canoeing and Sailing. By WarREN H. MILLER. George H. 
Doran Company, New York, 1917. Illustrated. Price, $1.25 net. 


+ Camping and Woodcraft. A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travel- 
ers in the Wilderness. By Horace Keruart. Vol. II, Woodcraft. Outing Publish- 
ing Company, New York. 1917. Price, $1.50 net. 


i In Canada’s Wonderful Northland. By W. Tres Curran and H. A. CALKINS. 
Price, $2.50. 


Book Reviews 389 


the heritage of the Canadian people.” The book is a narrative of an ex- 
pedition made in the summer and autumn of I912, under the supervision 
of the authors, for the purpose of continuing investigations begun in 
1907 of the natural resources of the territory of New Quebec. The par- 
ty, consisting of twenty-one people, traveled by canoe and motorboat 
from Missinaibi by river and then along the coast of Hudson Bay to 
Clarke Island and return. “The season of 1912,’ as Mr. Curran says, 
“was conceded to be the worst in fifty years,” hence much of the book 
is a description of difficulties thus occasioned. 

The book is clearly written and gives a detailed description of the 
country and especially of the accommodations afforded to travelers. It 
would be valuable to anyone planning a similar expedition of explor- 


ation. DAISYMAY HUBER 


“THE AVIATOR This little book by our esteemed fellow member, 
AND THE Dr. Ford Ashman Carpenter, is a timely contribu- 
WEATHER BuREAU’’* tion to a very timely subject. There are four 

chapters under the following headings: The Sig- 
nal Corps Aviation School at San Diego, Applied Meteorology for the 
Aviator, Weather Observations from an Airplane, Investigating the Up- 
per Air. Dr. Carpenter went aloft himself in an airplane to become 
“personally acquainted with some of the conditions that confront avia- 
tors,’ and he tells his experiences and observations in an interesting 
manner. The account of the sounding balloons liberated at Avalon, 
California, for the investigation of the upper air is particularly interest- 
ing, One of them, carrying a meteorograph, went up 32,643 meters or 
twenty miles and a half. We commend this little book to all who are 
interested in the wonders of the air and the art of aviation. 


W. F. B. 


C) 


“THE Boys’ Book This is a practical book on out-of-door sports in- 
oF HUNTING tended primarily for boys, but useful as well to any 
AND FisHING’} beginner. The author describes in detail the equip- 
ment necessary for, and the methods of handling the 
principal game fish of the Eastern streams. There follows the section 
on shooting, both with shotgun and rifle. A considerable portion of the 
book is devoted to camping methods, such as the selection of a camping 
place, erection of tents or shelters, camp cooking and travel. The book 
is principally adapted to camping in the eastern or northeastern woods, 
and not to the high mountain wilderness of the West. J.N.LeC. 


* The Aviator and the Weather Bureau. By Forp A. CARPENTER, LL.D., Mete- 
orologist. Published by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, 1917. Illustrated 
with photographs and charts by the author and others. 


+ The Boys’ Book of Hunting and Fishing. Practical camping-out, game-fishing 
and wing-shooting. By Warren H. Mitter, editor of ‘“‘Field and Stream.”’ Geo. 
H. Doran Co., New York. 290 pages. Price, $1.25. 


390 Sierra Club Bulletin 


““W OODCRAFT A very compiete description of the outfit and methods 
FOR WoOMEN”* of camping useful to women. Two chapters are de- 
voted to clothing and accessories; the remainder to 
packing, camp making and cooking. The book deals entirely with con- 
ditions present in the Eastern forest region. TN. baw 


“Tourtinc An excellent treatise of the methods of traveling through 
ArooT’t the wilderness where reliance must be placed entirely on 

what the traveler can carry on his back. The author first 
describes the general precautions to be taken in starting on such an ex- 
pedition, and then takes up in order the important items, such as packs 
and packing, footwear, cruising, shelters, bedding, cooking outfit, and 
rations. The information is adaptable to all kinds of forest as well as 
mountain work. Those of the Sierra Club who anticipate packing, or 
as we call them “knapsack” trips, will do well to consult this book. 


JNU EES 


“Trout A very technical account of the methods used to lure the wiley 
Lore’ trout from the stream to the frying-pan. The author speaks 
first of the different species and varieties of trout, in fact de- 
votes a chapter to its natural history. He then takes up in detail the 
different methods of trout fishing and the different types of tackle to be 
used. The book is intended for those with some experience in trout 
fishing, not for the beginner. J.N.LEC. 


“THE BookoFr The contents of this handy little book are: “Preparing to 


Campinc”|| Go Camping,” “How and Where to Camp,” “Camp House- 
keeping,” “How to Trap and Why,” “Emergency Hints.” 
M.R. P. 


*Woodcraft for Women. By KatTHRENE G. PINKERTON. Outing Handbook No. 
41. The Outing Publishing Co., New York. 174 pages. Price, 80 cents. 


+ Touring Afoot. By Dr. C. P. Forpycre. Outing Handbook No. 52. The Out- 
ing Publishing Co., New York. 166 pages. Price, 80 cents. 


& Trout Lore. By O. W. SmiTH, angling editor of “Outdoor Life.”” With twenty- 
four illustrations from photographs by the author. Frederick A. Stokes Co. New 
York. 200 pages. Price, $2.00. 


|| The Book of Camping. By A. Hyatt VeErRRILL. Illustrated. Alfred A. Knoff, 
New York. 1917. Price, $1.00 net. 


The books above reviewed were furnished by the Bureau of the Associated Moun- 
taineering Clubs of America. 


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JANUARY | 


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CATIONS OF THE SIERRA CLUB 
NUMBER FIFTY-FOUR | 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


FOUNDED 1892 iY he a 


Edited for the Club by . i i 
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE Yi : 


January, 1919 


VoL. X CONTENTS 
Plate CCX X. Grove Karl Gilbert , Promtspece. pe 
Grove Kary GILBERT, THE MAN C. ‘Hart Merriam 301 ‘ 


Plates CCX XI, CCX XII 


Grove Kart GILBERT; AN APPRECIATION Joseph Be vn ) 
PROFESSOR JOE : _-D.S. Richardson 400 
Some SIERRAN CuipMuNKs Harry S. Swarth 4 : 


With notes on Photography of Small Mammals by Joseph Dixon 
Plates CCX XIII, CCXXIV, CCXXV, CCXXVI } i x 3 wes 


STUDIES IN THE SIERRA | | : John Muir arg ee | 
V. Post-GLactaAL DENUDATION 
Plates CCKXVII, CCXXVIII, CCXXIX, CCXXX Prunes h Gc 
ORGANIZATION OF THE SIERRA CLUB : 
EDITORIALS 
Plates CCX XXI, CCX XXII, CCX XXIII, CCXXXIV 
REPORTS OF COMMITTEES | Peary Kh at 
Notes AND CORRESPONDENCE | ; i 438 at 
Plates CCXX XV, -CCXXXVI, CCX XXVII, CCXXXVIII eee 
Srerra CLus Honor Rott ~ yeni 
War SERVICE LETTERS 
Plates CCXXXIX, CCXL 


NATIONAL Park Notes 


Forestry NOTES 
Plates CCX LI, CCXLII 


Book REVIEWS 


Correspondence concerning the distribution and sale of the bublicaisore, 
with reference to advertising rates and space location, and concerning its b 
erally, should be addressed to the Secretary of the Sierra Club, Room 42H 
ing, San Francisco, California. 


PrIcE, 50 CENTS Per Copy | wilh ae fas io 


) 


PLATE CCXX. 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. 


GROVE KARL GILBERT 


1843-1918 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 


VOLUME NUMBER 
TEN FOUR 
fx Onley h 
ow 
SAN FRANCISCO (x NG 
JANUARY \ MATL 2 
19l XY 4 
A et; 
Omal Mus 


C%, 
. "Ons Fi aN 
Rs, a 4 pe) 
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Rte 
 REepecmg mente 


GROVE KARE GILBERT, THE MAN* 


By C. Hart MERRIAM 
> 


E are gathered here this evening to pay tribute to the 

memory of a colleague and friend—a man whose studies 
were models of thoroughness, whose presentation of results in 
the diverse fields of geology, geography, physiography, biology, 
ethnology, astronomy, physics, and mathematics, models of 
clearness and accuracy of expression. 

Gilbert’s college course was only the beginning of his educa- 
tion, for throughout his lifetime he was continually referring 
to dictionaries, encyclopedias and other books of reference—his 
habit of mind demanding precise knowledge on an incredible 
number and diversity of subjects. 

In the discussion of problems it was his habit to recite the 
facts, sometimes adding what seemed to his analytical mind 
the natural inference and conclusion, sometimes suggesting 
more than one explanation, but without reiteration or argu- 


*Read at Memorial meeting of Geological Society of Washington, January 22, 
1919. 

Dr. Gilbert was for many years a member of the Sierra Club and contributed 
articles on geological features of the Sierra to the Club Butietin. (Vol. V, pp. 
20, 211 and 279; Vol. VI, p. 225.) We first knew him intimately on the 1903 outing 
of the Club to Kern River Cafion and Mt. Whitney. There he gave evidence of his 
big-hearted, genial qualities and introduced the younger members of the party to 
new games and stories about the campfire. His youthful spirit at once endeared 
himself in the hearts of all.—The Editors. 


7 In this connection it may not be amiss to record the fact that the few books he 
kept close at hand were mainly Greek, Latin, French, German, and English diction- 
aries; British and American enclyclopedias, and technical works on geology, astron- 
omy, ’and mathematics. 


sere 


392 Sierra Club Bulletin 


ment; for having once made his statement, he regarded repe- 
tition unnecessary and he was strongly disinclined to engage in 
controversy. 

He was unconventional, impartial, industrious, averse to ex- 
aggeration, and possessed of exceptional evenness and serenity 
of temper. He was a man of few words, just and kindly in 
criticism, avoiding provocation both in the giving and in the 
taking, in all things calm and imperturbable. 

As a lecturer he was clear, precise, and naturally inclined 
toward the technical. This he himself realized, and he used to 
enjoy telling about his first public talk, which was on the geo- 
logical subject “Erosion.” He thought he had adapted it to 
the needs of a non-technical audience, and was chagrined to 
find that it went entirely over their heads. So on the first op- 
portunity he repeated it, under the title “Mud,” and this time 
succeeded in awakening enthusiastic interest. 

While able to devote the greater part of the most active pe- 
riod of his life to field-work and the study of problems arising 
therefrom, his work nevertheless suffered a serious interrup- 
tion due to the assumption of administrative labors, to which, 
from a sense of duty and much against his inclination, he gave 


| “his principal energies for eight long years (1884-1892).* Re- 


ferring to one of his unfinished investigations, he said: “It is 
hardly necessary for me to assure you that my personal regret 
in abandoning this research at its present stage is very great.” + 
But the depth of the sacrifice necessary in giving up research 
work, to a man of his keenness of intellect, clearness of vision, 
and logic of deduction, equipped by nature, inclination, and 
training for the solution of difficult problems, may be more 
easily imagined than expressed. The extent of the resulting 
loss to science can only be conjectured. 

It is not for me to speak of his resourcefulness, versatility, 
and diverse accomplishments, of his skill in making sketches, 
photographs, and diagrams for the better illustration of the 
subject in hand, of his quick grasp of the meaning of natural 
phenomena, of his vigor and enthusiasm in the field, or of his 


*Tt was the distaste for office-work and dread of abandoning research work that 
later led him to decline the offer of the high position of Director of the Survey. 


t+Inculcation of Scientific Method by Example. Am. Journ. Sci., 3d Ser., Vol. 
XXXI, pp. 284-299, 1886. 


Grove Karl Gilbert, the Man 393 


humor and good fellowship at the campfire. But if a personal 
digression may be permitted, I would like to refer briefly to a 
trip we enjoyed together in the High Sierra in the summer of 
1903, in the course of which he pointed out a multitude of fea- 
tures of geological significance and glacial sculpture that had 
escaped my observation during previous field-work in the re- 
gion; while reciprocally I was able to bring to his attention 
certain habits of the rock coney and of a rare animal of the 
genus A plodontia, that greatly excited his interest. 

From the towering summit of Mt. Conness, reached at 8:30 
in the morning after a cold night in our sleeping-bags among 
the timber-line mats of dwarf white-bark pine high up on the 
mountain side, we enjoyed a prospect of singular glory. The 
atmosphere was unusually clear, the smoke-haze of the lower 
country having not yet arisen. We looked out upon a broken 
sea of cold gray granite whose peaks, domes, and ridges 
stretched from the Matterhorn to Mt. Galen Clark, and from 
the splendid ramparts of Tenaya and Yosemite to the lofty 
crowns of Lyell and Ritter; while to the east, though the wa- 
ters of Mono Lake were hidden by the crest of the Sierra, the 
magnificent chain of volcanic cones known as Mono Craters 
was in full view, and beyond, in the far distance, arose the 
lofty Desert Ranges of Nevada. It was an inspiring picture— 
one that rekindled Gilbert’s youthful enthusiasm and tempted 
him to remain; but the rising wind, making the descent dan- 
gerous, forced a retreat before the morning was half spent. 

Gilbert’s description of another scene, though in a remote 
part of the west, is so to the point—so appreciative, so full of 
feeling, so suggestive of the man and of the emotions he must 
have had when standing on the summit of Conness—that its 
introduction here seems most fitting, It runs thus: 

“One summer afternoon, 35 years ago, I rode along a high 
plateau in southern Utah. My companions were Hoxie, a 
young army officer ; Weiss,a veteran topographer, who mapped 
our route as we went; and Kipp, an assistant whose primary 
duty was to carry a barometer. Not far behind us was a pack- 
train. We were explorers, studying the geography and geolo- 
gy of a strange land. About us was a forest of pine and fir, 
but we rode through a lane of sunlit prairie cradled in a shal- 


394 Sierra Club Bulletin 


low valley. Suddenly the floor of the prairie came to an end, 
and we halted on the crest of a cliff overlooking a vast ex- 
panse of desert lowland. The desert was not a monotonous 
plain, like that of northwestern Utah, but a land of mesas, 
cafions, buttes, and cliffs, all so bare that the brilliant colors of 
their rocks shone forth—orange, red, chocolate, blue, and 
white—fading slowly into the gray of the remote distance. We 
were looking across the broad barren tract through which the 
Colorado winds in Glen and Marble cafions, and of which the 
Painted Desert of Arizona is a minor division. To most of us 
it was a supreme vision of beauty and grandeur as well as des- 
olation, a scene for which words were inadequate; and we 
stood spellbound. The silence was at last broken by Kipp, 
who exclaimed, ‘Well, we’re nicely caught!’ and his discordant 
note so carried us from the sublime to the ridiculous that our 
tense emotion found first expression in a laugh. 

“The reminiscent story has been told to illustrate the rela- 
tion of the traveler’s appreciation to his point of view. Kipp 
saw only that the cliff at our feet barred further progress in 
that direction, and all that had appealed to the others most 
strongly was lost on him. Hoxie, Weiss, and I doubtless saw 
different things in the landscape, for we were trained in di- 
verse schools, but our personal points of view all included the 
esthetic factor, and that factor lifted us above the plane of 
petty annoyance into a realm of exalted emotion. We saw 
what we had eyes to see. Our point of view was the measure 
of our perception and appreciation.”* 

When a member of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, in 
1899, Gilbert seemed still in the prime of physical vigor, never 
hesitating to undertake active and difficult work among moun- 
tains and glaciers, undeterred by hardship or danger. His 
most noteworthy side trips perhaps were one to the glaciers of 
Geike and Reid inlets, traversing in a small boat, accompanied 


f “,\ by Muir and Palache, the ice-choked channel of the northwest 


arm of Glacier Bay, and camping on the bare rock close to the 
ice; and one in Prince William Sound, where, with Coville and 
Palache, he explored and mapped the most stupendous glacier 
visited by the expedition, a glacier having a sea-wall frontage 


* SIERRA CLuB BULLETIN, p. 225, Jan., 1908. 


x 


BYSELY ‘Plolg a8aq[og ojut SurdAqdua ‘raroeyyH autjuedisg puryaq yeadq 
Ladd TIO INNOW 


“IXXO9 ALVId *X “IOA ‘NILATING ANTS VUUTIS 


OU.) WE CN “ff AY OO 


“IIXX)DO ALVId 


[9}JOT]T JOULJUDG pur 9}1S plo oY} UsIMJoq AVM[LY 
‘Auvdwoy Atindy due y ay quyy visors oy} 10F Ao[[LA d}Woso XR UL poJoNajsuoso. SUL 


QIOL ‘Aad WHOA ‘ADAOT IVINOWAW ALNOOD WT 


“IOA 'NILATING ANTO 


Vadats 


Grave Karl Gilbert, the Man 395 


of four miles. This he named after the geologist and explorer 
I. C. Russell, but later, finding Russell’s name preoccupied by 
a glacier in the Copper River region, this one was rechristened 
the Columbia. 

When steaming northward along the lofty ice-wall of La 
Perouse Glacier, he noticed a number of tilted trees near the 
north edge of the ice, and induced Mr. Harriman and one or 
two others to accompany him ashore in a whale-boat, landing in 
a stiff surf, by which they were properly soaked. Climbing the 
lateral moraine to the edge of the forest, he was much interest- 
ed in finding the foremost trees ground into pulp and splinters, 
intermixed with the material of the moraine—the result of a 
recent northward advance of this corner of the glacier. 

During a brief landing at St. Matthews Island in Bering 
Sea, Gilbert made an ornithological discovery of considerable 
interest, finding two nests of the white Hyperborean Snowflake 
—one of the rarest and most beautiful of American birds and 
one not known to breed anywhere in the world except on this 
island and its close neighbor, Hall Island. The bird belongs 
to a group whose members usually place their nests on the 
ground among grass or other plants; but those discovered by 
Gilbert were in holes a foot or two deep on the sea-face of 
cliffs—an extraordinary location, due without doubt to the 
abundance of the bird’s arch enemy, the arctic fox. 

In later years, when the strain of continued mental effort 
brought on distress of the head, he was forced to shorten the 
hours of work with resulting increase in the time available for 
other occupations. He had been a famous walker, but at this 
period was no longer able to do much tramping and had to seek 
exercise and amusement in other ways. Fortunately, he was 
fond of canoeing, and in favorable weather, when in Washing- 
ton, might be seen paddling on the Potomac River nearly every 
afternoon. At other times, if like-minded companions were 
available, he played billiards, dominoes, or cards, or read 
aloud ; and when alone, alternated reading and solitaire. Once 
or twice a year he went to see a game of ball, or took the chil- 
dren of some friend to the circus; but he did not care much 
for the theater or for music, and needed the stimulus of com- 
panionship to indulge in either. He disliked public meetings 


306 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and dinners—even those of scientific societies —and finally 
gave them up altogether. When urged to go, his usual reply 
was that for half a century he had done his full duty in this 
line, having served in various offices and committees, and felt 
that for the rest of his life he was entitled to freedom from the 
fatigue and mental strain incident to such gatherings. 

My acquaintance with Gilbert dates from the winter of 
1871, after his return from his first season’s field-work in the 
far West. He was then only twenty-eight years of age and in 
the vigor of young manhood. I was impressed by his splendid 
physical appearance, by the dignity of his presence, and the 
maturity of his judgment. As he grew in years and knowledge, 
there came to him a certain nobility of purpose and bearing 
that was felt by all who knew him. Association with a man of 
such scope of intellectual activity, such rare scientific training, 
such high ideals, and such winning personal qualities could but 
exert, albeit unconsciously, a happy influence on one’s life and 
work. The memory of our friendship, extending over a period 
of forty-six years—during nineteen of which he was an in- 
timate member of my household—will always be cherished as 
one of the privileges of my life. 

To those who knew him, the memory of Grove Karl Gilbert 
will always stand out in bold relief. In our minds he will live 
as a type of the exceptional man: Tall and of fine presence, 
frank, informal, yet dignified and courteous, unobtrusive, pa- 
tient, sympathetic, considerate of others. Whether measured 
by mental alertness, breadth of view, or scholarly attainment ; 
by the scope and value of his contributions to science; by the 
logic and clearness of his presentation of scientific problems ; 
by the sincerity, fairness, and painstaking thoroughness of his 
work, or by the charm and inspiring influence of his unassum- 
ing personality, he loomed above most of his fellows and was 
looked up to and admired—for his qualities were those that ap- 
peal to the heart as well as to the mind. 

An authority in many fields, and yet one who never assumed 
authority ; a leader in science, and yet one who never assumed 
leadership; neither power nor glory did he seek, but the satis- 
faction of contributing his share to the sum of human knowl- 
edge. 


ee 


GROVE KARL. GILBERT 
AN APPRECIATION 


By JosEPH BARRELL 
> 


LEADER in thought is known personally to relatively 

few, a few hundreds perhaps, or a few thousands. He be- 
comes known impersonally to a vastly greater number, living 
in distant lands or in later generations. From each point to 
which his influence reaches a somewhat different view of his 
personality is obtained. In this series of appreciations of the 
life and work of Grove Karl Gilbert the present contribution is 
from a geologist of a younger generation who met him per- 
sonally and in conversation but once, in 1908, who has corre- 
sponded with him perhaps ten or a dozen times, but who has 
found in his scientific methods and publications a constant 
source of knowledge and inspiration. 

What are the features of Gilbert’s personality and scientific 
achievements as they stand out to one who thus is situated in- 
termediate in distance between his limited circle of intimates 
and contemporaries, on the one hand, and that indefinitely 
larger circle, on the other hand, who have known and will 
know him only through his works? 

Gilbert’s personality was one which could not fail to impress 
itself, even at a first meeting; tall, blue-eyed, reddish-brown 
hair, and of great bodily vigor while still in his prime, his phys- 
ical impressiveness matched his mental qualities. There were 
many notable features in his character: his kindliness and in- 
terest in the work of younger men, his judicial quality and 
clarity of thought, his transparent honesty, his lack of dogma- 
tism, his readiness to review and revise if need be his own 
conclusions ; these were outstanding characteristics, yet, as his 
contemporary, Professor Chamberlin, has written of him, “It 
is doubtful whether the products of any other geologist of our 
day will escape revision at the hands of future research to a 
degree equal to the writings of Grove Karl Gilbert.” 

Gilbert was by nature predestined to be a geologist. He 


398 Sierra Club Bulletin 


possessed a keen, exact, and philosophical mind, which showed 
through his speech and writings. He delighted to extract new 
principles from masses of observed facts, and these mental 
qualities, combined with a love of nature, determined the lines 
of his life-work. Into this he grew as opportunity offered 
through the Ward Natural Science Establishment, the Ohio 
Geological Survey, the Wheeler and Powell explorations of 
the west, and finally the United States Geological Survey. He 
was the only man who, during the existence, through the past 
thirty years, of the Geological Society of America, has been 
elected a second time its president, a recognition of his char- 
acter as much as of his ability. Speaking in acknowledgment 
of this unusual honor, he said that he was fortunate in being 
able to pursue a life-work which had always been to him a 
source of delight. 

Gilbert entered geology at a time when it was mostly a de- 
scriptive and qualitative science. The habit of his mind was 
logical and mathematical. These were the qualities of which 
geology at that time stood in need, and his ability in these di- 
rections, even to the close of his life, is shown in his mono- 
graphic studies on the “Transportation of Debris by Running 
Water,” prosecuted during years of ill-health, and published 
when he was seventy-one years old. That the same qualities 
were present even in his boyhood may be gathered from the 
following extract from one of his letters to the writer, in which 
he was discussing the possibility of the rhythmic action of the 
tides producing a progressive motion: 

When I was a boy I noticed that by rocking a skiff I gave it a for- 
ward motion. That led to the trial of other impulses, and I found that 
by standing near the stern and alternately bending and straightening my 
legs, so as to make the skiff rock endwise, I could produce a forward 
velocity of several yards a minute. If I stood one side of the medial 
line, the skiff moved in a curve. The motions I caused directly were 
strictly reciprocal, the departures from initial position being equaled by the 
returns. The indirect result of translation was connected with reactions 
between the water and the oblique surfaces of the boat. There seems to 


me a close analogy between these reactions and theoretic reactions of an 
ocean swayed by tidal forces upon oblique surfaces of its basin, 


He will be longest remembered for his classic papers on the 
Henry Mountains and on Lake Bonneville, but his deep-seated 


Grove Karl Gilbert: An Appreciation 399 


analytical instincts and the far-sighted nature of his conclusions 
are perhaps even better manifested in a number of his short- 
er papers. In his contributions on isostasy, geologic time, 
joints, fault-block mountains, and on the methods of scientific 
investigation, he was clear, original, and convincing. His 
presidential address before the Geological Society of America 
in 1892, on “Continental Problems,’ was a paper remarkable 
in comprehensiveness of view. In it he raised a number of 
questions on important topics which geologists disregarded, 
and showed himself twenty years in advance of his time in the 
appreciation of the large significance of unconformities. 


PROFESSOR JOE 
By D. S. RicHARDSON 
e 


UR ranks are few, Professor Joe, 
Who loved thee in that long ago 
Of smiles and tears. 

But still the perfume of thy days 

Floats downward to us through the maze 
Of vanished years. 


Thrice blessed is he whose memory 
Comes back in music from the sea 
Of other days; 
Nor builds he surer monument 
Than that which speaks the heart’s content 
In words of praise. 


We see him still amid the throng— 

So grave and sweet, so wise and strong— 
So shaped in gentleness ; 

The lover of all things that be, 

The fount of truth and chivalry— 
The refuge of distress. 


Thou art not dead. The simple stone 
Beneath the oaks which thou hast known 
Records thy name; 
But, graven on the hearts of men, 
Tis writ in light and lives again 
In deathless flame. 
February, 1919 


*Professor Joseph Le Conte was always affectionately known as ‘Professor Joe” 
ae his students. He was a charter member of the Sierra Club and one of its first 
irectors. 


SOME SIERRAN CHIPMUNKS 


By Harry S. SwartH 


WitTH NoTES ON PHOTOGRAPHY OF SMALL MAMMALS BY JOSEPH Dixon 


(Contribution from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the 
University of California) 


> 


HE timbered portions of California, which means the 

mountains for the most part, do not support as large a 
squirrel population as conditions apparently warrant — not 
nearly equal to that found in the hardwood forests of eastern 
North America, for example—but to make up for this de- 
ficiency there is certainly an abundance of chipmunks, both of 
species and individuals. 

The traveler through the mountains finds them almost con- 
stantly in view, scampering over rocks and logs or diving 
through tangles of underbrush at his approach, chipping de- 
fiantly from a securely distant perch, or, as often as not, in- 
vading his camp and examining his belongings. 

The chipmunks’ large relative, the Douglas Squirrel, has been 
immortalized by John Muir, and a reading of that gifted writ- 
er’s sympathetic portrayal of the squirrel and its surroundings 
has doubtless familiarized the animal to many visitors to the 
Sierras, indeed has probably caused many to make special 
search for it when passing through its haunts. Also the Doug- 
las squirrel is big enough and conspicuous enough, both vocal- 
ly and otherwise, to fairly force itself upon the notice. With 
the tiny chipmunks, however, it is different. 

California contains a host of these little animals, at least 
eighteen species and subspecies of the tree chipmunks alone 
(the genus Eutamias), all very much alike to the casual view 
—small, brownish-colored, and striped in the same general 
pattern—so that the average mountain visitor desiring to know 
more about them is apt to throw up his hands in despair at the 
hopelessness of the attempt to distinguish one from the other. 

Without, however, making any attempt at the careful study 
necessary to distinguish certain of the closely similar varieties, 


402 Sierra Club Bulletin 


it is quite possible for anyone to learn to recognize some of the 
more outstanding species, especially so as it is seldom the case 
that the closely related ones occur together at the same place. 
The chipmunks of the Kings River section of the Sierra Ne- 
vada may be taken as fair examples of the manner in which 
several species occur in the same general region, all to be seen, 
perhaps, in the course of a day, but each one, by choice of im- 
mediate surroundings or mode of life, sufficiently isolated to 
avoid too close competition with his relatives. In the follow- 
ing account the specific peculiarities of the chipmunks noted 
by the authors of this paper on a trip through this part of the 
Sierra are briefly outlined, affording the interested visitor to 
the mountains a means of distinguishing the species one from 
the other. 

In entering the mountains from the west the first of this 
group of mammals to be encountered is the Mariposa Chip- 
munk (Eutamias merriami mariposae). This is a local Sierran 
race of the wide-spread Merriam Chipmunk (Eutamias merri- 
ami), which, in its several varieties, occurs throughout the 
lower timbered portions of California, southward from Yo- 
semite in the Sierras, from San Francisco Bay along the coast. 
Going into the mountains from the vicinity of Fresno or 
Sanger, live-oak timber and brush is first encountered at about 
1500 feet elevation. In all probability the Mariposa Chip- 
munk extends down as far as this brush is found. It is an 
animal of the underbrush primarily, scurrying into thickets 
when alarmed, and taking the utmost advantage of such cover 
in keeping out of view. This is the most shy and wary of any 
of the chipmunks found in this part of the mountains, and it 
may successfully elude observation for days, the only intimation 
of its near presence being the hollow barking note heard issuing 
from the thickets. At Dunlap (2000 feet elevation), in the 
heart of the live-oak belt, about half-way from the foothills to 
General Grant National Park, we were well within the home of 
the Mariposa Chipmunk, but it took most assiduous search to 
catch even an occasional glimpse of one. 

In Kings River Cafion we were more fortunate. The species 
probably does not occur at all on the higher ridges traversed 
in reaching the cafion, as in General Grant National Park, at 


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Some Sierran Chipmunks 403 


Hume, and at Horse Corral Meadow, but it does ascend along 
the floor of the cafion as far as the mouth of Bubb’s Creek. In 
the upper reaches of the cafion, above Kanawyer’s Camp, and 
on the north side especially, there are broad gravelly stretches 
interspersed with numerous clumps of manzanita brush, and 
these are the preferred haunts of the Mariposa Chipmunk. 
They were difficult to observe here, however, fleeing to cover 
at the first hint of danger, and usually remaining hidden until 
the observer’s patience was exhausted. About camp more 
favorable opportunities occasionally presented themselves, for 
when all was still, with but a single occupant in the tent, and 
he unobtrusively writing or otherwise quietly engaged, a chip- 
munk would sometimes carry on exceedingly cautious investi- 
gations of the neighborhood. There was one big yellow pine 
near by that seemed an especial attraction, and, contrary to the 
usual habit of the species, Mariposa Chipmunks were several 
times seen here exploring bunches of pine needles at the ends 
of limbs fifty or sixty feet from the ground. If the tree were 
approached, the chipmunk usually vanished, apparently at once 
disappearing into thin air in a fashion that was most exasper- 
ating. The explanation of these disappearances was finally 
supplied by one unfortunate individual caught in the topys a 
little oak tree before he had time to scamper to the gro‘ au? 
This chipmunk was seen to disappear in the upper branches, 
and the tree was so small and so near by that it seemed im, os- 
sible for him to have descended unseen. A careful scrutiny of 
each branch and twig brought no results until the eye was 
caught by a slight movement. Then the chipmunk was seei..) 
in plain sight, stretched out along a small branch, perfectly 
motionless, but—an unfortunate oversight—with his long tail 
hanging limply down, to be caught by the faint breeze that 
was now waving it to and fro. 

Characteristics of the Mariposa Chipmunk that may be used 
in distinguishing it from the other species of this region are as 
follows: The choice of habitat, usually underbrush rather than 
trees, and its habit of generally (though not invariably) de- 
scending to the ground when surprised in the tree-tops; the 
rather dark coloration, the characteristic chipmunk stripes on 
the sides not being so sharply defined as to be readily seen at a 


404 Sierra Club Bulletin 


little distance; the long tail, which is not usually jerked ner- 
vously about, as in so many species, but is waved sideways, 
sinuously, in rather catlike fashion. The last mentioned is an 
especially good recognition mark, even at some little distance. 
Total length is from ten to twelve inches. The tail, to end of 
hairs, is from five to six inches, longer in proportion to total 
length than in the other species of the region. 

Probably the most abundant species of chipmunk in the 
Kings River section of the Sierra Nevada is the Tahoe Chip- 
munk (Eutamias speciosus frater),again a local race of a wide- 
spread species (Eutamias speciosus) occurring in the higher 
mountains from southern California to Lake Tahoe. This is 
an animal of the middle altitudes, not seen until the brushy 
home of the Mariposa Chipmunk is left behind, and seldom 
venturing up into the rocky habitat of the Alpine Chipmunk of 
the extreme heights. 

At Hume, near General Grant National Park, the species 
was extremely abundant, fairly swarming about the corrals 
and barns of the settlement, while out in the woods innumer- 
able havens of refuge were afforded the chipmunks by the 
piles of brush the lumbermen left behind them. Hume and 
Horse Corral Meadow seemed about the proper altitude and 
the types of country that suited them best. On another visit to 
the mountains the species was found in great numbers in the 
higher parts of Sequoia National Park, a few miles to the 
southward. A few were seen in Kings River Cafion, together 
with the Mariposa Chipmunks, and some ventured up into the 
lower part of the Alpine Chipmunk’s domain, but they were 
but stragglers, the metropolis of the Tahoe Chipmunk lying be- 
tween these extremes. 

This species lacks the suspicious nature of the Mariposa 
Chipmunk. He is alert enough, and wary in reason, but gives 
his confidence judiciously and soon responds to friendly ad- 
vances. When danger really threatens, however, he is off like 
a flash, taking refuge, preferably, in the trees, and usually mak- 
ing for some friendly hollow. The chipmunk has real need of 
all his speed and all his acuteness, for there are enemies at 
every hand who are quite his equal in these respects, who, in- 
deed, must necessarily overreach him occasionally to insure 


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Some Sierran Chipmunks 405 


their own existence. A Cooper Hawk gliding through the 
trees along Bubbs Creek with a long tail dangling from his 
claws, and a Western Red-tail Hawk, seen at Horse Corral 
Meadow, making off with a satisfied air, a similar token of 
success streaming below, bore convincing evidence of what 
happens to the luckless chipmunk who relaxes his vigilance at 
the wrong moment. 

At the time of our visit to Horse Corral Meadow, in late 
September, the Douglas Squirrels were hard at work harvest- 
ing nuts from the pine cones, being especially busy in the tam- 
arack groves. Climbing to the upper branches, where the green 
cones were numerous, the squirrel would cut them off as rap- 
idly as possible, letting the cones drop to the ground. Twenty or 
more might be severed in rapid succession (and far more quick- 
ly than one would imagine possible) before the worker would 
descend to carry them away, apparently to some secret cache. 
On several such occasions an astute chipmunk was seen waiting 
below the tree to reap a share of the harvest with the minimum 
of effort. And the squirrel was never seen to take offense. 

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to point out features 
whereby the Tahoe Chipmunk may be unfailingly recognized, 
and this, too, despite the fact that one familiar with the animal 
can usually distinguish it at sight. In this, as with many other 
species, it is probably a matter of learning to know them as one 
knows one’s friends. We may classify one species as having 
a longer tail than another, but when we see one of the animals 
at large we no more recognize it by its longer tail than we 
recognize our friend on the street by his long nose! Who can 
say what it is about an intimate associate that causes recogni- 
tion nearly as far as he can be seen? Surely no distinctive 
“recognition marks.” Similarly, when an animal species be- 
comes familiar to a person it is frequently recognized through 
an individuality that defies analysis. However, for a first ac- 
quaintance some recognizable features are necessary, and the 
following are suggested as of use in distinguishing this animal 
in life. Compared with the Mariposa Chipmunk, the Tahoe 
Chipmunk is of somewhat smaller size, with noticeably shorter 
tail. Total length is about nine and a half inches, tail about 
four and a half. The latter is jerked nervously about in a 


406 Sierra Club Bulletin 


quite different manner from the slower undulations performed 
by the Mariposa Chipmunk. In coloration the Tahoe Chip- 
munk is of a brighter, more ruddy appearance, with the stripes 
along back and sides conspicuous to view at some little dis- 
tance. Finally, this chipmunk will permit of a near enough 
approach so that coloration and other features are easily ap- 
parent, while with the Mariposa Chipmunk it is for the most 
part a mere chance if one obtains a close enough and leisurely 
enough view for satisfactory observation. 

Of all the animals of the California Sierras there is none 
that makes a stronger appeal to the sympathies than the little 
Alpine Chipmunk (Eutamuias alpinus), that tiny dweller of the 
inhospitable heights. Delicate and fragile, to all appearances 
as unfit for hardship as a butterfly, he still has made his home 
in the most forbidding portion of a region sufficiently rugged 
at the best. This habitat comprises the highest parts of the 
Sierra Nevada, from Tulare County north to Kearsarge Pass, 
or perhaps farther, and extends from a little below the timber- 
line practically to the summits of the loftiest peaks. Abundant 
opportunities of making acquaintance with the Alpine Chip- 
munk were found in the region about Bullfrog Lake, between 
Kings River Cafion and Kearsarge Pass, and he is such a 
friendly little fellow that we felt that we were becoming quite 
fully acquainted with the more public phases of his existence. 
Of the privacy of his home life, however, but little is known, 
as is the case with so many animals, both large and small, and 
there is still to be disclosed the manner of home he makes, and, 
also, just how he spends the long rigorous winters of the moun- 
tain-tops, to say nothing of the host of details that suggest 
themselves in this connection. 

Alpine Chipmunks were constant visitors to our camp at 
Bullfrog Lake, about 10,000 feet altitude, and just below the 
upper limit of upright timber. We were there in September, 
when the short summer was already drawing to a close—a thin 
film of ice formed on the lake each night—and the chipmunks 
were evidently beginning to bestir themselves in preparation 
for the cold weather that was coming. All about the edges of 
the lake they were busy in the little clumps of dwarf willow, 
scrambling up into the branches and bearing away bundles of 


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Some Sierran Chipmunks 407 


the soft down, as much as they could carry, this presumably 
for nest-lining. The enterprising little chap whose picture is 
shown herewith discovered a short cut to affluence and the 
means of furnishing his home far more luxuriously than his 
neighbors. He was constantly exploring among the interest- 
ing contents of our tent, and in the course of these investiga- 
tions came upon something of real practical use—a large roll 
of cotton batting! Anything more ridiculous than this mite of 
a creature standing before the enormous roll of cotton and en- 
deavoring to cram it all into his cheek-pouches it would be hard 
to imagine. Upright upon his haunches and with both arms 
outspread, he gathered as much as his reach would encompass 
and packed it in until his cheeks were bulging and long white 
strands protruded on either side. Apparently he knew when 
he had enough for his purpose, for after an active period of 
journeying to and fro between the cotton and some hidden 
nook in the rocks, he forsook this line of work and devoted 
himself to other things. 

Our kitchen refuse included much that was attractive to the 
chipmunks, and several of them were constantly about camp in 
search of edibles. Everything of the sort was gathered in one 
place, and they lost no time elsewhere, but went direct to this 
spot. Prune-stones found great favor, and also trout-bones, 
sometimes to be nibbled at where discovered and sometimes 
carried elsewhere. When a whole fish skeleton clung together 
it was some little task to remove it, and more than one nervous 
chipmunk, scurrying away with such a load, trod on his trail- 
ing burden and turned a complete somersault before he could 
catch himself. 

Elsewhere they were seen busily engaged in garnering the 
food upon which they doubtless mainly depend. The long 
grasses of the region were now in seed, and on all sides the 
chipmunks were encountered in these growths, sitting on their 
haunches in order to pull the heads within reach, when the 
seeds were stored away in their cheek-pouches. They were so 
unsuspicious as to readily endure observation at distances of 
but a few feet. Several were seen in pine trees, thirty or forty 
feet from the ground, at work upon the cones, but for the most 
part they labored on the ground. 


408 Sierra Club Bulletin 


The chipmunks were also quite busy at this time hiding 
things in the earth. It frequently happened that one was seen 
digging nervously, first in one place, then in another, evidently 
in search of something buried previously. But when found it 
would, perhaps, be carried not more than three or four feet 
away, to be covered up once more. A great deal of such hid- 
ing was done, in an apparently aimless way, the objects con- 
cealed barely beneath the surface of the ground, and not more 
than one fragment at any one place. As provision for the win- 
ter this would seem to an outsider as apt to be a failure when 
the snow came, but presumably the chipmunks know how to 
manage their own affairs. Then, too, on occasion they were 
seen at work in rather more methodical fashion, the cache 
being made at the base of a stump or rock that might serve for 
a landmark later on, and the hole excavated to some little 
depth. In filling the hole the dirt previously removed was 
shoved back in by the extended fore paws, with a forward 
thrust of the whole body. 

Alpine Chipmunks were found in great numbers in the re- 
gion about Kearsarge Pass, on both sides of the divide. One 
was seen within three hundred feet of the summit of Mount 
Gould (13,000 feet altitude), and there is little doubt of their 
ranging over all the higher peaks. We also found a few on 
Mount Mitchell (near Horse Corral Meadow), where they are 
restricted to the very summit of the mountain, hence forming 
an isolated colony away from the rest of their kind. Doubtless 
there are many such little communities in this section of the 
Sierra Nevada, on the numerous alpine-arctic peaks rising 
abruptly above the vast surrounding area of lower elevation. 

The tail action of the Alpine Chipmunk affords excellent 
means of identifying the species. This consists of quick, ner- 
vous upward jerks, constantly repeated, the tail curved slightly 
upward, as shown in the picture. Other readily appreciable 
features are found in the animal’s small size (seven and a half 
inches, or less, in total length) and its pale coloration, the areas 
which in other species are brown being grayish in this one, and 
the rufous areas faded out to a decidedly yellowish tinge. 

One other animal of this part of the Sierras is deserving of 
mention in this connection, the Sierra Golden-mantled Ground- 


Some Sierran Chipmunks 409 


squirrel (Callospermophilus chrysodeirus), not a chipmunk, 
though extremely like one in appearance and actions. Besides 
this rather pretentious “book name,” he is variously known as 
Yellowhead, Copperhead, or Bummer. This animal is in his 
mode of life much like the ground-squirrel of the lowlands, 
whereas the various species of Eutamias more nearly resemble 
the tree-squirrels in habits and actions. The yellowhead is 
rather a prosaic creature, prone to corpulence (not to say 
greasiness), and with none of the pleasing airiness of his asso- 
ciates. He is not unattractive, however, in his own more stolid 
way, while the peculiarity of his markings is quite certain to 
attract attention. The bright yellow head is a sure mark for 
identification, while the rather large size (total length twelve 
inches), heavy build, and short tail (about four and a half 
inches) are additional features that are readily appreciable. A 
yellowhead was a daily visitor to our camp at Bullfrog Lake, 
becoming quite tame and confiding. We saw the animals here 
in numbers, up to points at least as high as the limit of upright 
timber, and they occur commonly from 9000 to 10,000 feet on 
both sides of the divide at Kearsarge Pass. They were also 
abundant at Horse Corral Meadow, but not seen at all in 
Kings River Cafion. 

On the east slope of the Sierra Nevada at this latitude there 
are other species of chipmunks, more difficult to identify, but 
the above three species, together with the yellowhead, are 
characteristic of the western slope at the different levels sev- 
erally occupied. 


NOTES ON PHOTOGRAPHY OF SMALL MAMMALS 


The average collection of vacation photographs contains 
many landscape and camp scenes, with but few, if any, pic- 
tures of live wild animals. This is due not so much to lack of 
interest in the latter subject as to the many difficulties encoun- 
tered in securing even fairly satisfactory results. 

The writer of these paragraphs, after considerable experi- 
mentation, has been able to attain a certain degree of success 
in the photography of small wild animals by the use of appa- 
ratus such as can easily be included in the outfit of almost any 
enthusiastic amateur, and by adopting methods that anyone 


410 Sierra Club Bulletin 


can learn. Details of the outfit and mode of procedure are 
given herewith in the hope that they will prove of interest and 
value to others desirous of following up this line of enterprise 
without undue expense and trouble. 

The belief that good results are to be obtained only by the 
use of the most expensive type of reflecting camera is not 
borne out by the facts. On the other hand, one should not ex- 
pect to secure the best negatives of small living wild animals 
with the cheapest sort of hand camera. A camera between 
these two extremes was found in the writer’s experience to 
give excellent results. 

Good pictures were obtained with a “stand” or “tripod” 
camera which has a focal capacity (bellows) about twice the 
focal length of the lens used. The camera with which were 
secured the chipmunk pictures accompanying this paper was 
adapted to take 10-by 15-centimeter and 314-by 5%4-inch plates. 
These plates are each of good proportions and of wholly suffi- 
cient size. A ground glass which registers the exact position 
that the plates assume in the camera aids accurate focusing. 
This is of the utmost importance, for when the object photo- 
graphed is only three or four feet distant from the lens a 
change in the position of the subject, if only of a few inches, 
closer to or farther from the camera, throws the image out of 
focus. 

Metal plate-holders are preferable, as there is less danger of 
the plates being light-struck when the plate-holders are left in 
the sun than is the case with wooden holders. A good anastig- 
mat lens is a wise investment, as with such a lens enlargements 
three or four times the original size of the negative can be 
made with little loss of sharpness. A Dagor lens of 6%4-inch 
focal length, a Turner-Reich convertible anastigmat £/6.8 lens 
of 7%4-inch focal length and a Bausch & Lomb Tessar lens, 
Series Ic, £/4.5, of 74-inch focal length, have all proven satis- 
factory for this work. A “speed” lens is not a necessity, since 
stops 8, 11, and 16 are the ones most often used. Larger aper- 
tures do not give sufficient depth of field when used at a dis- 
tance of three or four feet, as allowance must be made for 
slight changes of position by the animal photographed. This 
difficulty is illustrated in the accompanying picture of the 


Some Sierran Chipmunks Aut 


Golden-mantled Ground-squirrel, where a slight shifting from 
his accustomed post has thrown the subject somewhat out of 
focus. 

A shutter of the compound type is preferable, as it is com- 
paratively quiet and does not frighten the nervous animals as 
does the noisy focal-plane shutter. One advantage of the 
compound type over the common automatic shutter is the fact 
that the former requires setting for each exposure, and thus 
obviates double exposure, when the shutter is released from a 
distance by means of a thread. 

Double-coated plates are preferable, in the writer's experi- 
ence, since their excellent rendering of color values more than 
offsets the disadvantage of their lack of speed. Both Standard 
Orthonon and Cramer’s Instantaneous Isochromatic were 
found to be satisfactory, and were preferred to speedy film 
packs, which latter refused to operate at critical moments on 
several occasions. 

A changing-bag makes daylight loading and unloading of 
plates an easy matter. This article, together with a developing 
tank with the usual appurtenances, makes it possible to develop 
negatives on the spot, thus enabling one to replace faulty ex- 
posures before it is too late. Asa “safety first” measure this 
outfit has proved its worth on several occasions. A short 
sturdy tripod with tilting top, focusing-cloth, exposure meter, 
thermometer, plate-drying rack, and spool of linen thread com- 
plete the list of accessories. 

Given a suitable camera and equipment, the next thing is to 
find the animals to photograph. Chipmunks, squirrels, and 
birds are often attracted to camp by the refuse thrown out. 
They thus become accustomed to the presence of human be- 
ings, and consequently afford good opportunities for the pho- 
tographer. A little watching will show certain stubs, stumps, 
and rocks to be used as points of vantage or as feeding stations 
by the animals just mentioned. The photographer is thus often 
able to select a suitable location where light, composition, and 
background are satisfactory. The camera may then be placed 
on the tripod and. focused upon the exact spot where the ani- 
mal to be photographed is likely to pause. Care should be 
taken not to focus on the bark of a tree trunk selected, but on 


412 Sierra Club Bulletin 


a point at least an inch nearer the lens. This allowance will in- 
sure that the animal itself rather than the tree trunk is sharply 
in focus. By placing the camera three or four feet distant an 
image nearly one inch high will be obtained with a seven-inch 
lens. Beware of attempting to work too close to the subject. 
It is better to enlarge an inch image later on than to try to se- 
cure a large image at once by working close up. By working 
at a reasonable distance, depth of field is obtained and the 
animal is not badly frightened. A long-focus lens can be used 
to advantage; but the use of the single combination of the or- 
dinary lens was found to be too slow for such active animals 
as chipmunks. : 

Exposures of 1/50 second at stop 11, or 1/25 second at stop 
16, were found to give well-exposed negatives when the sub- 
jects were in direct sunlight. The shorter exposure was found 
best, and even then the motion of the front feet or paws was 
not always stopped, as is seen in the photograph of the Alpine 
Chipmunk. Exact data for this picture (plate ccxXx1II) are as 
follows: September I, 3 P.M.; bright sun; 10x15 cm. Goerz Ten- 
nax camera; 614-inch Dagor: stop f/11; 1/50 second; 10X15 
cm. Cramer Inst. Iso. plate; pyro in tank; enlargment 3% 
times on No. 6 Studio Enlarging Cyko. It will soon be 
found that momentary pauses in the animals’ activities can be 
taken advantage of and good negatives secured at these op- 
portune moments. 

All moving parts (levers) of the shutter should be hidden 
from the chipmunk’s keen vision. Otherwise, the animal is 
warned of danger when the release moves and starts to flee 
before the exposure is complete, a blurred negative resulting. 
By draping a piece of cloth over the releasing lever this ten- 
dency of the sitter to “jump the gun” is avoided, and sharp 
negatives can be secured. A black pasteboard box set on the 
tripod was found to serve excellently as a dummy to accustom 
the animal to the camera. The shutter was usually operated at 
a distance of about fifty feet, by means of a thread tied to the 
shutter release. By this method one is able to watch the sub- 
ject from a distance and still make the exposure at the proper 
time. 

It should be remembered that the co-operation of the animal 


Some Sierran Chipmunks 413 


to be photographed must be obtained, and that patience on the 
part of the operator is therefore a large part of the game. It 
sometimes happens that individual chipmunks or other animals 
are found which refuse to tolerate the camera, and then a new 
subject must be hunted up. In my own experience, certain in- 
dividuals have been found that were much easier to photo- 
graph than others of the same species at the same time and 
place. 

The success of the photographer in this field will depend on 
three things: suitable equipment, patience, and some knowl- 
edge of the habits of the individual animal to be photographed. 


STUDIES IN THE SIERRA* 
By Joun Muir 


NO. V. POST-GLACIAL DENUDATION 
> 


HEN Nature lifted the ice-sheet from the mountains 

she may well be said not to have turned a new leaf, but 
to have made a new one of the old. Throughout the unnum- 
bered seasons of the glacial epoch the range lay buried, 
crushed, and sunless. In the stupendous denudation to which 
it was then subjected, all its pre-glacial features disappeared. 
Plants, animals, and landscapes were wiped from its flanks 
like drawings from a blackboard, and the vast page left 
smooth and clean, to be repictured with young life and the 
varied and beautiful inscriptions of water, snow, and the at- 
mosphere. 

The variability in hardness, structure, and mineralogical 
composition of the rocks forming the present surface of the 
range has given rise to irregularities in the amount of post- 
glacial denudation effected in different portions, and these ir- 
regularities have been greatly multiplied and augmented by 
differences in the kind and intensity of the denuding forces, 
and in the length of time that different portions of the range 
have been exposed to their action. The summits have re- 
ceived more snow, the foothills more rain, while the middle 
region has been variably acted upon by both of these agents. 
Again, different portions are denuded in a greater or less de- 
gree according to their relations to level. The bottoms of 
trunk valleys are swept by powerful rivers, the branches by 
creeks and rills, while the intervening plateaus and ridges are 
acted upon only by thin, feeble currents, silent and nearly in- 
visible. Again some portions of the range are subjected every 
winter to the scouring action of avalanches, while others are 
entirely beyond the range of such action. But the most influen- 
tial of the general causes that have conspired to produce ir- 


* Reprinted, as revised by the author, from the Overland Monthly of November, 1874. 


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Studies im the Sierra AIS 


regularity in the quantity of post-glacial denudation is the dif- 
ference in the length of time during which different portions 
of the range have been subjected to denuding agents. The ice- 
sheet melted from the base of the range tens of thousands of 
years ere it melted from the upper regions. We find, accord- 
ingly, that the foothill region is heavily weathered and blurred, 
while the summit, excepting the peaks, and a considerable por- 
tion of the middle region remain fresh and shining as if they 
had never suffered from the touch of a single storm. 

Perhaps the least known among the more outspoken agents 
of mountain degradation are those currents of eroding rock 
called avalanches. Those of the Sierra are of all sizes, from 
a few sand-grains or crystals worked loose by the weather and 
launched to the bottoms of cliffs, to those immense earthquake 
avalanches that thunder headlong down amid fire and smoke 
and dust, with a violence that shakes entire mountains. Many 
avalanche-producing causes, as moisture, temperature, winds, 
and earthquakes, are exceedingly variable in the scope and in- 
tensity of their action. During the dry, equable summers of 
the middle region, atmospheric disintegration goes silently on, 
and many a huge mass is made ready to be advantageously 
acted upon by the first winds and rains of winter. Inclined 
surfaces are then moistened and made slippery, decomposed 
joints washed out, frost-wedges driven in, and the grand av- 
alanche storm begins. But though these stone-storms occur 
only in winter, the attentive mountaineer may have the pleas- 
ure of witnessing small avalanches in every month of the year. 
The first warning of the bounding free of a simple avalanche 
is usually a dull muffled rumble, succeeded by a ponderous 
crunching sound; then perhaps a single huge block weighing a 
hundred tons or more may be seen wallowing down the face of 
a cliff, followed by a train of smaller stones, which are gradu- 
ally left behind on account of the greater relative resistance 
they encounter as compared with their weight. The eye may 
therefore follow the large block undisturbed, noting its awk- 
ward, lumbering gestures as it gropes its way through the air 
in its first wild journey, and how it is made to revolve like a 
star upon its axis by striking on projecting portions of the 
walls while it pursues the grand smooth curves of general 


416 Sierra Club Bulletin 


descent. Where it strikes a projecting boss it gives forth an 
intense gasping sound, which, coming through the darkness of 
a storm-night, is indescribably impressive; and when at length 
it plunges into the valley, the ground trembles as if shaken by 
an earthquake. 

On the 12th of March, 1873, I witnessed a magnificent ava- 
lanche in Yosemite Valley from the base of the second of the 
Three Brothers. A massive stream of blocks bounded from 
ledge to ledge and plunged into the talus below with a display 
of energy inexpressibly wild and exciting. Fine gray foam- 
dust boiled and swirled along its path, and gradually rose 
above the top of the cliff, appearing as a dusky cloud on the 
calm sky. Unmistakable traces of similar avalanches are vis- 
ible here, probably caused by the decomposition of the feld- 
spathic veins with which the granite is interlaced. 

Earthquakes, though not of frequent occurrence in the Si- 
erra, are powerful causes of avalanches. Many a lofty tower 
and impending brow stood firm through the storms of the first 
post-glacial seasons. Torrents swept their bases, and winds 
and snows slipped glancingly down their polished sides, with- 
out much greater erosive effect than the passage of cloud- 
shadows. But at length the new-born mountains were shaken 
by an earthquake-storm, and thousands of avalanches from 
cafion walls and mountain sides fell in one simultaneous crash. 
The records of this first post-glacial earthquake present them- 
selves in every cafion and around the bases of every mountain 
summit that I have visited; and it is a fact of great geological 
interest that to it alone more than nine-tenths of all the cliff 
taluses which form so striking a characteristic of cafion scen- 
ery are due. The largest of these earthquake taluses are from 
500 to 1000 feet in height, and are timbered with spruce, pine, 
and live-oak over their entire surfaces, showing that they have 
not been disturbed since their formation, either by denudation 
or accessions of fresh material. 

The earthquake which destroyed the village of Lone Pine, 
in March, 1872, shook the Sierra with considerable violence, 
giving rise to many new taluses, the formation of one of which 
I was so fortunate as to witness. 

The denuding action of avalanches is not unlike that of 


Studies in the Sierra 417 


water-torrents. They are frequently seen descending the sum- 
mit peaks, flowing in regular channels, the surfaces of which 
they erode by striking off large chips and blocks, as well as by 
wearing off sand and dust. 

A considerable amount of grinding also goes on in the body 
of the avalanche itself, reducing the size of the masses, and 
preparing them for the action of other agents. Some ava- 
lanches hurl their detritus directly into the beds of streams, 
thus bringing it under the influence of running water, by 
which a portion of it is carried into the ocean. 

The range of rock avalanches, however produced, is re- 
stricted within comparatively narrow bounds. The shattered 
peaks are constant fountains, but the more powerful moun- 
tain-shaking avalanches are confined to the edges of deep 
cafions in a zone twelve or fifteen miles wide, and gradually 
merge into land-slips along their lower limits. 

Large rock avalanches pour freely through the air from a 
height of hundreds or thousands of feet, and on striking the 
bottom of the valley are dashed into a kind of coarse stone 
foam. Or, they make the descent in several leaps, or rumble 
over jagged inclines in the form of cascades. But in any case 
they constitute currents of loose-flowing fragments. Land- 
slips, on the contrary, slip in one mass, and, unless sheer cliffs 
lie in their paths, may come to rest right-side up and undivided. 
There is also a marked difference in their geographical distri- 
bution, land-slips being restricted to deeply eroded banks and 
hillsides of the lower half of the range, beginning just where 
rock avalanches cease. Again, the material of land-slips is 
chiefly fine soil and decomposing boulders, while that of rock 
avalanches is mostly of un- 
weathered angular blocks. 

Let Figure I represent a 
section across a valley in 
which moraine matter, A, 
is deposited upon the in- 
clined bed-rock, BBB. 
Now, strong young mo- 
raine material deposited in 
this way, in a kind of rude 


AI8 Sierra Club Bulletin 


masonry, always rests, or is capable of resting, at a much steep- 
er angle than the same material after it has grown old and 
rotten. If a poultice of acid mud be applied to a strong boulder, 
it will not be much affected in an hour or day, but if kept on 
for a few thousands or tens of thousands of years, it will at 
length soften and crumble. Now, Nature thus patiently poul- 
tices the boulders of the moraine banks under consideration. 
For many years subsequent to the close of the ice period very 
little acid for this purpose was available, but as vegetation in- 
creased and decayed, acids became more plentiful, and boulder 
decomposition went on at an accelerated rate, until a degree of 
weakness was induced that caused the sheerest portions of the 
deposits, as A BD (Fig. 1), to give way, perhaps when jarred 
by an earthquake, or when burdened with snow or rain, or par- 
tially undermined by the action of a stream. 

It appears, therefore, that the main cause of the first post- 
glacial land-slips is old age. They undoubtedly made their 
first appearance in moraine banks at the foot of the range, and 
gradually extended upward to where we now find them, at a 
rate of progress measured by that of the recession of the ice- 
sheet, and by the durability of moraines and the effectiveness 
of the corroding forces brought into action upon them. In 
those portions of the Sierra where the morainal deposits are 
tolerably uniform in kind and exposure, the upper limits of the 
land-slip are seen to stretch along the range with as great con- 
stancy of altitude as that of the snow-line. 

The above-described species of land-slip is followed up the 
range by another of greater size, just as the different forest 
trees follow one another in compliance with conditions of soil 
and climate. After the sheer end of the deposit (A BD, Fig. 
1) has slipped, the whole mass may finally slip on the bed-rock 
by the further decomposition, not only of the deposit itself, 
but of the bed-rock on which it rests. Bed-rocks are usually 
more or less uneven. Now, it is plain that when the inequali- 
ties B B B crumble by erosion, the mass of the deposit will not 
be so well supported; moreover, the weight of the mass will 
continue to increase as its material is more thoroughly pulver- 
ized, because a greater quantity of moisture will be required 
to saturate it. Thus it appears that the support of moraine 


Studies in the Sierra 419 


deposits diminishes, just as the necessity for greater support 
increases, until a slip is brought on. 

Slips of this species are often of great extent, the surface 
comprising several acres overgrown with trees, perhaps mov- 
ing slowly and coming to rest with all their load of vegetation 
uninjured, leaving only a yawning rent to mark their oc- 
currence. Others break up into a muddy disorderly flood, 
moving rapidly until the bottom of the wall is reached. Land- 
slides occur more frequently on the north than on the south 
sides of ridges, because of the greater abundance of weight- 
producing and decomposing moisture. One of the commonest 
effects of land-slips is the damming of streams, giving rise to 
large accumulations of water, which speedily burst the dams 
and deluge the valleys beneath, sweeping the finer detritus be- 
fore them to great distances, and at first carry boulders tons in 
weight. 

The quantity of denudation accomplished by the Sierra land- 
slips of both species is very small. Like rock-falls, they erode 
the surface they slip upon in a mechanical way, and also bring 
down material to lower levels, where it may be more advan- 
tageously exposed to the denuding action of other agents, and 
open scars whereby rain-torrents are enabled to erode gullies; 
but the sum of the areas thus affected bears an exceedingly 
small proportion to the whole surface of the range. 

The part which snow avalanches play in the degradation of 
mountains is simpler than that of free-falling or cascading 
rocks, or either species of land-slip; these snow avalanches 
being external and distinct agents. Their range, however, is 
as restricted as that of either of the others, and like them they 
only carry their detritus a short distance and leave it in heaps 
at the foot of cliffs and steep inclines. There are three well- 
marked and distinct species of snow avalanche in the upper 
half of the Sierra, differing widely in structure, geographical 
distribution, and in the extent and importance of the geological 
changes they effect. The simplest and commonest species is 
formed of fresh mealy snow, and occurs during and a short 
time after every heavy snow-fall wherever the mountain slopes 
are inclined at suitable angles. This species is of frequent oc- 
currence throughout all the steep-flanked mountains of the 


420 Sierra Club Bulletin 


summit of the range, where it reaches perfection, and is also 
common throughout the greater portion of the middle region. 
Avalanches are the feeders of the glaciers, pouring down their 
dry mealy snow into the womb-amphitheaters, where it is 
changed to névé and ice. Unless distributed by storm-winds, 
they cascade down the jagged heights in regular channels, and 
glide gracefully out over the glacier slopes in beautiful curves ; 
which action gives rise in summer to a most interesting and 
comprehensive system of snow-sculpture. The detritus dis- 
charged upon the surface of the glaciers forms a kind of stone- 
drift which is floated into moraines like the straws and chips 
of rivers. 

Few of the defrauded toilers of the plain know the magnifi- 
cent exhilaration of the boom and rush and outbounding ener- 
gy of great snow avalanches. While the storms that breed 
them are in progress, the thronging flakes darken the air at 
noonday. Their muffled voices reverberate through the gloomy 
cafions, but we try in vain to catch a glimpse of their noble 
forms until rifts appear in the clouds, and the storm ceases. 
Then in cliff-walled valleys like Yosemite we may witness the 
descent of half a dozen or more snow avalanches within a few 
hours. 

The denuding power of this species of avalanche is not 
great, because the looseness of the masses allows them to roll 
and slip upon themselves. Some portions of their channels, 
however, present a roughly scoured appearance, caused by 
rocky detritus borne forward in the under portion of the cur- 
rent. The avalanche is, of course, collected in a heap at the 
foot of the cliff, and on melting leaves the detritus to accumu- 
late from year to year. These taluses present striking con- 
trasts to those of rock avalanches caused by the first great pre- 
glacial earthquake. The latter are gray in color, with a cover- 
ing of slow-growing lichens, and support extensive groves of 
pine, spruce, and live-oak; while the former, receiving addi- 
tions from year to year, are kept in a raw formative state, 
neither trees nor lichens being allowed time to grow, and it is 
a fact of great geological significance that no one of the Yo- 
semite snow avalanches, although they have undoubtedly 
flowed in their present channels since the close of the glacial 


Studies in the Sierra 421 


period, has yet accumulated so much débris as some of the 
larger earthquake avalanches which were formed in a few 
seconds. 

The next species of avalanche in natural order is the annual 
one, composed of heavy crystalline snows which have been 
subjected to numerous alternations of frost and thaw. Their 
development requires a shadowed mountain side gooo or I0,- 
ooo feet high, inclined at such an angle that loose fresh snow 
will lodge and remain upon it, and bear repeated accessions 
throughout the winter without moving; but which, after the 
spring thaws set in, and the mountain side thus becomes slip- 
pery, and the nether surface of the snow becomes icy, will 
then give way. 

One of the most accessible of the fountains of annual ava- 
lanches is the northern slope of Cloud’s Rest, above the head 
of the Yosemite Valley. Here I have witnessed the descent of 
three within half an hour. They have a vertical descent of 
nearly a mile on a smooth granite surface. Fine examples of 
this species of avalanche may also be observed upon the north 
side of the dividing ridge between the basins of Ribbon and 
Cascade creeks, and in some portions of the upper Nevada 
Cafion. Their denuding power is much greater than that of 
the first species, on account of their greater weight and com- 
pactness. Where their pathways are not broken by precipices, 
they descend all or part of their courses with a hard snout 
kept close down on the surface of the rock, and because the 
middle of the snout is stronger, the detritus heaps are curved 
after the manner of terminal moraines. These detritus heaps 
also show an irregularly corrugated and concentric structure. 
An examination of the avalanche pathways shows conclusively 
that the annual accretions of detritus, scraped from their sur- 
faces, are wholly insufficient to account for the several large 
concentric deposits. But when, after the detritus of many 
years has been accumulated by avalanches of ordinary magni- 
tude, a combination of causes, such as rain, temperature, and 
abundant snow-fall, gives rise to an avalanche of extraordinary 
size, its superior momentum will carry it beyond the limits at- 
tained by its predecessors, and sweep forward the accumula- 
tions of many years concentric with others of like magnitude 


422 Sierra Club Bulletin 


into a single mass. A succession of these irregularities will 
obviously produce results corresponding in every particular 
with the observed phenomena. 

What we may call century avalanches, as distinguished from 
annual, are conceived and nourished on cool mountain sides 
10,000 or 12,000 feet in height, where the snow falling from 
winter to winter will not slip, and where the exposure and 
temperature are such that it will not always melt off in summer. 
Snow accumulated under these conditions may linger without 
seeming to greatly change for years, until some slowly organ- 
ized group of causes, such as temperature, abundance of snow, 
condition of snow, or the mere occurrence of an earthquake, 
launches the grand mass. In swooping down the mountain 
flanks they usually strip off the forest trees in their way, as 
well as the soil on which they were growing. 

Some of these avalanche pathways are 200 yards wide, and 
extend from the upper limit of the tree-line to the bottom of 
the valleys. They are all well “blazed” on both sides by de- 
scending trunks, many of which carry sharp stones clutched 
in their up-torn roots. The height of these “blazes” on the 
trees bordering the avalanche gap measures the depth of the 
avalanche at the sides, while in rare instances some noble sil- 
ver-fir is found standing out in the channel, the only tree suffi- 
ciently strong to withstand the mighty onset; the scars upon 
which, or its broken branches, recording the depth of the cur- 
rent. The ages of the trees show that some of these colossal 
avalanches occur only once in a century, or at still wider inter- 
vals. These avalanches are by far the most powerful of the 
three species, although from the rarity of their occurrence and 
the narrowness of the zone in which they find climatic condi- 
tions suited to their development, the sum of the denudation 
accomplished by them is less than that of either of the others. 

We have seen that water in the condition of rain, dew, va- 
por, and melting snow, combined with air, acts with more or 
less efficiency in corroding the whole mountain surface, thus 
preparing it for the more obviously mechanical action of 
winds, rivers, and avalanches. Running water is usually re- 
garded as the most influential of all denuding agents. Those 
regions of the globe first laid bare by the melting of the ice- 


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Studies in the Sierra 423 


sheet present no unchanged glaciated surfaces from which, 
measuring down, we may estimate the amount of post-glacial 
denudation. The streams of these old eroded countries are 
said by the poets to “go on forever,’ and the conceptions of 
some geologists concerning them are scarcely less vague. 

Beginning at the foot of the Sierra glaciers, and following 
the torrents that rush out from beneath them down the valleys, 
we find that the rocks over which they flow are weathered 
gradually, and increasingly, the farther we descend; showing 
that the streams in coming into existence grew like trees from 
the foot of the range upward, gradually ramifying higher and 
wider as the ice-sheet was withdrawn—some of the topmost 
branchlets being still in process of formation. 

Rivers are usually regarded as irregular branching strips of 
running water, shaped somewhat like a tree stripped of its 
leaves. As far as more striking features and effects are con- 
cerned, the comparison is a good one; for in tracing rivers to 
their fountains we observe that as their branches divide and 
redivide, they speedily become silent and inconspicuous, and 
apparently channelless; yet it is a mistake to suppose that 
streams really terminate where they become too small to sing 
out audibly, or erode distinct channels. When we stoop down 
and closely examine any portion of a mountain surface during 
the progress of a rain-storm, we perceive minute water-twigs 
that continue to bifurcate until like netted veins of leaves the 
innumerable currentlets disappear in a broad universal sheet. 

It would appear, therefore, that rivers more nearly resemble 
certain gigantic algae with naked stalks, and branches webbed 
into a flat thallus. The long unbranched stalks run through the 
dry foothills; the webbed branches frequently overspread the 
whole surface of the snowy and rainy alpine and middle re- 
gions, as well as every moraine, bog, and névé bank. The 
gently gliding rain-thallus fills up small pits as lakelets and 
carries away minute specks of dust and mica. Larger sand- 
grains are overflowed without being moved unless the surface 
be steeply inclined, while the rough grains of quartz, horn- 
blende, and feldspar, into which granite crumbles, form ob- 
stacles around which it passes in curves. Where the current- 
lets concentrate into small rills, these larger chips and crystals 


424 Sierra Club Bulletin 


are rolled over and over, or swept forward partly suspended, 
just as dust and sand-grains are by the wind. 

The transporting power of steeply inclined torrents is far 
greater than is commonly supposed. Stones weighing several 
tons are swept down steep cafion gorges and spread in rugged 
deltas at their mouths, as if they had been floated and stranded 
like blocks of wood. The denudation of gorges by the friction 
of the boulders thus urged gratingly along their channels is 
often quite marked. 

Strong torrents also denude their channels by the removal 
of blocks made separable from the solid bed-rock by the de- 
velopment of cleavage planes. Instructive examples of this 
species of denudation may be studied in the gorges between 
the upper and lower Yosemite falls and the Tenaya Cafion, 
four miles above Mirror Lake. This is the most rapid mode 
of torrent denudation I have yet observed, but its range is nar- 
rowly restricted, and its general denuding effects inappreci- 
able. 

Water-streams also denude mountains by dissolving them 
and carrying them away in solution, but the infinite slowness 
of this action on hard porphyritic granite is strikingly exempli- 
fied by the fact that in the upper portion of the middle region 
granite ice-planed pavements have been flowed upon incessant- 
ly since they were laid bare on the breaking up of the glacial 
winter without being either decomposed, dissolved, or mechan- 
ically eroded to the depth of the one-hundredth part of an 
inch, 

Wind-blown dust, mica flakes, sand, and crumbling chips ~ 
are being incessantly moved to lower levels wherever wind or 
water flows. But even in the largest mountain rivers the 
movement of large boulders is comparatively a rare occur- 
rence. When one lies down on a river-bank opposite a boul- 
der-spread incline and listens patiently for a day or two, a dull 
thumping sound may occasionally be heard from the shifting 
of a boulder, but in ordinary times few streams do much 
boulder work; all the more easily moved blocks having been 
adjusted and readjusted during freshets, when the current 
was many times more powerful. All the channels of Sierra 
streams are subjected to the test action of at least one freshet 


Studies in the Sierra 425 


per season, on the melting of the winter snow, when all weak- 
ly constructed dams and drift-heaps are broken up and re- 
formed. 

It is a fact of great geological interest that only that portion 
of the general detritus of post-glacial denudation—that is, in 
the form of mud, sand, fine gravel, and matter held in solution 
—has ever at any time been carried entirely out of the range 
into the plains or ocean. In the cafion of the Tuolumne River, 
we find that the chain of lake basins which stretch along the 
bottom from the base of Mount Lyell to the Hetch-Hetchy 
Valley are filled with detritus, through the midst of which the 
river flows; but the washed boulders, which form a large por- 
tion of this detritus, instead of being constantly pushed for- 
ward from basin to basin, lie still for centuries at a time, as is 
strikingly demonstrated by an undisturbed growth of immense 
sugar-pines and firs inhabiting the river-banks. But the pres- 
ence of these trees upon water-washed boulders only shows 
that no displacement has been effected among them for a few 
centuries. They still must have been swept forward and 
outspread in some grand flood prior to the planting of these 
trees. But even this grand old flood of glacial streams, whose 
magnificent traces occur everywhere on both flanks of the 
range, did not remove a single boulder from the higher to the 
lower Sierra im that section of the range drained by the Tu- 
olumne and Merced, much less into the ocean, because the low- 
er portion of the Hetch-Hetchy basin, situated about half-way 
down the western flank, 1s still in process of filling up, and as 
yet contains only sand and mud to as great a depth as observa- 
tion can reach in river sections. The river flows slowly 
through this alluvial deposit and out of the basin over a lip of 
solid bed-rock, showing that not a single high Sierra boulder 
ever passed 1t since the close of the glacial period; and the 
same evidence is still more strikingly exhibited in similarly 
situated basins in the Merced Valley. 

Frost plays a very inferior part in Sierra degradation. The 
lower half of the range is almost entirely exempt from its dis- 
ruptive effects, while the upper half is warmly snow-mantled 
throughout the winter months. At high elevations of from 
ten to twelve thousand feet, sharp frosts occur in the months 


426 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of October and November, before much snow has fallen; and 
where shallow water-currents flow over rocks traversed by 
open divisional joints, the freezing that ensues forces the 
blocks apart and produces a ruinous appearance, without ef- 
fecting much absolute displacement. The blocks thus loosened 
are, of course, liable to be moved by flood-currents. This ac- 
tion, however, is so limited in range, that the general average 
result is inappreciable. 

Atmospheric weathering has, after all, done more to blur 
and degrade the glacial features of the Sierra than all other 
agents combined, because of the universality of its scope. No 
mountain escapes its decomposing and mechanical effects. 
The bases of mountains are mostly denuded by streams of 
water, their summits by streams of air. The winds that sweep 
the jagged peaks assume magnificent proportions, and effect 
changes of considerable importance. The smaller particles of 
disintegration are rolled or shoved to lower levels just as they 
are by water currents, or they are caught up bodily in strong, 
passionate gusts, and hurled against trees or higher portions 
of the surface. The manner in which exposed tree-trunks are 
thus wind-carved and boulders polished will give some concep- 
tion of the force with which this agent moves. 

Where boulders of a form fitted to shed off snow and rain 
have settled protectingly upon a polished and striated surface, 
then the protected portion will, by the erosion and removal of 
the unprotected surface around it, finally come to form a ped- 
estal for the stone which 
saved it. Figure 2 shows 
where a boulder, B, has set- 
tled upon and protected 
Gy, —_ from erosion a portion of 
od | the original glaciated sur- 

face until the pedestal, A, 
has been formed, the height 
of which is of course the 
exact measure of the whole 
quantity of post-glacial de- 
nudation at that point. These boulder pedestals, furnishing so 
admirable a means of gauging atmospheric erosion, occur 


Studies in the Sierra 427 


throughout the middle granitic region in considerable numbers: 
some with their protecting boulders still poised in place, others 
naked, their boulders having rolled off on account of the stool 
having been eroded until too small for them to balance upon. It 
is because of this simple action that all very old, deeply weath- 
ered ridges and slopes are boulderless, Nature having thus 
leisurely rolled them off, giving each a whirling impulse as it 
fell from its pedestal once in hundreds or thousands of years. 

Moutonnéed rock forms 
shaped like Figure 3 are ee 
abundant in the middle C3, 
granitic region. They fre- 
quently wear a single pine, 
jauntily wind-slanted, like 
a) feather in a cap, and a yy; 
single large boulder, poised | 34 WS 
by the receding ice - sheet, chan 
that often produces an im- ane 
pression of having been 
thus placed artificially, exciting the curiosity of the most apa- 
thetic mountaineer, Their occurrence always shows that the 
surfaces they are resting upon are not yet deeply eroded. 

Ice- planed veins of quartz and feldspar are frequently 
weathered into relief by the superior resistance they offer to 
erosion, but they seldom attain a greater height than three or 
four inches ere they become weather-cracked and lose their 
glacial polish, thus becoming useless as means of gauging de- 
nudation. Ice-burnished feldspar crystals are brought into re- 
lief in the same manner to the height of about an inch, and are 
available to this extent in determining denudation over large 
areas in the upper portion of the middle region. 

This brief survey of the various forces incessantly or occa- 
sionally at work wasting the Sierra surface would at first 
lead us to suppose that the sum total of the denudation must be 
enormous ; but, on the contrary, so indestructible are the Sierra 
rocks, and so brief has been the period through which they 
have been exposed to these agents, that the general result is 
found to be comparatively insignificant. The unaltered pol- 
ished areas constituting so considerable a portion of the upper 


Jo, & ty Pepe 
ep Wk LIL 
TGs 3% 


7 


7 


428 Sierra Club Bulletin 


and middle regions have not been denuded the one-hundredth 
part of aninch. Farther down measuring tablets abound bear- 
ing the signature of the ice. The amount of torrential and av- 
alanchial denudation is also certainly estimated within narrow 
limits by measuring down from the unchanged glaciated sur- 
faces lining their banks. Farther down the range, where the 
polished surfaces disappear, we may still reach a fair approxi- 
mation by the height of pot-holes drilled into the walls of 
gorges, and by the forms of the bottoms of the valleys contain- 
ing these gorges, and by the shape and condition of the general 
features. 

Summing up these results, we find that the average quantity 
of post-glacial denudation in the upper half of the range, em- 
bracing a zone twenty-five or thirty miles wide, probably does 
not exceed a depth of three inches. That of the lower half has 
evidently been much greater—probably several feet—but cer- 
tainly not so much as radically to alter any of its main fea- 
tures. In that portion of the range where* the depth of glacial 
denudation exceeds a mile, that of post-glacial denudation is 
less than a foot. 

From its warm base to its cold summit, the physiognomy of 
the Sierra is still strictly glacial. Rivers have only traced shal- 
low wrinkles, avalanches have made scars, and winds and 
rains have blurred it, but the change, as a whole, is not greater 
than that effected on a human countenance by a single year of 
exposure to common alpine storms, 


*See study No. IV, in SreErrRA CLusB BULLETIN of January, 1918. 


SIERRA’ CLUB 


Founded 1892 


402 Mitts Buitpinc, San Francisco, CaLiFornia 
Annual Dues: $3.00 (first year, $5.00) 


THE PURPOSES OF THE CLUB ARE: 
rr, explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific 
Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them, to enlist the sup- 
port and co-operation of the people and the Government in preserving the 
forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada. 
> 
Joun Murr, President 1892 to 1914 


OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES FOR THE YEAR 1Io18-!1919 
BOARD OF DIRECTORS 


eM MOORE Y Sam EN TANCISCOL .c/ivic cece ailsoit ala soctera ate a ol alenraate President 
WERNON 2 KEtLocc, Stanford University... 0.05 00068. Vice-President 
MARION FIRANDALL,. PARSONS: Berkeley... 0.0 scvie co oieiy aid pice-s sles Treasurer 
Nhe plies CONTE. Detkeley oi. ecls os od ca oa tls wee beac es delet Secretary 


WILLIAM FREDERIC BApkE, Berkeley ALBERT H. ALLEN, Berkeley 
Watter L. Huser, San Francisco Rosert M. Price, Reno, Nevada 
CLair S. TAPPAAN, Los Angeles 


HONORARY VICE-PRESIDENTS 
JAMES Bryce, London, England 
Henry S. Graves, Washington, D. C, 
RoBERT UNDERWOOD JoHNSON, New York City 
Davip STARR JORDAN, Stanford University 
J. Horace McFartanp, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 

STEPHEN T. MatTHER, Washington, D. C. 

Enos A. Mitts, Estes Park, Colorado 


COM MITTEES 

Outing Committee: WILLIAM E. Cotsy (Chairman and Manager), CLAIR 
S. Tappaan (Assistant Manager), JosepH N. Le Conte. 

Committee on Local Walks: Frep R. Parker (Chairman), A. E. NEUEN- 
BURG, LESLIE GARDNER, Dozier FINLEY, WM. C. FANKHAUSER. 

Committee on Le Conte and Parsons Memorial Lodges: JosEpH N. LE 
ConTE (Chairman), MARION RANDALL PARSONS, Robert M. PRICE. 

Auditing Committee: Wi1tt1AM F, Bape (Chairman), WALTER L. HuBER, 
RoBertT M. Price. 

Librarian: WALLACE BRADFORD. 

Southern California Section Executive Committee: Putt S. BERNAYS 
(Chairman, 315 W. 3rd Street, Los Angeles), Cuas. J. Fox (Secre- 
tary), BENJAMIN W, Fenton (Treasurer), MABELLE McCALLa (As- 
sistant Secretary), Mrs. Henry Braun, Mary F. KeEttocc, ERNEST 
Dawson, CarriE FE. Tracy, Ltoyp B. AusTIN. 


> 
SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 
Published annually for the members 
EDITORIAL BOARD 


Rv CD ART EO SADIE Whe) eau MeN Make et Yet were AE 7 (oh gtat ot tee A Editor 
MARION RANDALL PARSONS......... Associate Editor and Book Reviews 
Ni CHIC EOL DIM Go) 8) eae aE an oe) A A Notes and Correspondence 
DP MMER NU UTERORD (oye vs cycle aie liek sisle gis, GNM EN Goh, Gig lb ehdve alt Forestry Notes 


ALBERT H. ALLEN, FRANcis P. FARQUHAR 
Wa ttTerR L. Huser, WILLIAM T. GoLpsBorOUGH, JosEPH N. LE Conte, 
ELLiott MCALLISTER, ELIZABETH M. BADE 


EDITORIALS 


> p 
GrovE Kart The passing of Dr. Gilbert after almost seventy-five years 
GILBERT* of activity deprives geological science of one of its ablest 


and most honored representatives. It is permitted to few 
men to leave an equally enviable record. To an unusual degree his work 
was distinguished by keenness of observation, by depth of penetration, 
by soundness in induction, and by clarity of exposition. It is doubtful 
whether the products of any other geologist of our day will escape re- 
vision at the hands of future research to a degree equal to the writings 
of Grove Karl Gilbert. And yet this is not assignable to limitation of 
field, or to simplicity of phenomena, or to restriction in treatment. The 
range of his inquiries was wide, his special subjects often embraced in- 
tricate phenomena, while his method was acutely analytical and his 
treatment tended always to bring into declared form the basal princi- 
ples that underlay the phenomena in hand. 

In the literature of our science the laccolith will doubtless always be 
associated with the name of Gilbert. In its distinctness as a type, in its 
uniqueness of character, and in the definite place it was given at once 
by common consent, one may almost fancy a figurative resemblance be- 
tween the laccolith and its discoverer and expositor. Gilbert’s mono- 
graphs on the Henry Mountains and on Lake Bonneville will long stand 
as unexcelled models of monograph treatment. His contributions to 
physiographic evolution, particularly his analysis of the processes that 
end in base-leveling, link his name with that of Powell, and give to 
these two close friends a unique place as joint leaders in interpreting 
morphologic processes. Glacial and hydraulic phenomena were also 
fields in which Gilbert’s powers as an investigator and expositor were 
signally displayed. 

In accuracy of delineation, in clearness of statement, and in grace of 
diction Gilbert’s contributions are certain long to stand as models of the 
first order. His personality was of the noblest type; he was a charming 
companion in the field; he was a trusted counselor in the study. The 
high place he has held in the esteem of co-workers is quite certain to 
merge into an even higher permanent place to be accorded him by the 
mature judgment of the future. Ox OF 


TuHEopoRE The new year had scarcely begun when the sad news was 
ROOSEVELT flashed around the world that America’s most distinguished 

citizen had crossed the last divide. Respected and admired 
throughout the civilized world, Theodore Roosevelt had become not 


— 


* Reprinted from The Journal of Geology, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, May-June, 1918. 


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Editorials 431 


only a national, but an international figure. Never before has it hap- 
pened in the English-speaking world that a man’s initials, like the 
familiar “T.R.,” could be used anywhere without fear of misunder- 
standing. The charm, force, and vividness of his personality were un- 
forgettable to all who came into contact with him, and he possessed the 
power of winning personal loyalty more than any other leader who has 
appeared in American public life. 

Roosevelt’s activities were too manifold even for a summary editorial 
review. But we must not leave unmentioned the fact that he was an 
ideal outdoor man. The very name and organization of his famous 
“Rough Riders” was an echo from the western plains where he chose 
for a time to live the life of a ranchman. Though frail in body during 
his boyhood, he developed a surprisingly vigorous physique by life in the 
open and by carefully planned exercises. As a big-game hunter, ex- 
plorer, and naturalist he has achieved lasting distinction. It is to be 
feared that the last of his great expeditions, the one which had for its 
object the exploration of a South American river now bearing his name, 
so undermined his health that it became the indirect cause of his un- 
timely death. 

Roosevelt was a man of superb strength, courage, and energy. Who 
else than he could have written more than forty books while engaging 
in activities that would have taxed the strength of half a dozen men? 
“I wish to preach,” he wrote years ago, “not the doctrine of ignoble 
ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of 
labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes 
not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does 
not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who 
out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” This is the man 
whom Europe chooses to consider the finest embodiment of American 
manhood! Fortunate is the country of which such a citizen can be con- 
sidered typical, even though we know that he was so exceptionally and 
gigantically American that he has left no peer among us. W.F.B. 


RoosEvVELT There has been before Congress for some time a proposal to 
NaTIONAL enlarge the Sequoia National Park so as to include the 
Park Kings and Kern River cafions and the wonderfully pictur- 

esque High Sierra watershed in which the tributaries of these 
rivers have their source, On account of the opposition of cattle and timber 
interests, especially those which center around Fresno, it has been diffi- 
cult to secure Congressional consideration of this project. The death 
of Theodore Roosevelt and the unique service he rendered to this coun- 
try in the conservation of its natural resources suggested to a number of 
men in public life the propriety of naming the enlarged park as a memo- 
rial for him. Senator Phelan and Congressman Elston accordingly in- 
troduced bills to that effect. The Senate immediately passed it with 


432 Sierra Club Bulletin 


enthusiasm, but cattle and timber interests, as well as the negative action 
of the Forest Service in asking for additional time to investigate 
(whereas they have already had five years in which to acquire this in- 
formation), have managed to delay action in the House of Representa- 
tives. Some, at least, of the sudden show of affection for the name 
Sequoia is known to have been deliberately stimulated by a concealed 
opposition. While it is a sound policy in principle not to change a name 
like Sequoia for that of a man, this surely is one of the cases where the 
principle is honored in the breach. We ought to recall that Roosevelt, 
in 1908, called the famous Conference of Governors at the White House 
in order to consider and provide for the conservation of our natural re- 
sources, and at this conference the importance of national parks was 
emphasized. “We want to take action that will prevent the advent of a 
woodless age,” he said in his remarkable opening address. Some idea 
of what he did may be gathered from the fact that near the close of his 
administration in 1908 there were 165 national forests, of which Roose- 
velt had created 143, and seven additional ones were created by him 
during the remainder of his administration. In other words, Roosevelt 
increased the national forest area from 46,000,000 to 194,000,000 acres— 
four times the original area and ten million acres to spare! In the face 
of facts like these one might expect all forest and park lovers to have 
patriotic reasons for taking the lead in securing the consummation of a 
project like the setting aside of the Roosevelt National Park. 

But these are not the only reasons that can be urged for the associ- 
ation of Roosevelt’s name with this measure. It was he who found the 
way and set the example of creating by Presidential proclamation 
twenty-three national monuments, whose unique, beautiful, and in some 
cases awe-inspiring, scenic features are now a precious possession of the 
American people. Other Presidents followed in his footsteps until now 
we have at least thirty-six of these monuments. But those created by 
Roosevelt constitute both in number and in character the most valuable 
part. Among them was the Grand Cafion of the Colorado, regarded by 
some foreign experts as the greatest scenic wonder in the world. If 
Roosevelt had not taken this action we probably would never have been 
able to enroll it among our national parks, as has just been done by act 
of Congress. 

Finally, Roosevelt during his administration secured the establish- 
ment of five additional national parks, comprising an area of 390,000 
acres, and established the precedent of urging the welfare of national 
parks upon the attention of Congress in his messages. No other man 
in American public life has done half as much to preserve for the use 
and enjoyment of the American people resources of forests, water- 
power, and scenery which are now an invaluable asset of our national 
wealth. 

Nor let us overlook what Roosevelt did by his foresight to win the 
great war, when, at the Conference of Governors in 1908, he sounded a 
trumpet-call to the nation in these words: “Finally, let us remember 


Editorials A323 


that the conservation of our natural resources, though the gravest prob- 
lem of today, is yet but part of another and greater problem to which 
this nation is not yet awake, but to which it will awake in time, and 
with which it must hereafter grapple if it is to live—the problem of 
national efficiency, the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and con- 
tinuance of the nation.” 

There has not been in the past, and we may question whether there 
can arise in the future, a man who so richly deserves to be memorial- 
ized in the establishment of a national park. W. FOB. 


Tue NaTionaL After reading the 1918 report of the Director of the 
Park Service National Park Service, we feel moved to express our 

warmest appreciation of the able and far-sighted man- 
agement of our national playgrounds by Director Stephen T. Mather. 
Altogether admirable was the firmness with which the Interior Depart- 
ment refused all applications for sheep-grazing in the parks. The more 
determined of the park invaders, cloaking their hope of private gain 
under a show of public service with mutton and wool, even applied to 
the Food Administration for aid in opening Rainier National Park to 
sheep. But Mr. Hoover promptly concurred in the view that “the Gov- 
ernment’s policy should be to decline absolutely all such requests.” It 
is a well-known fact that even a short period of grazing by sheep com- 
pletely destroys many species of beautiful wild flowers that are the 
glory of our mountain parks. Crater Lake Park, as Mr. Mather points 
out, has not recovered its extinguished flora after a lapse of twenty- 
five years. The damage done there by sheep is irreparable. 

Among features of the service which are deserving of special com- 
mendation and public support is the effort to turn the parks to practical 
account in the public schools. This is being done in classes of geog- 
raphy and general science through the medium of literature and picture 
portfolios, furnished by the National Park Service. A beginning has 
also been made with traveling exhibits of national park pictures, mo- 
tion-picture films, and lantern-slides. The need of restoring and pre- 
serving as much as possible the wild-life resources of the national parks 
has also received Mr. Mather’s careful attention. The presence of an 
abundant fauna greatly enhances the recreational appeal which a peo- 
ple’s playground makes to the traveling public, and thus increases its 
potential economic value as well. 

A fact of good augury for the steady growth and development of our 
national park system is the Congressional authorization of the Secre- 
tary of the Interior to accept gifts of land areas and other property 
that will improve the parks, A considerable number of important gifts 
for such purposes have already been made, notably that of the old Tioga 
Road, in the Yosemite Park, and a section of the Giant Forest—both of 
them invaluable additions to the parks. We are so filled with enthusi- 


434 Sierra Club Bulletin 


asm over the showing made by the National Park Service during the 
past year that we ardently hope Congress will speedily transfer to this 
service the ten national monuments which by a strange anomaly still 
remain under the control of another department. W.F.B. 


BEQUEST Lieutenant Robert S. Gillett, a member of the club, and 
TO THE resident of Hartford, Connecticut, gave his life for his 
SrerRA CLUB country in an airplane accident in Texas, September 17, 

1918. We are proud to have had so brave a spirit as his 
on our honor roll. He had a real love for the Sierra, and his widow 
writes that his admiration for John Muir was limitless. His will pro- 
vides for a bequest of one thousand dollars to the Sierra Club, to be 
used for the maintenance of the John Muir Trail or toward the upkeep 
of the Parsons Memorial Lodge in Tuolumne Meadows. 

It is worthy of note that the two bequests which have been made to 
the club have come from those who reside far from the Sierra. Ed- 
ward Whymper, the world-famed mountaineer of England, left the club 
fifty pounds in his will, and now this recent bequest comes from one 
who resided across the continent. Can it be that these generous non- 
residents have a greater love and appreciation of the Sierra and of the 
work the club is striving to accomplish than those of us who live in 
California? The Appalachian Club has received many and substantial 
bequests and gifts from its members. Perhaps the thought has not 
occurred to our own members yet. There are a multitude of worthy 
objects in line with the work of the club, to which such gifts, large or 
small, could be devoted. We BuG: 


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REPORTS OF COMMITTEES 
- 


TREASURER’S REPORT 


To the Directors of the Sierra Clubi: 


I beg to submit the following report on the finances of the Sierra 
Club covering the period from January 1, 1918, to January 1, I919: 


Prremeey Cas On hand: January 1) TOTS... 2.) c's). cele esse cites $2,658.57 
Receipts during the year: 
Mes GOR BRCIIDELS) Visio ced ee lee ey $3,664.75 
mvementisements 1 BULLETIN, |..'\.0....4.-. 0.00.00 2 350.00 
ipescston)Fermanent Fund ).....0.0..0000 00.000 .5 250.00 
PMA MPO OUI) AOR sede ale sei sie ale, Gales wiaie db gid eleld ae lass 50.00 
ee OMOLBDENS Ne Uy alg eh elec aise dass sa dleleles 21.60 
EMMONS Ve ieee eae Cdn o cece sdile dee doe cleld 19.50 
inmerest Om sayings accounts. :...... 000.00... 0.08% 41.24 
Pmeemecironm iperty Bond 3.0... ek ee 8 14.90 
Increased valuation of War Savings Stamps....... 6.00 
SGA SMAIE TECEIDES Ls kee cle le eee e eee see's 50.75 
a Po 
$7,127.32 
Expenditures during the year: 
Remon Toons 402) ad! A088 e ee loo ode es $ 720.00 
Saiany Or assistamt Secretary. 16s. cis a s/o 6 Yee wee o's 930.00 
Printing, postage and delivery of BULLETIN No. 53.. 1,505.09 
Amount paid to Southern California Section....... 400.75 
Office expenses, postage, stationery, etc............ 233.87 
Meclepuone and telegraph’ service’... 00.050 ke 129.89 
Me; Cante Memorial Podge iii) ei akon lee. 165.90 
Bassons. Wemotial Modge ie 3 ie ot sik sc le eels 378.51 
TES SIS ANG A OTTER NTO es iC 51.44 
POea Av AKS PEUIMIMONETO Ue ee ee wd 50.00 
Cin ey Cea GUT A ER A 48.10 
Be ey LOMO MEG NEMMISIM uve lemre shelsic eg MIR Sug ales we 38.00 
PEM em CATE EA iis le WPL belin ale ele so vides 9.00 
imeerest; debit om Wiberty Bond’. .c). 00002. ee 6.87 
Miscellaneous small expenses 0.0). a ee 45.45 
AiGtAWeRPenSese nis Vu Wo Dee ule ales. $4,712.87 
Cash on hand iantiaty Hi TOTO... oleae es ee ek a 2,414.45 


——— $7,127.32 


436 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Cash on hand distributed as follows: 


IndurstuiNational (Banks). wi.[5 eseise kee eee $ 570.75 
In Security savings ‘Bank” 73.) dees eee eee 263.19 
In:SavinessUnion Bank and Trust'Gols. see 698.51 
lia Wart savings Stamps: iin4.c8 fc Re. oe ee 848.00 
Cash uniSecretaty s drawer vine eee ee 25.00 
$2,414.45 
Permanent Fund: 
Balance in tund Jantiaty 1) OIG... 2.5502. -)-e ee $2,107.42 
New: life memberships... ae ce ee eee 150.00 
nberest= to dae \< 2s eh cd wereeo ioe erent pe ene 52.32 
——__ — $2;409. 74. 
Interest withdrawn for Parsons, Lodge: ..3. 2.2.24: )05. Gee 250.00 
$2,059.74 
Distributed as follows: 
Bond of the Third Liberty oan 7 22555050408 $1,000.00 
Bond of the Fourth Liberty Loan ..3.....2:4.%. 1,000.00 
Cash in) Sectirity Savings Bank jcc ees nes 50.74 
—_— $2,059.74 


Respectfully submitted, 
Josep N, Le Conte, Treasurer 


Parsons MEMorRIAL LODGE 
CUSTODIAN’S REPORT FOR 1918 


Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park 


I reached the Lodge July 5th by horse over the Tenaya Trail. The club 
is much indebted to Mr. Lewis, the superintendent of the Park, for as- 
sistance in enabling me to reach the lodge at this date, and also for 
many other favors. The lodge and log hut had been broken open dur- 
ing the winter, and the whole place, inside and out, was in a bad state 
of disorder. 

Travel began on the Tioga Road July 6th, the first cars reporting the 
only snow to be a little patch at the summit. The river was then very 
low and there was hardly any snow on the mountain peaks. Weather 
conditions have been ideal all summer—cold frosty nights, ice in the 
teakettle almost any morning, warm sunny days, and the mosquitoes 
all gone by July roth. During my stay we had five thunder and rain- 
storms, the lodge affording dry shelter to all near-by campers. 

Our visitors numbered one thousand, from July 5th to closing day, 
September 18th. Some of them camped for a while near us, and all 
were interested in what I could tell them about the trails, roads, fishing 


Reports of Committees A277, 


and the mountain peaks. Not quite one hundred were members of the 
club. The Soda Springs are always appreciated; a number of people 
told me they made the trip in this year solely for the benefits of the 
water. It was often suggested that a store should be maintained in the 
meadows, that all the trails should be carefully marked, and that horses 
should be kept for rent at reasonable prices. I recommend that the 
club build gateways over the Tioga Road where it enters and leaves club 


property. VIVIAN YARBROUGH, 


Sacramento, Cal. 


NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 
- 


Geological Survey, Dept. Mines, Sydney, New South Wales, 
April 30, 1913. 
Ww. E. Corsy, Sierra Club. 

Dear Mr. Colby: Very many thanks for your latest number of the 
SrerrA CLuB BULLETIN. Each time it comes along the many beautiful 
illustrations carry me back to the time when I spent a most delightful 
holiday in your Sierran region, In the midst of magnificent scenery and 
in company with one of your noblest natures, I learned to love every 
inch of the great Sierras. The man I refer to is Dr. G. K. Gilbert, a 
man worthy surely of rank with your John Muir. He it was who taught 
me the names of all your forest trees and their geographical distribu- 
tion. He it was who read to us of a night under the forest canopy of 
the deeds of King in the Sierra, and who told us of the lives of Galen 
Clark, John Muir in the Sierras and of John W. Powell in the Grand 
Cafion. He it was who showed me the paraboloid spider’s web in Wa- 
wona, who showed me the fault scarp under Mt. Dana, who urged me 
with Willard D. Johnson to behold the panorama from the summit of 
Mt. Davidson, who showed me the glacial polish of the Tuolumne, the 
peculiarities of Fairview and Lambert’s Dome, the view sublime from 
Cloud’s Rest, and a thousand other things equally glorious and enchant- 
ing. 

To me in quiet moments often come the rustle of the aspen leaves, 
the scent of the fir and pine forests, the stateliness of the Sequoias, the 
rush of the San Joaquin torrents, the peculiar cries and calls of the 
woodpecker and the jay, the splash of the water-ouzel, the innocent ap- 
pearance of the poison oak, the overwhelming majesty of the Yosemite 
walls and the glory of the mountain outlooks. I am, yours sincerely, 

E, C. ANDREWS 


[Ed. Note: Dr. Andrews is one of the foremost glacialogists of the world. ] 


CLUB ALPIN FRANCAIS 


Reconnu d’utilité publique par décret du 31 Mars, 1882 


Rue du Bac, 30, Paris, le 4 Juillet, 1918 


; Independence Da 
Monsieur et Trés Honoré Président, ( P ») 


Nous avons bien recu, en son temps, votre lettre du 3 Janvier, et nous 
vous remercions bien vivement de votre adhésion au Congrés de 1’Al- 
pinisme. Nous sommes heureux de voir votre nom figurer parmi nos 


Notes and Correspondence 439 


Présidents d’Honneur. Le concours de l’Amerique est tout particuliére- 
ment apprécié, et nous avons donc maintenant avec nous: 


—Sierra Club 
—American Alpine Club 
—Alpine Club of Canada 


Nous comptons que vous pourrez nous envoyer des Délégués pour 
représenter votre association, lorsque la Réunion sera fixé. Mais pour 
cela il faut d’abord obtenir la victoire contre les Barbares, nous avons 
la plus grande confiance, vos armées arrivent en grand nombre pour 
combattre avec nous, et déja nous admirons leur vaillance. 

Nous fétons aujourd’hui avec vous l’Independence Day, le Drapeau 
étoilé flotte a coté du Drapeau tricolore, la joie est dans nos coeurs! 
C’est l’aurore de la victoire! C’est ainsi que j’ai désiré vous écrire en 
ce jour qui consacre l’étroite union de nos armées et de nos peuples. 

Nous étions allés chez vous avec notre La Fayette pour défendre la 
liberté de lAmerique, vous venez aujourd’hui avec nous défendre la 
liberté du monde! 

Je vous prie de recevoir, trés honoré Président, l’assurance de nos 


meilleurs et distingués sentiments. Baron E. CApEr 


Vice-Président du Club Alpin Frangais 
President du Congres de l’Alpinisme 


[TRANSLATION ] 


FRENCH ALPINE CLUB 
Recognized as of Public Service by the Decree of March 31, 1882 


30 Rue du Bac, Paris, July 4, 1918 


(Independence Day) 
Sir and Highly Honored President: 


We received in due time your letter of the 3d of January, and we 
thank you warmly for your consent to participate in the Alpine Con- 
gress. Weare happy to see your name take its place among our Hon- 
orary Presidents. The participation of America is exceptionally appre- 
ciated, and we have, so far, with us:—The Sierra Club, the American 
Alpine Club, and the Alpine Club of Canada. 

We are counting on your being able to send delegates to represent 
your organization, when the date for the meeting shall be fixed. But 
for that it first is necessary to win the victory over the Barbarians. We 
have the utmost confidence; your armies are arriving in great number 
to fight along with us, and already we are admiring their valor, 

We are celebrating today, with you, Independence Day; the Starry 
Banner floats beside the Tricolor, and joy is in our hearts. It is the 
dawn of victory! It is in view of these circumstances that I have desired 
to write you on this day, which consecrates the intimate union of our 
armies and our peoples, 


440 Sierra Club Bulletin 


We had gone to your country wth our La Fayette to defend the lib- 
erty of America; today you are coming with us to defend the liberty of 
the world. 

Accept, I pray you, Mr. President, the assurance of our best and 


highest regards. Baron F. GABET 


Vice-President of the French Alpine Club 
President of the Alpine Congress 
Sir and Highly Honored President: Paris, the 6th of December, 1918 

We have the honor to forward to you herewith a List of Committees 
which are to be organized for the Alpine Congress. The complete vic- 
tory won by the Allies against the Central Empires enables us now to 
foresee that the Congress can be held in the course of a few months. 
We shall then be able to celebrate together the liberty of the world in 
paying a glorious tribute to our valiant armies that have smitten to 
earth the Barbarians. 

Accept, Mr. President, the expression of my high regard. 

The President of the Alpine Congress 
Baron F. GABET 


Dear Mr. Colby: 

Please add to the Sierra Club’s records a note to the effect that Mt. 
Thompson—latitude 37° 08.5’ N., longitude 118° 37’ W., Mt. Goddard 
Quadrangle—elevation 13,494 feet, was ascended by Clarence H. Rhudy 
and H. F. Katzenbach during the summer of 1909. So far as known, 
this is the first ascent of Mt. Thompson. 

I also wish to call your attention to a peak almost directly west of 
Mt. Thompson about two and one-half miles, being in latitude 37° 814’ 
N., longitude 118° o4’ W., and having an elevation of 12,224 feet. This 
peak is very well known locally as Mt. Hurd, although it has so far re- 
mained on the Mt. Goddard Quadrangle of the U.S. Geological Survey. 
It stands free of the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains directly 
above South Lake, from which it has a very striking appearance. Its 
name is derived from the late Mr. H. C. Hurd, an engineer who, while 
making certain explorations of this region, climbed it in 1906. So far 
as known, this was the first ascent. It was again ascended in I909 by 
Clarence H. Rhudy and James Kevil. Can you not take steps to have 
this name placed on the Geological Survey Quadrangle? 

Very sincerely, 
January 6, 1919. nt W. L. HuBER 


ASSOCIATED MOUNTAINEERING CLUBS OF NorTH AMERICA 


The membership of the Bureau for 1918 consisted of the following or- 
ganizations, comprising over 20,000 individuals: 

American Alpine Club, Philadelphia and New York. 

American Game Protective Association, New York. 


Notes and Correspondence 441 


American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
Adirondack Camp and Trail Club, Lake Placid Club, N. Y. 
Appalachian Mountain Club, Boston and New York. 
British Columbia Mountaineering Club, Vancouver. 
Colorado Mountain Club, Denver. 

Field and Forest Club, Boston. 

Fresh Air Club, New York. 

Geographic Society of Chicago. 

Geographical Society of Philadelphia. 

Green Mountain Club, Rutland, Vermont. 

Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, Honolulu. 
Klahhane Club, Port Angeles, Wash. 

Mazamas, Portland, Oregon. 

Mountaineers, Seattle and Tacoma. 

National Association of Audubon Societies, New York. 
National Park Service, Washington. 

New York Zoological Society. 

Prairie Club, Chicago. 

Rocky Mountain Climbers’ Club, Boulder, Colorado. 
Sagebrush and Pine Club, Yakima, Wash. 

Sierra Club, San Francisco and Los Angeles. 


The annual Bulletin of the Association was published in May. As very 
few books on mountaineering were published during the year, many 
books of travel and outdoor life were sent free of charge for the library 
of each club or society. Many individual members from all parts of 
the country have called to inspect the large collection of mountaineer- 
ing books and photographs in the New York Public Library, 

An important feature of the work of the Bureau is co-operation with 
the National Park Service. First in the hearts of all true mountain- 
eers is the preservation of our finest mountain regions from commercial 
ruination. In many ways the future welfare of the nation depends on 
the protection of our forested watersheds, and on the permanent re- 
tention of our rich heritage of tree and flower, of bird and animal life. 
Several of our most wonderful regions have not yet been made national 
parks; many of our parks should at once be increased in size; others 
should have sufficient appropriation to insure their proper patrol and 
development. Mountaineers are often the first to visit new regions of 
wonder and beauty. Is it not their highest privilege to be foremost in 


their protection ? LeRoy JEFFERS, Secretary 
Librarian American Alpine Club, 476 Fifth Ave., New York 


INCREASED SHEEPING ENDANGERS WILD LIFE 


Great pressure is being brought to bear to so change the regulations re- 
garding grazing in the national forests as to allow sheeping in national 
parks and increased sheeping in national forests. This may sound 


442 Sierra Club Bulletin 


favorable so far as increased meat supply is concerned, but any one who 
has seen the deep traces left in sections where sheep have grazed will 
shudder to think what results are to be expected. Many are the worn- 
out meadows, deeply gullied, which now testify to the past inroads of 
herds of sheep, and many the depleted game-covers where the tramp- 
ling of nests and the destruction of food has reduced upland game 
birds to the minimum. These are dangerous times, and every conserva- 
tionist must help form the army of defense needed to save wild life in 
this emergency when special opportunity to devastate wild-life resources 
is given the enemy.—Califormia Fish and Game, April, 1918. 


The great public service of John Muir was leading the nation, through 
his writings, to appreciate the grandeur of our mountains and the beauty 
and variety of their plant and animal life, and the consequent necessity 
for holding forever as a heritage for all the people the most precious of 
these great scenic areas. Probably to his leadership more than to that 
of any other man is due the adoption of the policy of national parks.— 
President Van Hise. 


Dear Mr. Colby: Yosemite, Cal., October 23, 1918 


The mountain lions are growing very fine—and I am very proud of 
them. They are as tame as kittens, and I rather flatter myself that they 
always will be. All my little children handle them like kittens, and 
Gabrielle, my youngest daughter, helps mother and myself to take care 
of them and takes them out for exercise one by one. 

They are about six months old now, and I believe they must weigh 
over 30 pounds apiece. I am enclosing some postals that were made 
when they were about twelve days old and some that Mr. Boysen took a 
few days ago. I will try to have some taken in the group, but do not 
know whether we will succeed or not, as they are very restless beasts 
and full of play. 

I will send specimens from time to time to the club as they grow. 
They eat everything that is given to them in the line of cereals, with 
an exception of cornmeal; but I think it is due to their ignorance that 
we are at war with Germany and it is necessary to use substitutes. We 
will break them in to it, as I believe it will be good for them. We do 
not feed them raw meat at all—just scraps of meat from the table. I 
wonder if Mr. Enos A. Mills would not give us some suggestions in 
regard to bringing them up. 

With kindest regards to Mrs. Colby, Professor and Mrs. Le Conte 
and yourself, from Mrs. Sovulewski, kiddies and myself, I remain 

Yours very truly, 
GABRIEL SOVULEWSKI 


STERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCXXXV. 


MOUNTAIN LION CUB-TEN DAYS OLD 
One of three captured in Yosemite National Park in May, 1918 


Photos by Boysen 


Sore. 


Mrs. Sovulewski with one of the mountain lion cubs she raised 


on a bottle in Yosemite Valley 


(See page 442) 


STERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCXXXVI. 


i ABOVE THE WAPITE 


A TWO:-FOOT COTTONWOOD CUT BY BEAVERS 


Note the pile of chips around the stump 


Notes and Correspondence 443 


78th Battery C. W. A., 


Dear Mrs. Parsons: Petawawa, Ont., June g, 1918 


I have been a long while answering your letter of March 26th, but the 
last few months have been the most eventful of a varied life of adven- 
ture. 

We were a month late in getting away on our trip to the north and 
so were delayed the whole trip. Had we left Grand Prairie up in Peace 
River country early in January, as formerly planned, we would have 
had good ice-traveling after the New Year’s thaw. But when we got 
there a lot of new snow had fallen and was so dry and soft that dogs 
could do nothing in it; so instead of going up the Wapite, as we in- 
tended, on the ice, we had to follow the trail via Beaverlodge and Red- 
willow settlements, and had to get a team to haul our outfits to the end 
of civilization, and then we followed a pack trail via Callahoo Lake and 
struck the Wapite at the junction of Sheep River with the Wapite. We 
had good going up Sheep River for four days to the cabin built in 
November; but it was very cold and our grub ran out, and we were 
pretty tired and worn out from lack of food and exposure when we 
landed at camp. We found the snow very deep up there and all the 
game had migrated to a lower altitude, and we had passed many moose 
on the way up, but now could not get any feed for our dogs. So after 
_a week of fruitless hunting we had to go back down the river for meat 
for our starving dogs, and hauled it back to base camp up the river. 
Later we got good going and worked northward along the outer ranges, 
exploring for sheep and elk, neither of which we found any farther 
north than we had previously found them. We got into a great caribou 
country, and for a while never saw less than fifty ina day. These were 
days of plenty and our dogs got fat. About the middle of March it 
commenced to thaw and the ice got bad in the rivers inside the moun- 
tains, and by the first of April we could only travel at night and early 
in the morning, and we started back to base camp. On April 14th we 
left base camp to return to civilization, expecting to make it in about 
six or seven days, as it was all down hill and ice to go on. But there 
came a sudden thaw that raised the water and broke up the ice, and at 
the end of the third day we had only covered twenty-five miles of the 
160 and the ice was no longer to be traveled upon, so we built a raft 
and put our stuff on it; but the river was small and shallow and in 
many places still bridged over with ice, and we would have to take the 
raft apart and haul the logs over the ice to open water again. We had 
two days of that and then a larger flood, and we had to lay up two days 
while the ice ran past us. The third day we started again and only 
went a mile or so when we were swept under a log jam and the raft 
turned completely over, but we rescued everything except our dog har- 
ness. For the next few days we never made more than two miles any 
one day, as we caught up to the ice and the water fell, and it would not 
run out, just melting slowly from the rear. We were completely out 


444 Sierra Club Bulletin 


of grub, and, as we had a cache at the forks, we did not want to kill a 
moose until we absolutely had to, as we had a game warden along with 
us, but finally we had to do it. But just when we wanted one we could 
not get it and lived on squirrels and bear-root for a couple of days. 
When we did get a moose he was the oldest and toughest bull in the 
province of Alberta and we could not eat it, but boiled large pails of it 
and drank the broth, which was not very satisfying, and we were get- 
ting weaker each day. On the 2oth the water started rising rapidly, and 
on the 30th the ice pulled about fifteen miles. We gave it an hour and 
followed. That was the most exciting afternoon of the whole trip. The 
river was running like a millrace and full of rocks and stranded ice- 
bergs, and we went over two falls that we could not see on our way up, 
as the ice was level over them in February. We went under both times, 
but the prospect of grub ahead cheered us and we only laughed. Round- 
ing a bend there was ice jammed on the right; so we steered for the 
left, and swinging sharply around the point a big boulder loomed up 
directly in our path and we struck it head on and the ropes that lashed 
the front end together parted and the raft spread out like a fan and all 
our stuff fell through. We caught my sled, which had all our speci- 
mens on and most of our equipment, and managed to get it back up on 
the raft and crosswise of the logs, as the rear end was up on the boulder 
out of the water. Then I got a rope and got down in the icy water and 
pulled the logs together and made temporary repairs while cakes of ice 
striking the rear end threatened to start us on again. With a shove we 
were away again and poling madly for an eddy on the opposite side a 
half mile below. We just made it and tied up and took stock of our 
losses. The game warden had lost everything except his camera and 
glasses, which he had on his back at the time. All our cooking outfit 
was gone except one tin plate and a tea-pail and all but one piece of the 
moose meat. Making all safe again we started on, the poor dogs having 
all they could do to keep up on the shore. We found the dog-feed pail 
on a bar and recovered it, but that was all, mile after mile of mad water 
and ice cakes until our nerves were strained to breaking point and 
poles were broken or wrenched from our hands, and we would land and 
get a fresh supply. Just before dark we caught up to the ice again, now 
piled ten to twelve feet high. Wet and cold, we landed and hung our 
things up to let the water drip out of them and built a big fire of dry 
cottonwood, and, supperless, lay down exhausted. In the morning the 
ice was out of sight, but too much still running to risk rafting; so two 
of us started at daylight for the cache five miles below. Had to build a 
small raft to get over to it and bring some back to our side, where we 
cooked some rice, bacon and cornmeal mush. It was so long since I 
had had a square meal that two cups of mush made me feel as if I had 
swallowed a bale of hay, and I could hold no more. The next day we 
moved down to the cache and added a couple more logs to our raft and 
ran out into the large rapid-flowing Wapite, and in twenty hours made 


Notes and Correspondence 445 


the hundred miles to Grand Prairie. I came straight to Calgary, as I 
was late for reporting, and joined the 78th Battery, and a few days 
later we started for the East, and here I am in uniform at Petawawa, 
out where all the Canadian artillery train during the summer. It is a 
beautiful spot to the eye when the sand is not blowing. The Ottawa 
River, two miles wide here and full of islands, flows by the camp on one 
side and the smaller Petawawa on the other. Naturally, I don’t like 
the life, but it is not what one likes now; it is what has to be done. A 
draft is already called, but I missed it. I may be here a month or two 
yet before getting overseas. Bob Wilkins is in charge of my outfit at 
Jasper, and I hope some day I may have the pleasure of taking you out 


for another trip. Sincerely 


DoNALD PHILLIPS 


Dear Mr. Colby: Wellcroft, Helensburgh, April 9, 1918 


By yesterday’s mail I received a S1rErRA CLuB BULLETIN (Vol. Io, No. 
3). No letter came with it, and I am putting you down as the sender. 
First, I must thank you for it, I see it contains many fine pictures and 
a lot of articles which should provide interesting reading if one can tear 
one’s self away from the war bulletins. 

I see you have a war service record. We of the Scottish Mountain- 
eering Club have such a record. Out of a membership of about 180, 
some 50 are on service, and about a dozen have been killed. Our presi- 
dent’s son, Charles Inglis Clark, was killed last month. 

So far, none of your friends have shown up here; but I am expecting 
them sometime as soon as their more pressing engagements in France 
have been disposed of. I shall make it my care to give them as good a 
time as I can, and show them as much of bonnie Scotland as they have a 
mind to view. Red Cross work, volunteering, and digging in my gar- 
den for extra food keep me busy. 

With many thanks to you, and greetings to all Sierrans, 

Yours truly, J. RENNIE, 
Scot. Mtg. Club 


(Mr. Rennie is a brother of James Rennie of our Club, and was at one time Presi- 
dent of the Scottish Mountaineering Club.) 


Monn Sin: Alpine Club, 23 Savile Row, London W., June to, 1918 


It has occurred to us that some of the members of your club may be 
over on this side. Should this be the case we shall be very glad if they 
will look in here whenever they may find it convenient, and we shall be 
very much pleased to see them. 

Unfortunately, there will be very few of us to welcome them, as 
hardly anyone comes here except to our general meetings, and these are 


446 Sierra Club Bulletin 


over until the 15th of October; but they may like to see the club and 
look at our pictures and library, 


With very hearty greetings, Iam 
Yours very truly, 
C. H. R. WoLEAsTON, 
The Hon. Secretary, Sierra Club, Hon. Sec. 
San Francisco 


AqloD “A WA Aq oj04g 
WAVd ‘IVNOILWN ALINASOA ‘SMOGVAN ANWOTONL “MXO1 TIAAT JO GVaH 
\ 


“IIAXXXO9 FLvi1d 


*X “IOA ‘NILATING ANT vuuUgIsS 


laqnyy "J 1911e8M Aq ojoydg 
ANVI MOCGVHS WOU NVAd VANNVE GNV AALLIA LNOOW 


*X “IOA ‘NILAI1NG €NTO vaUuTIS 


“IIIAXXX)O) ALVId 


SIERRA CLUB HONOR ROLL 


> 


ABEEL, Ensign Epwin A., U.S.N.R.F., U.S.S. “Savannah.” 
spree Major Arsert H., Comdt. Occidental College, Los Angeles Co., 
al. 

ARNOLD, Ratpo, Tax Reviewer War Revenue Act, Los Angeles, Cal. 
ATKINSON, FLoRENCE E., Medical Dept., U.S. A., Fort Snelling, Minn. 
Base, LEonora M. 

Barr, MarKELL C., Ordnance Training Camp, Camp Hancock, Ga. 
Barney, Lieut. C. R., F. A. N.S.A., P.O. 711, A. E. F., France. 
*Barrows, Lieut.-Col. Davin P., Philippines and Siberia. 

Bearp, D. L., Red Cross, Italy. 

BeEckwitTH, Lieut. Hotmgs, Field Artillery, 

Best, Capt. E. J.. M.R.C., Base Hospital 30, A. E. F., France. 

BLAKE, Capt. Epwin T., Engineers, France. 

BuiicHFELDT, H. F., Range Firing Sec., Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. 
Brown, J. G. 

Bruce, Lieut. L. E., Union Iron Works, San Francisco. 

Butt, Epitu, Red Cross. 

Burpee, WALTER A., O. T.S., Camp Zachary Taylor, Ky. 

a iia FLORENCE C., Chief Surgeon, Division of Orthopedics, A. E. F., 

rance. 

CAMPBELL, RoBERT, 116th Engineers, A. E. F., France. 

CHAMBERLAIN, Major Fiver C., Cons, Q. M., Camp Travis, Texas. 
CHAMBERLAIN, Capt. Epmunp, U.S. M.C., Aviation Section, France. 
CuHapMAN, Major R. H., Washington, D. C. 

CLEMENS, Chaplain Jos. 

Curr, Francis Kester, Mine Sweeping Division, Staten Island, N. Y. 
CorricaNn, Lieut. J. LE Roy, Camp Lee, Va. 

Craven, Lieut: ALEX R.,’C. A. N: A. A. E. F., France. 

Currier, Set. FaRNsworTtTH, Machine Gun Battalion. 

DEAN, Mrs. SHERMAN W. (née Barton), Y. W.C.A., Paris 

Dose, Lieut. JouN AsHTON, Ordnance Dept., San Francisco, 

DoyLe, DorotHy, Red Cross nurse student, Lane Hosp., San Francisco. 
Drum, Joun S., State Director of War Savings for northern California 

and member Capital Issues Committee, Washington, D. C. 

DursBin, EMMA PittiNceER, Base Hospital, Camp Lewis, Wash. 
EINSTEIN, LESLEY, R. O. T. C., Camp Lewis, Wash. 

ELuioTtt, Lieut. Ropert P., Aviation, France. 

Emerson, Capt. Grorce D., Const. Division, U.S. A. 

Farouuar, Lieut. Francis P., Pay Corps, U.S.N.R.F., Navy Depart- 

ment, Washington, D. C. 

FINLey, Capt. Dozier, Frankfort Arsenal, Bridesburg, Pa. 

fisn, DD, Rd. Clerk, O. M.C., ‘A. E. F., France. 

Erost, Capt, Dower C.,' M,C.) U.S.A. 

GARDINER, Joyce, Y. W.C.A., Redwood City, Cal. 

GipnEy, Ensign H, D., U.S. N.R.F., San Francisco. 
+GILLETT, Lieut. Rost. S., 191st Aerial Squadron. 

GopparD, MALCoLM. 

GoLpszBorouGH, Lieut. Wm. T., Amer. Air Service, A. E. F., France. 


* Appointed Knight of the Order of the Crown by the Belgian Government. 
7 Killed in aeroplane accident September 17, 1918. 


448 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Gorpon, Otive, Y. M. C. A. Canteen, France. 

GRAHAM, Lieut. H. B., M.C., U.S. N.R. F., Paris Islands Sac: 
*GREGORY, WARREN, Belgian Relief. 

Gripprer, Lieut. PAu C., 21st Infantry, San Diego, Cal. 

Gruss, Lieut. D. H. 

Hackett, Lieut. C. Netson, 810th Pioneer Infantry, Camp Greene, N. C. 
HALi, ANSEL F., 20th Engineers, A. E. F., France. 

Hami ton, Dr. Jas. K. 

Hansen, Harvey L., Convois Automibiele, A. E. F., France. 
ELARRELL, Lieut. Et. J.; J. G:, U. SAN. Roe 

HARSHBERGER, Capt. C. E., Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. A. 
HaskELL, Lieut. L. G., Artillery, Fort Monroe, Va. 

HASzLetTr, Ensien S. M.,; U.S.S. “Decatur” 

HEALD, Major CLARENCE E., 56th Ammunition Train, Camp Eustis, Va. 
HEFLINGER, Epwarp A., Commission Dept., Allentown, Pa. 

Hickox, JosEPH O., 32nd Infantry, Camp Kearny, Cal. 

Hoag, Dr Cai; 

Hott, Lieut.. Rost. L., U.S. N:, Chief Executive, U.S. S. “Cacique? 
HussBarp, H. V. S., Co. C, 508th Engineers, Ser. Batt., A. E. F., France, 
JoLiFFE, GLapys, U.S. Naval Hospital, Washington, D. C. 
+KELLOGG, VERNON L., Belgian Relief. 

Kinc, Grace, Red Cross, Base Hospital, Camp Kearny, Cal. 

Kune, Lieut. G. R. 

Koro, Major C. A., Sanitary Corps. 

Kroti, Capt. FrEDERICc, Medical Corps. 

Leg, Lieut. Cares H. 

Levy, Lieut. Gaston J., Chemical Warfare Service, A. E. F., France. 
Lewis, Major Girpert N., Gas Service Dept., Washington, D. C. 
LipMAN, Epw. C., Yeoman 2nd Class, U.S. N.R.F., Union Iron Works, 

San Hrancisco, 

Lipman, Sgt. Rost. L., Ordnance Depot Co., Camp Greene, N. C. 
Losu, Lieut. Wm. J., U.S. Aviation Service, A. E. F., France. 
MALONE, FLORENCE L., P. J., Unit 9, N. Y. 

Matvitte, Lieut. N. J., A. R.C., American Red Cross, France, 
MarsHALL, Lieut.-Col. Rost. B., U.S. G.S., Washington, D. C. 
Mavers, Lieut. E. A., Signal Officer, U.S. A., Washington, D. C. 
McApte, Lieut.-Commander Atex., U.S.N.R. F. 

McCLeave, Capt. T. C., Medical Reserve Corps, U.S.A. 

McDurrigz, Duncan, Food Administration, Washington, D. C. 

McGee, Capt. RatpH C., Supply Train, 89th Div., A. E. F., France. 
MeEaps, Dr. A. M. 

Miter; Ensien Homer Tf. US. N.R: F., U.S.S. “Fanamoz 
Morrow, Miss Wize I., Red Cross, France. 

Norton, O. SarcENT, Tank Corps, Camp Colt, Gettysburg, Pa. 
OLNEY, WarREN, Jr., Chairman Appeal Board, Military Registration, 
PaRKINSON, Lieut, J. H., Sanitary Train. 

Parsons, Mrs. Marion R., Red Cross, Landes, France. 

Paxton, Bricut R., Aero Squadron, San Diego. 

Perry, Set. Henry L., Ambulance Co. 

Prerson, WARREN L. 

Potter, Mrs. ELizABETH GRAY, Red Cross, France. 

PRENTYS, RoLAND W. 

Putnam, NaTHAN, Railway Engineers, France. 


* Appointed an officer of the Order of the Crown by the Belgian Government. 
+ Appointed Commander of the Order of the Crown by the Belgian Government. 


~~ 


Sierra Club Honor Roll AAQ 


RANKIN, CHARLES, Regiment A, Pelham Bay Park, N.Y, 
RANKIN, Lieut. Joun W., Aviation Section, Signal Reserve Corps. 
Reep, Capt. J. Ross, Medical Reserve Corps. 
RENTCHLER, LAWRENCE, Aerial Photo, Sec. 32, Eberto Field, Lonoke, Ark. 
Rogerts, W. C., Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. A., San Francisco. 
Roppa, ALFRED Gray, 2nd Artillery, C. A. C., France. 
moss, Grorce, 2nd P.O., U.S. N., U.S. S. “Birmingham.” 
Ryerson, Set.-Major Know tes A.,1st Batt., loth Engineers (Forestry), 
France. 
SANDOVAL, Ensign H. E., U.S. N. 
See, Capt. T. J. J.. Naval Observatory, Mare Island, Cal. 
SmitH, Capt. Joun J., Medical Reserve Corps, Fort McDowell, Cal. 
Sm1tTH, STuART, Sec. 616, Ambulance Corps, Allentown, Pa. 
Stanton, H. W., Master Gunner, Fort MacArthur, Cal. 
STEWART, CoLEENA, Y. M. C. A. Canteen, London, England. 
STILLMAN, Dr. STANLEY, Medical Officers’ Reserve Corps. 
STOCKING, E. L., Co. C, 18th Railway Engineers, A. E. F., France. 
StronGc, Epwarp K., Jr., War Department, Washington, D. C. 
Swinpt, Capt. J. K., France. 
TAppAAN, C. S., Y. M.C. A., France. 
Tuurston, Capt. E. T., Engineer Reserve Corps, Vancouver, Wash. 
TompkINs, Lieut. AVERY, Washington, D. C. 
TorMEY, JULIAN C., 182nd Infantry Brigade, A. E. F., France. 
Trevorrow, Wm. J., Mare Island, Cal. 
Van DecriFt, TYLER R., 7th Batt., 166th Depot Brigade. 
Van Hacen, Sayer, Y. M.C. A., Cauterets, Haute Pyrénées, France. 
Wuite, Geo. W., Battery D, 144th Regt. Field Artillery. 
Wuitt te, Lieut. Geo. D., Engineer Corps. 
WILKIE, ISABELLE, Y. M. C. A. Canteen, France. 
WITTER, ELIzABETH L., Red Cross, France. 
Woop, Capt. Harry O., Engineer Reserve Corps, Washington, D. C. 
Woop, MarcareT, Red Cross, France. 
Woop, Mrs. Frep W., France. 
Woopwarpb, Freperic C., Judge Advocate General Reserve Corps, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 
ZOBEL, Lieut. SIDNEY. 
(This list is only as complete as was permissible from the data avail- 


able. The addresses given here were war-time addresses and not neces- 
sarily correct now.) 


BELGIAN RELIEF FUND AND Rep Cross ACTIVITIES 


The donations for Belgian Relief have been discontinued. From January 
13, 1918, to February 2, 1919, the sum of $344.15 was received. The Bel- 
gian Relief Committee was paid $10.00 a month for seventeen months, 
or $170.00; Belgian Christmas Fund, $20.00; French Christmas Fund, 
$30.00; Armenian Relief, $15.00; and Red Cross work, $109.15. 
F, R. PARKER, 
Chairman 


Members of the Sierra Club are urged to continue their Red Cross work. 
The Sewing Section meets every Monday afternoon from 2 to 5 at 1800 
Buchanan Street. For knitting apply at the club-rooms, 402 Mills Build- 
ing. Do 1 today. (Mrs. A. E.) Vioret E. NEUENBURG, 

Chairman 


WAR SERVICE LETTERS 
> 


THE SIERRA CLUB’S PARTIN THE WAR 


During the period of the war the club endeavored to perform sugh of 
its work as was possible under the adverse circumstances which existed. 
It also tried to keep in touch with its members who had entered the 
service and send them a little cheer by means of letters from members 
at home. That this was an excellent plan is amply proven by the enthu- 
siastic appreciation expressed in reply. 

We are proud of the service performed by our members. Professor 
Vernon Kellogg, one of Mr. Hoover’s right-hand men, is now in Eu- 
rope, having recently visited Poland. Mrs. Marion R, Parsons has been 
in France for several months in full charge of refugee work in the prov- 
ince of Landes. Mr. Clair S. Tappaan is with the Y. M. C. A. in France. 
Dr. David P. Barrows and Albert H. Allen are both majors in the 
army. Professor A. G. McAdie is a lieutenant-commander in the Naval 
Aviation Service. 

All of the foregoing either are or have been recently directors of the 
club. Our honor roll of members is so long that individual names can 
not be mentioned, but as complete a list as possible will appear in the 
forthcoming issue of the BULLETIN. 

Besides those who were in active service, the members at home did what 
they could to bring about a speedy victory. The club itself bought Lib- 
erty Bonds and War Savings Stamps to its financial limit, and its mem- 
bers formed a Red Cross Auxiliary and a War Correspondence Commit- 
tee, and the local walk collections are regularly used for Belgian relief, 
while personal subscriptions resulted in raising over $200, which was 


sent to Mrs. Parsons to bring Christmas cheer to some of her refugee 
children. 


EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS OF MarRION R. PARSONS, NOW WITH THE 
Rep Cross IN FRANCE 


“Wasn’t it kind of fate and the Red Cross to land me here in Paris 
just in time for July 14th? We got here late Saturday night and rode 
up through the darkened streets in a ‘camion,’ with all our baggage 
piled in with us. I wondered in case of an air raid how we ever could 
get out to find a shelter—what a scramble over that mountain of lug- 
gage it would have been! However, nothing happened. In the morning 
Miss McNeal and I started out early to see the parade. A lucky com- 
bination of chance and cheek got us a splendid place in front of the 


War Service Letters | 451 


Lille statue in the Place de la Concorde. We saw the decoration of the 
Strassburg monument, and the whole parade passed through a great 
open space right in front of us. A very pompous gendarme looked 
severely at us several times, for we were a little outside the crowd he 
had caged in behind the statue, but our uniforms and a firm front car- 
ried the day. Nearly every soldier was bedecked with flowers, and 
nearly all the allied nations were represented in the parade—a tremen- 
dousi, impressive spectacle, with a big offensive ready to TGS any 
minute less than fifty miles away. ‘ 

“Monday was kept as a holiday fas and will stand out longer in my 
mind as the day when I was first ‘under fire.’ La grosse Bertha spoke 
again after a silence of several weeks. I was sitting in front of the 
Louvre when the darn thing went off. It sounded mighty close to me, 
but missed me by about a mile, I afterwards learned. For a few min- 
utes I thought I didn’t care much about sight-seeing anyway; but then 
I reflected that I might just as easily be hit in the hotel as in the 
park and might better enjoy the privilege of seeing something first. 
Big Bertha does not seem to be thought much of, anyway. A woman 
near me merely shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Encore,’ and went 
on with her reading. We all went around as if she weren’t barking at 
2 ORE ARN 

“I worked at the hospital again yesterday—a terribly hard day. I 
had to tell one boy that his leg was amputated—he hadn’t known it was 
gone. He was so brave about it for all he was so terribly weak and 
sick. Later, when I was giving him some soup, he said, ‘They seem to 
take a lot of trouble about caring for you here, even if they know 
you’re never going to be good for anything again. They seem to try 
just as hard to make you get well.’ I had all I could do to keep from 
crying. . 

“T saw Mr. McAdie too in London, to my surprise, and Patty Cos- 
grave Murray, who seems the same as ever, Here I have met Harry 
Hand and Elizabeth Gray Potter and Alice Leavens so far. Alice 
Leavens is returning to America tomorrow after a most eventful year 
here. She was at Havre when the Germans made their March advance, 
and had to evacuate with her refugees and without her possessions.” 

July 21, 1918. 


. “Since I wrote you last I’ve had only one day of hospital work, 
with some very slightly wounded but thoroughly tired-out Sammies— 
not at a real hospital, but at a refugee home which had been called into 
temporary service. I went there to inspect the refugee work as part of 
the preparation for my job, but took off my hat and rolled up my sleeves 
and fell to work bathing, undressing, feeding and jollying a bunch of 
lads so utterly weary and worn out they were just like tired, sleepy 
children. I had to wake one of them three times before even the idea 
of food would penetrate. ‘Gee, isn’t it quiet here!’ he said, and fell 


452 Sierra Club Bulletin 


asleep again, and then said exactly the same thing over again, and had 
to be waked a third time, though he was as hungry as a cannibal when 
he did finally come to. . . 

“One evening, however, there was no singing—we knew that a train 
of wounded was coming. It pulled in long after dark, silently as the 
little French trains always do, and the great darkened sheds that had 
looked so empty during our long hours of waiting were at once full of 
people and stir. I wish I could make you see it— the French ‘Auxili- 
ares,’ with their blue veils and white dresses, following closely the uni- 
formed doctors; the rows upon rows of stretchers with their tired, suf- 
fering men—a white bandage showing here, there a blood-stained bared 
arm or foot; the huddled, half-dazed groups of walking cases ranged 
on benches or floors; the sturdy, busy stretcher-bearers working quickly, 
quietly, and without the least confusion; and the ambulances burring 
off through the dark streets with their silent, patient cargoes. 

“Tt was among the walking cases that we American women, four of 
us, were chiefly busy, giving them coffee or water and talking to them. 
They were mostly cheerful enough, uncomplaining all of them, but one 
very young chap couldn’t get his experience out of his mind. He told 
me he hadn’t slept for four nights thinking of it, and felt as if he should 
never sleep again. His best friend had been shot down beside him and 
had cried out, ‘My God, my leg is gone!’ and before this boy could get 
to him he too was down, and he hadn’t seen him again, The poor boy’s 
eyes looked as if he would never get that dazed, horrified look out of 
themagain.... 

“T have grown to love Paris very dearly in these three weeks. In 
spite of its war-time mask—the piles and piles of sandbags hiding its 
statues and doorways, its empty galleries—it is full of beauty and color. 
The parks are gay with flowers and the flower markets still flourish on 
the corners, and the war has not marred the beauty of the sunsets on 
the Seine or down the long vistas of the Champs Elysées. And the 
French spirit is wonderful. They show none of the sharp edge of strain 
that I was so conscious of in England. The women are so poised and 
unjangled—those at the gare, for instance, nearly every one of whom 
had close relatives at the front, many of whom were in mourning— 
women who worked there every day and slept there many a night. If 
anyone even hints that Frenchwomen are not doing their part in this 
war, don’t you believe it. But I have also a profound disgust for Paris 
—so beautiful outside, but so unspeakably rotten within. With the 
gaiety of the better people so sobered, I suppose the underworld shows 
in all the stronger relief... . 

“T’m finishing this down at Bordeaux on my way to my job. After 
playing solitaire with me and the map of France for about a week, Dr. 
Devine has made me delegate to the department of Landes. That 
means that I’m to be special providence and mother superior to about 
10,000 refugees—not 100, mind you, nor 1000, but ten thousand. Do you 


War Service Letters 453 


wonder I’m so scared that I’m wobbly in the knees! Nobody seems to 
know just how many. One record says 8500 and the other 13,000, so 
I’m striking an average. I am (or will be tomorrow) within three 
hours or so of Irving Clark at Pau, but understand that Mont de Mar- 
san, my headquarters, is flatter than a pancake. Hard luck for a moun- 
tain maniac, isn’t it, when there are so many mountains in France? 
They held out the department of Jura before me just long enough to 
get my appetite up and then snatched it away.” .. . 
August 4, 1918. 


. . . “There are two little rivers, the Midon and the Douze, that come 

sauntering through the woods near Mont de Marsan and join to make 
the Midouze. My town rambles about the banks of all three, a rather 
picturesque, very dirty town of tall bare white houses with red-tiled 
roofs. Some of the buildings are very old—of dull gray stone these— 
brightened by lichens as varied and beautiful as those on the Yosemite 
cliffs. The streets are crooked and narrow, many of them without side- 
walks, and the closely shuttered houses fairly elbow you off the curb. 
You wouldn’t think to look down such a street that behind the blank 
houses lovely high-walled gardens stretch right down to the little riv- 
ersiy sd). 
“Geographically, I regret to say, the Landes is the most uninteresting 
part of all France. It is flat as a pancake for the most part, wooded 
with a scrubby kind of pitchy, two-leaved pine—‘pin maritime,’ they call 
it—a planted forest set out seventy-five years or more ago to reclaim 
the sand-dunes of the coast and the sandy desert just behind. Practical- 
ly all the industry of the coast half of the department centers about this 
forest. There are several turpentine distilleries, and all the trees are 
dishgured by longitudinal gashes which bleed them of their resin. Each 
tree has a little tin basin tied to it to catch its gore. When a district 
is to be lumbered they ‘bleed the trees to death,’ gashing them on all 
sides to catch every drop. Before they are quite dead the lumberman 
comes along and chops them down. Not very gay these forests. 

“Near Mont de Marsan and farther to the east and south lies a flat 
agricultural country, rather pretty in a quiet way. It has a few very 
beautiful trees, especially near-sycamores, ‘plantains,’ and quiet little 
overshadowed brooks, but for a hill-lover its whole effect is depress- 
MA's) 


August 14, 1918. 


. “I wish you could have seen Paris last Wednesday night. It 
was full moon and misty, and not an artificial light was to be seen. 
Most of the Red Cross had been present at the War Service mass meet- 
ing, and on coming out I suggested to my companion that it was our 
bounden duty to walk along the Seine and see Notre Dame by moon- 
light. Of course, it was just the kind of night for air raids, but the 
Germans were awful busy elsewhere, and they seldom begin before I1 :30 


454 Sierra Club Bulletin 


anyway, and so we took the chance. There can’t be a lovelier city in the 
world. I'll never forget the sight of the great Place de la Concorde or 
the front of the Madeleine and the shadowy arches of the bridges and the 
light in the river and the wonderful bulk and majesty of Notre Dame. 
Each time I look at Notre Dame I wonder will it be there unharmed 
when I go back again. Paris has been marvelously spared so far—not 
one of her historic beauties marred. And there was no air raid after 
1 ee 


August 25, 1918. 


. “It is all so different from my thoughts of it at home. My 
imagination had somehow never got beyond the first flow of the refu- 
gees from the invaded districts—the flood along the roads and in the 
Paris gares, the emergency work of supplying their first needs. That is 
over now—we’ll hope forever !—and what I find are forgotten, neglected 
exiles, half-fed, half-clothed, lodged frequently in crowded, smelly, 
dark, frightfully unsanitary holes, sitting the long day through without 
occupation or amusement or companionship except with other exiles 
equally unhappy. After all they have been through, some of them liv- 
ing for eighteen months or two years under shell-fire, do you wonder 
that these stunned, bewildered, underfed creatures are rapidly develop- 
ing into a pauper class, recognized as a serious menace to the whole 
future of France? ... 

“You can’t work among these refugees for a week without coming to 
feel that under the dirt and squalor and laziness and all the misery that 
has been accumulating on them during four years of war there is some- 
thing very fine and brave and true. I am getting instances every day— 
things I want to tell you in some letter, but as usual this has grown 
unconscionably long already. But I’d like you to see my Sister of 
Charity with her fifty orphan boys with whom she lived in a cellar at 
Bailleul for two years now crowded into a tumble-down old building in 
a village where every drop of water has to be fetched uphill for about 
an eighth of a mile—and it takes a lot of water to keep fifty small boys 
as clean as they are! Or the young French doctor, invalided home, in 
very poor health, running a military and a civil hospital and practicing 
throughout a district about thirty miles square—the only doctor for 
40,000 inhabitants! And he has time to make special friends with a sol- 
dier from Tunis because he’s so far from home and probably won’t get 
well. You’d just love that doctor! 

“Yesterday was Labor Day, and next Monday’s Admission Day, and 
I suppose you all went to the woods. I had one lovely mountain day 
up on the edge of the Pyrenees three weeks ago, when I went to visit 
Irving Clark’s institution at Eaux Bonnes. We found eidelweiss and 
lovely big purple aquilegias and yellow Iceland poppies, pentstemons 
and heather and lots of charming flowers.” .. . 

September 5, 1918. 


War Service Letters 455 


. “It was mighty good to hear from you, and I’m delighted to 
know that Tap is coming. I think the Y. M.C. A. needs men just of his 
type. From my own impressions of those I’ve met, it strikes me that 
the clerical element is stronger than the jocund. They’re good fellows 
—splendid—but not amusing as they ought to be. Down here the great 
majority of the boys have never seen the front. They’re working terri- 
bly hard at manual labor most of them, and in isolated camps where 
they haven’t any diversions at all. I can’t imagine anything better for 
them than one of Tap’s ‘lectures.’ For his sake, however, I hope he 
won't be tucked down quite as far from the war. I feel positively 
ashamed to be so comfortable and to get so much sheer fun out of the 
work as I do every once in a while. (I can’t get over the sheer cheek 
of my being here at all in my present exalted position!) 

“The news from the front is making everyone very happy, though 
there is a very wholesome lack of that confidence that the war is going 
to be finished quickly and easily that is so apparent, after every little 
advance, in our papers at home. There is not the slightest wavering in 
the determination to fight to a satisfactory conclusion, The news of the 
American victory at St. Mihiel yesterday has made every one wild with 
joy. I have had the rather embarrassing experience of having my old 
doctor publicly shake me by the hand and congratulate me on belonging 
to such a valiant and noble country! When I think, however, that we 
are going into the battles fully prepared and equipped, and remember 
how the French and English went in almost bare-handed, and how they 
have fought the Boche back for four years, I can’t feel as thoroughly 
proud as I’d like. But we surely are popular with the French. One of 
the American officers told me that when he and a fellow officer entered 
a hotel dining-room at a resort in southern France a few days ago all 
the French people applauded them. Strangely enough, they didn’t like 
Ce aa a 


. .. “The roads here are very fine, and the country, though monoton- 
ous, is very pretty now. The great plane trees that arch above so many 
of the roads are beginning to turn and shed their leaves. Like the syca- 
mores, the leaves turn slowly, grow brown on the tree and are shed 
almost one at a time. They do not seem so much to fade as to grow 
thinner and more translucent, for the whole effect is a brightening of 
the foliage to the tender greens of early spring. With the carpets of 
brown leaves along the edges of the white roads and the sunshine flick- 
ering down through the green arches, the color effects are enchant‘ng. 
So too are the fields of purply-pink heather blooming now under the 
pines, and a prickly bush with yellow flowers that looks like what I’ve 
always thought gorse looked like. And all the brakes are turning a 
rich, bright brown. Yesterday we came home, as we often do, at what 
the French prettily call ‘’heure mauve.’ The air grew crisp and frosty 
as soon as the sun dropped low, and as we rounded one low hill we saw, 


456 Sierra Club Bulletin 


miles away across the flat pine-shadowed country, the sharp peaks of 
the Pyrenees.” ... 
September 29, 1918. 


.. . “As I rounded the corner in front of the hotel I saw an Ameri- 
can navy officer at the door. ‘How much that looks like Homer Miller!’ 
I said to myself. And it was! He’ll never know how near he came to 
being embraced, right there in the public square. How good it was to 
see him, and how we did talk! He had arrived in Mont de Marsan 
shortly after noon, and, as he is probably the first naval officer who has 
ever been here, he created quite a sensation. Homer said he had about 
three French officers with him all afternoon, and he with about one 
French word for each of them. I know what a strain it must have been 
—I’ve talked with three French officers at once myself. He told every- 
one he met that he was a friend of mine; so next day every one was 
asking me who and what Homer was. Of course, I said he was an 
admiral, or would be soon. Well, he departed on the morning train in 
an aura of chocolate creams and ginger cookies, and I had the same 
feeling of left-behindness that I had when Arthur Elston left Paris— 
contrary-minded person that I am, for you couldn’t pull me away from 
France now witha pair of tongs! 

“Our work has just about doubled during this last month. We have 
opened our second office at Dax, where there are even more refugees 
than at Mont de Marsan, and where they are even more miserable. They 
are on the whole of a lower type than those of Mont de Marsan—drink 
more, are dirtier and more generally worthless. We have grown very 
fond of some of our refugees here. 

“T have had it in mind for some time to tell you some of their stories. 
Pere and Mére Dudon come from near San Quentin. They are re- 
patries, having lived nearly three years behind the German lines. I 
think I told you that old Mére Dudon had fifteen children living at the 
outbreak of the war. Three have been killed; two she has lost track 
of; five are at the front; five are prisoners in Germany. When I visited 
the old couple first they were nearly starving. Mére Dudon had col- 
lapsed on the doorstep of one of my French committee members, who 
called her case to my atiention. Their one room was scrupulously 
clean. It had the usual hard slat bed and mattress of straw, a table of 
rough boards with sawhorse legs, a bench, and two or three cooking 
utensils. There was an open fireplace, where they cooked the little they 
had. They were probably sending packages of food to their prisoner 
children; otherwise, even with war prices, they would not have been 
reduced to such bags of skin and bone. I gave them a stock of pro- 
visions, and then the old man—they are both over seventy—begged me 
to find him some work to do... . 

“Tt was not until I had grown to know them well that they told me 
what poor old Mére Dudon had suffered at the Germans’ hands. I 
don’t know what provoked it, but she is a spirited old thing and prob- 


War Service Letters A457 


ably boasted of the number of children she had given to France. Any- 
way, she infuriated a German officer, who tore open her dress and 
slashed off her right breast. An old bent woman of seventy! I have 
seen the scar myself, and have shown it to the doctor at our clinic. 
There is no possible doubt as to the truth of her story. 

“One woman in our care was shot in the leg by the Boche—‘par mé- 
chanceté,’ she told me; but I never finished getting her story, through 
some interruption. Another had her husband shot down and killed 
beside her in their own home because he protested against a German 
officer taking all his fourteen rabbits. 

“As a rule, the stories of the worst cruelty all belong to the first year 
of the war. Those who have lived longer behind the lines complain for 
the most part of unreasonable regulations, fines, petty tyranny, loss of 
property, or unjust prison sentences. One very intelligent woman from 
the Vosges told me that so long as things were running normally the 
Germans in her district were kind enough. ‘The soldiers often gave my 
children bits of chocolate, and a military doctor used to care for the 
sick; but twice it happened that the country had to be evacuated, and 
then we were treated like dogs, herded out of the way with no regard 
whatever for the hardships and suffering we had to undergo.’ I asked 
her why she had returned to France, since her husband was a civil 
prisoner behind the lines. “Because of my son,’ she said. ‘He is four- 
teen. All the boys and girls were taken from their families and sent 
into Germany as soon as they were fifteen”... 

“T saw little of the celebration of victory, for I wasn’t allowed to 
leave the hospital and come up to Mont de Marsan, where all the real 
doings were. We did not get the news of the signing of the armistice 
until nearly two o’clock at Labouheyre. Then Dr, Seagrave came up 
from the village, from the mayor’s house, where she had just learned 
it, and told us all to go over to the mayor’s, as he wanted us to go with 
him to the mairie while he announced it to the village people. He made 
us walk beside him and grouped us near him as he stood on the steps 
of the mairie to address the crowd. His speech, I thought, was very 
good, even if my translation of it makes it sound stilted to you. ‘My 
friends,’ he said, ‘the bells have already told you what I have to say. 
Germany has signed the armistice. The nightmare under which we 
have lived for four long years is over. In this hour of victory let our 
first thoughts, our first gratitude, be for our noble dead. This is not a 
day for words. Our hearts are too full. Let us pay tribute, however, 
to our glorious allies, through whom civilization has triumphed over 
barbarism. England, Italy, Serbia—above all America, by whose un- 
stinted help we have finally conquered. Let us remember that in our 
darkest hour America came to our aid; that America realized that if 
France perished civilization itself was doomed. We have conquered. 
Victory is ours. Lift your voices now and cry with me, Vive ’Améri- 
que! VivelaFrance!’... 


458 Sierra Club Bulletin 


“Well, I suppose by the time this reaches you my Landes experiences 
will about be over. Comparing notes with one of the captains the other 
day, I found he had about my experience—cordially detested the coun- 
try when he first came, found it uninteresting and monotonous, and has 
grown to love it and see much beauty in it since. October and early 
November were glorious in color. Some of the vineyards had the most 
wonderful tones of rose and lavender; there were brilliant red maples 
and oaks and great masses of yellow. Now it is a country of deep rich 
tones of brown, colors that we never see in California. Keith’s later 
paintings will always mean southern France in late November to me 
now. The fogs have a singular beauty here too, especially on moon- 
light nights. They lie close to the ground, not in continuous masses, 
but broken and torn by the wind. Driving through the pine woods in 
the moonlight, you could fancy them the scarfs of a hundred fairies 
dancing among the trees. 

“This will have to be Christmas and New Year greetings to you all. 
I have about a thousand on my refugee Christmas list, and have to dis- 
tribute to all the sick American soldiers in the department as well, so 
I’m not thinking Christmas outside of France. Oh, while I think of it, 
please don’t think of having the after-the-war outing to the John Muir 
Trail until 1920! You won’t begin to have us all back by next July. My 
own contract holds until June 27th, and I naturally want to see a little 
something before I start back home.” .. . 


“Dear Sierra Club: You are nice people! Your hundred dollars will 
not only give Christmas to the Coudures orphans, but to those at Tartas 
as well—a hundred little Belgian girls. After Christmas I’ll write and 
tell you what I did with it”... 

December II, 1918. 


“Hotel Richelieu, Mont de Marsan 

“Dear People: Check after check keeps coming in. How good youall 
are, and how much I can do with it! All of it will go for Christmas. 
Some of it I am going to leave in the hands of la Generale to use after 
I am gone in helping through the hardest winter months. We are going 
to be able to leave a stock of provisions to continue our sales idea. Here 
in Mont de Marsan I have a devoted group of ladies to carry things on 
for a while at least without me. I hate to leave some of these poor 
people. Poor old Dudon fell dead in the street a week ago Tuesday, 
only a few minutes after he had left my office. He had been working 
there as chipper as could be all morning. We have at last located a 
daughter and a soldier son and have started the machinery to get old 
Mére Dudon sent to the daughter, who is near Paris. ‘I shouldn’t want 
to go if the Red Cross was going to stay,’ she said. Poor old thing! 
how she must want to hang on to any one who shows the least interest 
in what is to become of her! So many families are scattered that may 
never be reunited. For three months I have been trying to locate a 


War Service Letters 459 


nine-year-old boy who was ‘lost’ in the evacuation of a hospital at 
Noyon, 

“We have definite instructions to close all of the Red Cross work on 

December 31st. Unfortunately, instead of being transferred to the de- 
vastated area, as some of us had hoped, there is every indication that 
most of us will be sent home. I am making every effort to get into some 
form of work, even if it is in another country, but so far have not met 
with any encouragement. All the refugee workers are bitterly disap- 
pointed that we are not to be allowed to help in the reconstruction. 
Down here all any one can do is just temporary. It would have been 
infinitely more interesting to be helping restore these people to normal 
life and surroundings again. 
. “Tt is funny what grandmotherly concern we have about leaving our 
refugees to the care of their own countrymen! We of course feel that 
we handle things better! It is a constant wonder to us how anything is 
ever accomplished with all the impedimenta of ceremonial and red tape 
that accompanies every movement. And the documents! I wish you 
could see some of the offices at the prefecture, just spilling over with 
records. When I think of all the people I’ve told my age to, and realize 
that each time it was written down and filed away, my brain reels. 

“T have just had a very amusing instance of the circumlocutory way 
of doing things here. I have been receiving large stocks of provisions, 
and was greatly annoyed by an octro1 official, who not only came nosing 
around and talking about taxing everything I brought in, but actually 
held up my goods at the station and wouldn’t let them be delivered until 
I had declared what was inside the bales and boxes. As I had ordered 
everything from shoes to ham and from crutches to an accordion, and 
didn’t know what was coming first, that was plumb impossible, and I 
got very, very mad. I sat down and wrote a hot letter to the prefect, 
and told him that, as the goods were brought from America for the ex- 
clusive benefit of his refugees, I thought it unfair that I should pay the 
same tax as the merchants did, and asked to be exempted; said, too, 
that if that couldn’t be, would he at least tell his octroi man to give me 
the privilege of declaring them myself, and not annoy me by holding up 
their delivery? It certainly was a fierce letter, and when a week went 
by without a reply I began to repent me of my boldness. But then the 
letters began to come in. I got one from the prefect, one from the 
mayor, one from the conseil generale—something like an attorney- 
general—and one from a lawyer in Bordeaux, And the upshot of the 
matter was that I had asked something that the law of France would 
not allow them to give. Much as it pained them, they had to tax me; 
but the very moment the tax was paid it should be returned to me, for 
it was intolerable that I should be asked to pay. A few such incidents 
in a day make one a little dizzy... . 

“As usual, this letter has taken a rest of a few weeks, and most ex- 
citing things have been happening. About two weeks ago I got a tele- 


460 Sierra Club Bulletin 


gram from my Bordeaux boss saying that I was being considered for 
work with the Balkan commission, and if I wanted to go I had better 
be prepared to close my work up quicker than I had planned. Ofcourse 
I wanted to go, and at once began to speed up preparations. The Wed- 
nesday before Christmas the Paris office telephoned that if I could drop 
work and be in Paris in two days I could go. It was maddening. Elsie 
was in Bordeaux with Lizzie and I couldn’t get hold of her, and upon 
consideration I knew that she was entirely incapable of closing things 
out here, especially the financial and statistical part. I have done all the 
bookkeeping and making of reports and inventories, and it has grown 
too complicated to turn over without a course of instruction. And 
there was Christmas coming, too, and I had to lose the chance! Wasn’t 
that hard luck? In a few days more came a letter from Irving Clark 
asking whether I would consent to be his assistant at the Red Cross 
depot at Mezieres, near Sedan in the Ardennes, providing he could get 
my appointment confirmed. I wired that I would, and yesterday I 
heard that I am appointed, and I am to report in Paris next week. The 
Red Cross is not going to do reconstruction work at all, but is to es- 
tablish warehouses at Lille, Amiens, Laon, Mezieres, Chalons sur Marne, 
and Verdun and work entirely through French committees. As I un- 
derstand it, my job will be to “make decisions as to which societies re- 
ceive supplies.’ That sounds as if it were to be rather aloof from any 
personal contact with the returning people, which may be less interest- 
ing than the work here; but as between that and returning to America 
I did not hesitate at all, There are only to be twelve such Red Cross 
positions in all France, according to present intentions, so I feel mighty 
lucky at that. 

“T know you all want to know about Christmas and what the many 
francs you all so generously sent did to make the day a happy one in 
my department. So before I tell you about our parties I’ll give you a 
brief and informal accounting. With the money you good people sent 
we bought toys, handkerchiefs, nuts, oranges, figs and chocolate for 210 
refugee orphans; gave a Christmas dinner, with chicken, salad, wine and 
dessert to 150 old people who hadn’t tasted such things for four years; 
produced two cinema shows in Mont de Marsan and Dax, with Christ- 
mas trees for the 150’old people and about 800 children (I bought the 
toys and goodies for these with Red Cross funds), and gave 220 francs 
in money to special deserving people. (‘Gee whiz!’ I hear you say. 
‘And do they say that there are war prices in France!’) Yes; but you 
don’t know how many checks came independently and how little it takes 
to ‘show these people a good time.’ The man who received the largest 
lump of money, you may be interested to know, is not only a refugee 
here with his family, but is an ‘ampute de guerre.’ He fought three 
years and lost both legs above the knee. Moreover, he lost all his 
teeth, and is now suffering from indigestion and malnutrition besides. 
Unfortunately, before I knew that he ought to have false teeth the Red 


So a oe 


War Service Letters 401 


Cross closing had already begun and Bordeaux couldn’t let me do any- 
thing. So your money arrived just in time. He is such a brave, cheery 
chap, not more than thirty years old. And his country pays him for his 
sacrifice four francs a day (less than eighty cents) for the support of 
himself, his wife and his child! He is a shoemaker, and a good one, 
and if he gets some strength back he can make a living still. 

“We had our movie show in Mont de Marsan on Tuesday afternoon, 
Christmas Eve, and in Dax the Monday before New Year. The convent 
celebrations I could not get to see, but we carried the things out the 
week before and paid a farewell visit to the children, Major Brooking 
went with us to Coudures and St. Sever, and his Dodge and our Lizzie 
gave the fifty orphans a ride. You never saw such shrieking carloads 
of arms, legs, sabots and heads all mixed in together! The village 
hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. The Major was as impressed as 
I have been by the beauty and charm of the Sister Superior of Cou- 
dures. She is one of the most delightful women I have met in France. 

“We confined our gift-giving to children under fifteen and old people 
above sixty-five. But I think every one of the 2258 on my relief list 
got some little goody—oranges or nuts or a little package of cookies. 
The movie shows made an immense hit, and the sous-préfet of Dax was 
dazzled by the display of toys. 

“TI was very deeply touched, if a little ashamed, by having the refu- 
gees present me with a little gold medal in appreciation of the Red 
Cross work here. It is about the size of a five-dollar gold piece, beauti- 
ful in design, like all the French medals. On one side is the head of a 
helmeted warrior-woman—la Gauloise—on the other a crowing cock, the 
emblem of France, and the inscription ‘Reconnaissance, réfugiés Landes.’ 
I am as proud of it as if it were a croix de guerre, even though I feel 
like a thief in taking to myself all the gratitude and affection that ought 
to belong to you at home who are making the sacrifices and putting up 
the money and getting none of the glorious experience that I am having. 
But I am on the ground and get the expression of it, and you will have 
to be satisfied with the knowledge that your sacrifices are appreciated 
and that the name of America is like the name of Providence to these 
people. We had a heart-rending morning yesterday, when we held our 
last sale and they all said good-by to us. Many of the old people cried 
on our shoulders, and we were much put to it not to weep ourselves. 
The work is over here. Only accounts and reports and packing to do, 
and then off for Paris again. Saturday and Sunday I am hoping to 
sneak down to Lourdes for one look at the Pyrenees.” .. . 

January 3, I919. 


Maison de la Providence, Coudures, Ce. 
Madame la Présidente du Comité Américain: January I, 1919 
Permit me to offer you our thanks for the photographs that we have 
just received and which have given us so much pleasure. Notwithstand- 


462 Sierra Club Bulletin 


ing they are so small, they are good likenesses, and the children to 
whom I showed them said immediately, “It is Mdme. l’Américaine, who 
did so much for us for Christmas!” This exclamation repeats to you, 
Madame, the happiness that you gave to them. I told them that the 
generosity of your personal friends assisted you in giving them so much 
joy, and we have offered a prayer that the good God will bless these 
charitable people. Will you please, Madame, offer them my particular 
thanks and say to them that the little orphan refugees of the north of 
France will pass many happy moments this winter, thanks to your toys 
so well chosen? 

Thanks again, Madame, for the sugar that I have just received. Yes, 
more and more am I overwhelmed by your kindness to us. 

Let me repeat to you also how much I regret your departure from 
Landes! We were accustomed to see you sometimes at Coudures, and 
you know that your visit and that of Mdme. Rouge were veritable holi- 
days for the children. The poor refugees of Mont de Marsan must be 
very sad—you were so good to all of them! A new field is open to you 
for your work, since you tell me that you will go soon to Mezieres, I 
doubt not that you will again do much good in this part of our beloved 
France, and I know in advance that the poor stricken ones will bless 
you. 

Of our return to Bailleul, it is not yet possible to think of, for it must 
be entirely rebuilt and this work will take a long time. When the good 
days will return, they will think of us again perhaps! 

In closing, please accept, Madame, the respectful remembrance of each 
of the Sisters and those of the children, to which I join mine, accom- 
panied by my affectionate salutations. 

I have the honor to be, madame la Présidente, 


Your very humble Scur SI0T 


Sister of Charity 


U.S. P. O., A. E. F. 711, France: 

My dear Wilding: September 3, 1918 

When I received your first letter I was at Condrecourt on the staff of 
the Ist Corps Artillery Schools, and, as the Irishman would say, “and 
a very nice job it was too.” The country around there was one that 
would surely appeal to the average Sierran. Long sloping ridges with 
pine forests, each ridge teasing you to go to the top of it so that you 
could see what was on the other side. When you did you saw stretched 
out before you just about the same kind of a valley that you had trav- 
ersed to get there, with plenty of wild life and a French town or two 
sticking its Gothic church spires and slate-colored houses up through 
its green surroundings. The wild flowers were in bloom then and the 
frequent rains keeping the grass green, all added to the spring beauty. 
The flaming-red coquelicot (our red garden poppy—here a wild flower) 


War Service Letters 463 


spotted the fields with its flaming red. You can picture the landscape, 
if all our poppies were red instead of yellow. I had often wished while 
there that I could transport the Sierra Club entire for an overnight trip 
there. France is a beautiful country. Most particularly is it beautiful 
in spring. Frequent rains and such trees as usually grow in damp 
stream-bottoms keep it green when our own state has put on its brown 
coat that it usually carries for summer wear. It is in fact the prettiest 
country that I have ever seen. It is pretty in its French way; but noth- 
ing that I have seen here can approach the boldness and silent grandeur 
of our California ridges where they drop into our deep redwood-filled 
cafions in the places where we most like to lay our bags. The vastness 
of California scenery is missing, and its grandeur. Pretty as it all 
is, and much as I will dislike to leave it behind, for there is so much 
historic charm and quaintness everywhere, still it will be a great day 
for me when I can stretch my legs and lungs again at the six- to ten- 
thousand-foot level in our own Sierra. 

As you probably know, I am in the artillery branch of the service, and 
took my course, as did a great many officers of the same branch, at 
Saumur, which at one time was the oldest and finest cavalry school in 
the world, but for some time now has been an artillery school, and a 
very fine one, probably the best-equipped one over here. Homer Spence, 
a first lieutenant, and, I think, an Alameda boy, is an instructor there, 
or was at the time that I graduated. Since leaving there my life up to 
the past month or two has been a rambling one and full of interest. At 
Gondrecourt I was within hearing of the guns at the front on most all 
days, though they were a considerable distance away. We could always 
tell when any action of importance was on by the multiplied intensity 
of the artillery action. The Boche planes passed over us now and then 
on their way to Paris, and could be detected by the different sound of 
their motors from our own. We picked up a large paper balloon one 
morning to which had been attached a fat bunch of daily papers printed 
in French within the territory captured by the Germans. It was the 
Gazette des Ardennes, and was a fine instrument for furthering German 
propaganda, Its news items were rich with German successes by land 
and sea. It also drew pleasing pictures in its local items of feast-days, 
weddings and the like, which laid particular stress upon the ideal life 
that the inhabitants enjoyed under the rule of their German captors. 
Altogether it was a very smooth little edition, calculated to work upon 
the weak and war-weary minds of the territory, which they were seek- 
ing to further subjugate. This was found at the time that the Germans 
were beginning their big push which got them as far as Chateau Thier- 
ry. I had hopes of staying in that vicinity and taking part in what we 
all felt was going to be a very important and likewise a desperate ac- 
tion, for the momentum of the German forces at that time seemed to 
require some very hard fighting to keep them from getting dangerously 


404 Sierra Club Bulletin 


close to Paris. I had passed along the Marne through Chateau Thierry, 
Epernay and the country adjacent to the railroad on my way down 
there, and I could picture what a mess the invading army had made of 
it. The country in its peace-time state was unspeakably beautiful. I 
might say in passing that the destruction of nature’s beauty-spots is not 
the largest of Germany’s crimes by any means, but it is one sufficiently 
devilish to make a Sierra Club man see red. It was not to be my good 
fortune to remain there, for about the time that I am speaking of the 
artillery school was discontinued, the policy of the Government being 
to concentrate such institutions in larger units. I was sent across coun- 
try with the entire equipment for three or four hundred miles. The 
trip was made by motor-truck and was a very beautiful one, as we 
passed through a very rich portion of France, including the wine coun- 
try, which is very clean and pretty, with poplar-lined canals and good 
roads and rosy-cheeked girls (don’t tell my wife). 

After completing my tour of duty and delivering this equipment to 
the officer in charge of the school—a San Francisco boy, by the way— 
I reported here, and am at present railhead officer in charge of all ship- 
ments coming by rail to this camp, which is the largest artillery camp in 
France. It is a man’s job and keeps me on the jump early and late; but 
I am afraid it has put the quietus upon my ever seeing the front while 
the war continues. I have a half-dozen quartermaster men under me 
and forty-five Algerians, my labor-detail, the latter speaking nothing 
but Arabic and French. They are pretty good guessers, so they under- 
stand what I tell them in the latter language. I spoke none at all when 
I came over in February, so you can figure how fluent I must be now. 
I get good work out of my men, and have the satisfaction of knowing 
that it is work that has to be done, and if it is well done it means just 
as much in the whole scheme of things as if I were commanding a bat- 
tery at the front—more, really, as one battery at the front is a very 
small proposition, while this is a very large one. JI am the “main guy” 
here. Thousands of tons of United States subsistence for man and 
beast pass through my hands here every day, and I have issued forage 
for as many as ten thousand horses here at times, so you see we are a 
busy little community. I like the work, like the country and like the 
experience, and if my wife was here I wouldn’t care (from a strictly 
selfish standpoint, understand) how long the war lasted. With best 
wishes, Very sincerely yours, 

CHaAs. Royce BARNEY, 
and Lieut. F. A. N, A., U.S. P.O. A. ESE. Nowa 


France, 
My dear Mr. Parker: Sunday, Sept. 22, 1918 


“Whiz-bang !’”’—this is the music that is greeting my ears as I sit in 
our seven-by-twelve dugout writing this by the light of a candle. It is 


War Service Letters 465 


anything but a romantic situation to be in, but an interesting one, to say 
the least. I am at last where everyone appreciates enjoying good 
health and hopes to continue so. Since last writing you we have been 
“forward marching” almost continuously. Many times I have thanked 
my lucky stars that my days of hiking with the Sierra Club were not 
for naught. We have been put to the test “road pounding,” and I have, 
so far, come in on schedule time always. More power to the club! if 
it does nothing more than teach a person how to keep going. 

Incidentally, I might add here that we carry all our worldly posses- 
sions on our backs. These bundles weigh on an average of from forty 
to sixty pounds, depending upon how much personal stuff one thinks he 
can lug. Many fellows started out with a vanload, but as the miles grew 
larger the packs grew lighter. We are now down to bare necessities, 
and we are continually scheming how and what we can get rid of. 
When I get back and join you all again on the overnight trips, I’ll be 
fully able to add a few suggestions as how to carry the field-range in 
your hip pocket and your sleeping-bag in a handkerchief. 

After a number of days traveling we finally pulled up at our present 
location, and things are proving mighty interesting. The Huns are no 
respecters of feelings or nerves. 

While on our way here we went through our baptism of shell-fire. 
My first experience at this “enjoyable” little game was anything but 
pleasant. I can best describe the sensation as one of helplessness. The 
only time I ever had this same feeling was the morning of the San 
Francisco earthquake. Strange as it may seem, after the first three or 
four “bangs” my feelings were changed and I was itching to get a crack 
at the Dutchman who was causing all the rumpus. It must have been 
his night off, for his aim was poor and all the damage done was the 
disiguring of the landscape about 200 yards from us. This particular 
gun shoots over our heads every evening at regular intervals—evidently 
wants to destroy some particular railroad point or some crossroad. 

A few days ago the most popular man in camp, the mail orderly (the 
Y.M.C. A. man comes second), delivered to us a bunch of mail from 
home. Among those for me was a copy of the T.C.C. “out-of-doors.” 
It certainly was a pleasure to get it, and I read it through from head- 
ing to printer’s name. I started to read the copy of a letter to you from 
one of the boys. and as I read on the wording seemed familiar. I 
looked at the signature and—well, you know everyone hates to see his 
Own name in print. It was a bit of a surprise. 

We have passed through villages that have suffered from German 
kultur. The best comparison I can make is to say they look like Mar- 
ket Street after the San Francisco fire. The Huns are thorough in 
their destruction. They strip a village of every movable thing and de- 
stroy the balance, including the town itself. 

(Several days later:) Did not get a chance to finish this last Sunday. 
The last few days have been exceedingly interesting ones. The Dutch- 


466 Sierra Club Bulletin 


men seem to take great pleasure in disturbing our slumbers, and each 
night we are treated to an old-time 4th of July. So far none of their 
greetings have come close enough to my particular unit to do any dam- 
age. We are taking no chances, however, and are ready for them at 
any time. Our gas-masks are our bosom friends, and we wear them 
ready on an instant’s notice to dive into them. My present home is a 
seven-by-twelve dugout with nearly all the comforts of home. Some 
one must have admired the Persian rugs and marched off with them, as 
Mother Earth is our carpet; but this doesn’t bother us, for if we had 
them we’d have to keep them clean. The mud in this section is here in 
gobs. We’ve had plenty of both rain and sunshine. The latter is favor- 
ing us now, and we’ve come out of our squirrel-holes to enjoy it. In 
our quarters we have four bunks, a la Pullman car, straw mattresses 
and chicken-wire springs. Our covering is our blanket, overcoat, blouse, 
raincoat and anything else our delicate systems may fancy. Some of 
the boys use their gas-masks for pillows, others their comfort-kit bag 
filled with K.C. Bs. For myself I am the proud possessor of an air- 
pillow. Candle-light has been our usual means of illumination hereto- 
fore, but at present all we have to do is turn on the button and our 
electric light burns gloriously. How’s that for being up to date? From 
7 to II each evening we enjoy its rays; after that the one-power candle 
comes into its own. We also have a home-made writing-desk and chair 
to add to our comfort. 

I said four of us occupied our bungalow. I must not overlook our 
four-legged friends, the rats. They seem to like our companionship, so, 
uninvited, have moved in with us. Presumably they feel they have a 
prior right, being here ahead of us. However, they do not bother us, 
and we haven’t time to interfere with their plans, so we both go about 
our own affairs. Where we are located reminds me greatly of Muir 
Woods. The country about here is very pretty, and I would like to go 
nosing around, but “Safety first” is our password, and we stick close to 
home. Strange to say, there are many birds around us. One would 
think they’d seek a more restful place while the seeking is good. An- 
other thing that has taken my eye is the French lily. These are in 
great numbers in places we’ve been. They are a beautiful purple little 
flower, growing wild like the California poppy. As I sit here under the 
“shade of a sturdy oak,” the music that greets my ears is “Whang-brrr- 
crack!” and a few seconds later “Bang!” Our side and the other fel- 
lows take great delight in sending and returning greetings. These steel 
messages are far overhead and are lighting far away; otherwise, I as- 
sure you, I would not be here calmly telling you about it. When this 
letter reaches you, you will probably have read some more news about 
further American successes. I would like to tell you more, but Billy 
Censor is a particular sort of a fellow and hates to have us tell all we 
know; otherwise, we’d have nothing to talk about when we get home. 

The papers are no doubt telling you of activities around Metz. Until 
we started our “forward march” we were able to obtain the daily news- 


War Service Letters 467 


papers and keep informed as to what’s going on. Now we are unin- 
formed and are at sea as to the general movements of the Allies. We 
get bits of news, but it’s like feeding a starving man by letting him read 
a cook-book. I am wondering if the Allies have taken Metz. We want 
to be with the boys when they march down the main street of that city. 
Maybe we will, and maybe we wont; but it will not be long before we'll 
be marching down some main street in some big city, and it will be some 
German place, mark my word, and it won’t be long either. The people 
at home can rest assured that before we come home for that fatted calf 
and tell you all about the medals we won, or nearly obtained, we are 
going through Kaiser Bill and his horde of kulturists, and we are going 
through them thoroughly. The job is being done now, and it’s not far 
off before we'll be hocking Bill’s crown—hocking it in an American 
way, not in the German sense of the word. 

The Huns are awaking to the fact that the American army over here 
is anything but a small, contemptible one, I can’t see how they figure 
to come out of this affair with a whole skin at all. The German prison- 
ers we have taken have been told there were only a few Americans 
over here and would not believe we had several million men in Europe. 
Their awakening is being a tough one. 

Yesterday we were issued several pairs of Red Cross socks. Again I 
say more power to this society. The folks at home will never regret 
what they are doing and have done for this organization. Another 
body that the Americans should be proud of is the Y.M.C.A. We 
have a “Y” man with us, and he takes good care of us “stomachically” 
besides spiritually. He and the mailman run a good race for first place 
in the popularity contest. When time and circumstances permit, Mr. 
“VY”? man appears upon the scene with cookies, tobacco, jam, gum, salted 
peanuts, and occasionally candy. His supply is generally limited, but 
each of us get the opportunity to get a goodly portion of his wares. 
This is the first time in my life where I had money to spend and no 
one to take it. If anyone wants to save their coin, tell them to join the 
army and head this way. 

We have become accustomed to the French money now. It annoyed 
us at first, not the amount in value, but in paper. Five dollars in change 
meant the carrying around of a wad of bills nearly an inch thick. Pa- 
per money is issued in value as low as fifty centimes. In our money, 
“real money,” the boys say this equals ten cents. Sometimes the boys 
start rolling their cigarettes with these before they realize the differ- 
ence. French coins are numerous, however. But the worst trouble we 
have is spending our salary; but, then, we haven’t been to Paris as yet. 
Our cooks are taking excellent care of us and our meals come regu- 
larly. Canned goods are used extensively, but everything is fine. Yes- 
terday they treated us to some good home-made doughnuts. 

Several days ago a letter came to me from one of my fellow Sier- 
rans, Portia Dalton was kind enough to write me, and I surely was 


468 Sierra Club Bulletin 


glad to hear from one of my 8:15 side-hikers. Letters are a mighty 
welcome thing over here, and they can not come too fast and furious. 
I am enjoying the best of good health. Am going through a wonderful 
experience, and will have some great tales to tell you when I start to 
carry my pocketful of nuts and raisins over the Marin hills once again. 
I have not yet run across any fellow Sierrans, but have my eye 
peeled for them. Will be looking forward to hearing from you again in 
the near future. A few lines from any of my club friends is a great 
source of pleasure. Trust you are enjoying good health and awaking in 
time each Sunday for the good old 8:15. 
With best wishes from 
JULIAN C. TorMEY, 
182nd Inf. Brigade Hdqrs., American P. O. No. 776, A. E. F., France 


Somewhere in Belgium, 


My dear Mr. Parker: November 14, 1918 


Well, here I am again for a little chat with you after a good many 
days’ silence. I say silence, but this means quietness of pencil and pa- 
per, not of French 75s and t1os and the 57 varieties of French cannon. 
Since last writing you we have left the land of parlez-vous, and are in 
this interesting country of Belgium. We side-door-pulmanned and road- 
pounded our way here, and my present address is the usual “some- 
where,” but in a different land. My last letter to you was sent some 
weeks ago, and since then I’ve been through enough fighting and other 
interesting affairs to fill a volume. Much of my experience I will have 
to retain until some day when we are sitting in a quiet nook somewhere 
on Tamalpais and I can open up the flood-gates and pour my chatter 
into your ears, 

Shortly after writing you last we went into action—‘over the top” is 
the popular phrase—and for over a week I had my baptism of fire. At 
first the sensation wasn’t anything like a debutante’s coming-out party, 
and when we came out of the line, after giving the Huns a thorough 
good licking, I had to admit that I knew just a bit about the flash and 
crash of artillery, the whistle and bursting of shells, barb-wire en- 
tanglements, dugouts, shell-holes, aeroplanes, fights, the “put-put” of 
the machine-guns, tree-trunks splintered and severed by shells, ruined 
houses, villages and towns converted into stone-piles, rain and mud, 
hardtack and stew. The most annoying thing to me during our advance 
was “Jerry and his Barrack Bags.” Will introduce him to you. He is 
any Boche aviator who comes sailing over (mostly during the moon- 
light nights), with a load of bombs, and when he thinks he has the 
proper range on some nice town or forest full of soldiers he lifts up the 
tail-gate and down come the explosives. The nickname we’ve given this 
projectile is “Barrack Bags,’ on account of the size of it. So moon- 
light nights may appeal to the treaders of Lovers’ Lane in California, 


War Service Letters 469 


but over here a foggy or rainy one is voted most popular. Fritzie does 
his dirty work in this line, as I say, at night. His yellow streak is too 
big to permit him to come out and pull off his game in daylight. Speak- 
ing of moonlight, we have had some beautiful weather since coming to 
this country. The November days are exactly the same as those of 
good old California, and I have never seen more beautiful evenings. 
Even Fritzie has not been around to disturb us. I know you will be 
interested in knowing that I came through all the days of our fighting 
without receiving a scratch of any kind. We were also in action in this 
country and gave the Huns a great reception. To us it appeared more 
like a foot-race than a fight, for Fritz was continually retreating, and 
about the only way we could make him go faster was to fan his coat-tail 
with our artillery. Fritz is licked, and he knows it. He is getting out 
of Belgium as fast as he can, and, from reports we hear, he is raising 
the dust getting back to his own country all along the front. The Kul- 
turites had better wipe the dirt from old Napoleon’s downy couch on 
St. Helena Island, for Bill K. seems destined to have a one-way ticket 
there. 

It would do your heart good to see the cordial way the Belgians treat 
us. After four years of Hun rule they are free, and nothing is too good 
for us American boys. We are “Vive la Americaned” as we go by, and 
many of the people actually weep, they are so happy. I feel fully re- 
paid for the bit I’ve played in this great game when I see the joy they 
express. The Prussians and Bavarians are hated by the Belgians, for 
it was these two classes that treated the populace shamefully. Some of 
the stories would make your blood boil. I will have some interesting 
things to tell you in this regard when we meet again. 

This country is entirely different from France. It is almost entirely 
level, and it was days before we came to a hill during our advance. The 
entire country is intensely cultivated—at present with turnips and beets. 
This growth I am told is a second planting, The first is a grain crop, 
and the vegetables are then put in to fertilize the ground, and also serve 
as a food for both man and beast. During our marches we were never 
“empty,” as the turnips were always near us in great plenty. They 
proved life-savers to me many times when our chow-wagon was not on 
time; but once in the good old U.S.A. again, I am inclined to remove 
this specie of the vegetable kingdom from my visiting list. I’ve had my 
fill. Army stew is another form of filler that I intend to sever relations 
with also. Heinz must have been in the service at one time, and ob- 
tained his idea about 57 varieties while doing his bit. Most of the time 
our food is fine, especially when we are at some resting-point. During 
the marches it’s hard to feed 300 men from a field kitchen; but some- 
how it has been seldom that we had to dig down into our sacks and get 
out our reserve rations, consisting of hard bread and bully beef. The 
latter is a corned beef, and is affectionately known as “canned willy” by 
the boys. We also carry a pressed package of coffee large enough to 


470 Sierra Club Bulletin 


make three good-sized cups. From time to time our stock is replen- 
ished. So there is no chance of our going hungry at any time. 

In France, after we went on the line, our resting-places were gener- 
ally in the field under tent cover. Here in this country we billet in the 
natives’ houses and barns. The expression “Hitting the hay” is literally 
carried out by us. This form of bed is very comfortable and excep- 
tionally warm, and, I will add, healthy. Our “roosts” are in the lofts 
in the fresh, clean straw, and fresh air is plentiful. This accounts for 
the lack of the Spanish flu amongst us, and which, from accounts I 
hear, the U.S. is full of. The life of a soldier over here is a strenuous 
one, but a healthy one also. For myself, I haven’t had a sick day since 
I left California—not as much as a cold. Guess I’m too busy “getting 
Fritz” to run around and have the Infirmary Medic feel my pulse. 

After many months of booming and banging it seems strange for us 
to be enjoying a spell of quietness. I refer to the armistice, which is 
now in order. By the time this reaches you we'll all know whether 
peace is with us or not. I know the people in the U.S. are intensely 
worked up over the prospects of peace. For us boys over here, we hope 
it does come, but at the Allies’ terms. You can imagine what a Christ- 
mas present it would be to be told we were going home soon, but before 
I get out of here I want to see kultur and all that it means cleaned from 
the face of the earth once and for all. I want my next trip to Europe 
to be one of pleasure, not one of showing some inflated, ‘“God-chosen,” 
demented creature where he belongs. Bill has had a taste of what an 
“American mob” can do, and at this time is probably lamenting the fact 
that he didn’t stay in his own back yard and keep on kidding himself 
that his kultur was for “me und Gott” and no one else. Well, he shot 
his bolt, and I only hope his punishment is such that he will be able to 
see the progress the world will make without him. Death would be too 
good for his old filthy hide. 

The people of America have every just cause to be proud of their 
boys over here, and the folks of California especially in the Division 
from the West. We were especially complimented for our work in 
France, and the King of Belgium, I hear, has praised us also. So when 
we return we may be decorated like a Christmas-tree or something. All 
the boys are, of course, talking about what they will do when they get 
back to God’s country. It will be one of the happiest days of our lives 
when we pass old Miss Liberty Statue, and New York will look like a 
flag station when I start for California. I am looking forward to see- 
ing you and all my good Sierra Club friends again. I promise not to 
monopolize all the conversation, but I warn you if I don’t get a chance 
to talk I’ll merely bust. 

Just a few days ago I was in receipt of several letiers from my hiking 
club friends—your two of September 8th and 28th, from Redwood City; 
one from Clarence N., of September 20th; one from Miss Edwards, of 
September 26th; one from Mr. and Mrs. Neuenburg, of September 24th; 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCXXXIX. 


CATHEDRAL PEAK AND UNNAMED LAKE 
At head of Budd Creek, Yosemite National Park 
Photo by Wm. E. Colby 


SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. xX. PLATE CCXL. 


YI. Reservekorps, ; ne! 
paneralkommando, K. He Que, den 4. Mei 1916. 


- {Ta Lo60°. 
| een en nim Rio Y Ph 48 gee bk ef 6k 1 fe Ae 


be te te 20 Wik ie Ne se: Me Se in mi ee tome ae ee 


Die heute und morgen vou mir verlioehenen Zisernen Kreuze sind, eoweit 
migiich,am 6.d.Mts. dem Geburtetage Seiuer Kalseriichen mud Foniglichen 
ge des Kronprinzen auszuhdéudigen. 


ges. ve Go@ler. 


Korpstagesdbe efehi il. 


nos ee a & 


(Tia) Die froppenteile worden davan erimnert, a28 gle cag Blntretian 
yon Offiziersn sofort uwmitteibar den Ersatz truppenteilen mitgo~ 
_teilen haben,damit Hick i sage) nach dem | Verbleio der Offiziere ver~ 
miedon worden.  #}§}3&=8= = —_hl : 


2, (11a) 14.,12.R.0. wed 2.L.D. legen gum 15 .. Stellenbesetzungs 
SS distor noch dem Stends vou 10.5.1 i 


(Ila) Die Betriige fir die {ibersandten Bilde 
Armee” sind bis zum Bid 2iMte. oe Registratar oe Generals 
-einzgusenden. - 


{T¥a) Waoh einer i (ted tung des Bricvsminist riuns erhalten nur d € 
zum Betehlsbereich dea General—Couvernements ‘Belgien aed hn 
Zrappen und Behorden immobile Cebilnrnisse. 

Pur AngehSrige dex Peldsrmes,dis “Belgien 8) 
aid ekratensepote) sind ‘wobile Gebilhrni. 8s pas tends 


jam 25.4. 7 eber 5 ist, ein Trankentriger, 0) 
‘BoE. 13,em Baye @ tetlich verwandet word 
aa oe rates, peeken und soreahi oe 


a Bin ‘Seni ts fshone ace tscher chu fer ind ,wolfer: a 

 =~«MAt Bchwerccu Klicken, hort eur ue Hemen axe, in 

Sep tear ges entlaufen. : — 
bitteilung an Res « San. Komp. 20. 


Omron 


gg die macutseales 


u Lf At a Pe 


“Major und Adjutent, 


GERMAN ARMY ORDER 
On the back of which a member wrote a letter to the club 
(See translation, on page 473) 


War Service Letters A471 


one from Ruth Burchard, of September 18th; and last, but far from 
least, the “community” letter, written September 20th by all you good 
folks at Lake Lagunitas. The above list looks like a roster of the 
Sierra Club, does it not? Well, I want to tell you from the bottom of 
my heart how deeply I appreciate every word written me. If time and 
circumstance would only permit me, I would answer every one of the 
kind and thoughtful folks who devoted their time to cheer me up, and 
if th of>ortunity does present itself I will write them; but I want you 
to ‘ ink them for me and express my deepest gratitude for every 
cheery word they sent me. I spent many a pleasant tick of the clock 
visiting with you all, and it indeed was some visit. I hope the day is 
not far distant that I will be able to express my appreciation to you all 
other than by a French lead-pencil. My feelings toward the Sierra 
Club, and that means the good people in it, have increased a thousand- 
fold. I always considered being among you one of my greatest pleas- 
ures, but since being over here I have fully grown to appreciate what 
the meaning of good fellowship is. I don’t believe anyone feels that 
keen sensation unless they have gone through what the boys have over 
here. It seems to have awakened a new spirit in me, one that is hard to 
describe, but fills a person up to the brim and to the bursting-point. I 
know that each member that is doing his bit on this side of the Atlantic 
has this same feeling toward you all at home who are doing all to 
make our days as cheerful as possible. 

I constantly keep my eye open for any fellow club members that are 
over here, but during all my wanderings I have never met any. This 
world is small, however, and there is no telling when and where I may 
come across one or more of my old 8:15 friends. 

Since last writing you I have been transferred back to my old com- 
pany. Am doing the same line of work—telephonist. My address is at 
foot of letter. My mail is all being sent to me here from the 182nd 
Brigade headquarters, so I will not miss getting any mail matter. As 
you know, no one can send any parcels to the boys over here without a 
written authorized request. However, Uncle Sam has raised no ob- 
jection to folks at home putting a stick or two of chewing-gum in their 
letters. If any kind-hearted Sierrans have an extra piece buried away 
somewhere, they would be giving me a treat if they would enclose it in 
their letter when they write to me. This will be a good chance for 
dropping me a few lines. Gum is a scarce commodity over here, more 
so than candy. 

It is now 3:30 in the morning. Am on watch from midnight to 8 
A.M. Things are as quiet as a church-mouse, with the exception of a 
fellow comrade who unintentionally is giving me a fine imitation of 
how a trombone should be played. But even his snoring is more sooth- 
ing to the nerves than Fritzie’s “Whiz-Bangs” and “Big Berthas.” 

I deeply regret that I can not use a camera. The pictures I could 
take would prove to be of wonderful value and something historic. But 


472 Sierra Club Bulletin 


I regret to say that the ones I'll bring back will be in the mind’s eye 
only. My powers of description will have to be keenly sharpened if I 
wish to convey any half-way decent idea to you of what I’ve seen and 
been through. 

I hope the war news continues to be on the sunny side. You folks at 
home, 8000 miles away, are better informed than we who are next door 
to the Rhine. We get few papers and little information as to the ac- 
tivities on the various fronts. It would not be a bad idea if some one 
would donate a daily paper to the club rooms and these papers be kept 
on file. For one, I would be interested in reading the account of how 
the peace terms progressed after I get home. 

I’ve rambled on for a couple of hours now and haven’t said much of 
anything, but this will let you all know I am still among those present, 
enjoying the very best of health and looking forward to the day when 
I will be with you on the 8:15. 

With best of good wishes to each of my friends and deepest personal 
regards to you, Mr. Parker, from 

JULIAN C. Tormey, 
Headquarters Company, 363rd Infantry, A. P. O. No. 776, 
American Ex. Forces 


SIERRA CLUB, At the Front, France, Nov. 4, 1918 


Dear Friends: You might like to get another line from here, so will 
send this. We started a drive yesterday and today the Germans are so 
far back our artillery have no targets. Where I am now is ten miles 
over the Hindenburg line, and I am sleeping in a concrete dugout made 
by the Germans and cooking on a German stove and using quarters in 
France that the Germans held for four years, and am writing on the 
back of some paper that is around here in bales. 

The prisoners have been coming in by the hundreds, and I have spok- 
en to many through men who spoke German. They are tired of the 
war, and many of them, officers included, curse the Kaiser and his gov- 
ernment for getting them up against what they had before the Ameri- 
cans. Some to whom I spoke were surprised that we treated them so 
well, the wounded, and I have seen loads of them treated well; the se- 
riously wounded Germans are treated before the slightly wounded 
Americans. 

Last week we were shelled in this town by hundreds of shells, and the 
aeroplanes dropped bombs; we were gassed too, but we let loose and 
have gone ahead about fifteen miles, and reports are that we are still 
going. Today I am left behind in peaceful territory. Will go up to the 
new front tonight. 

Now I hope all the Sierra Club people in France are well and also 
those at home, and will close with best wishes. 

N. J. MALVILLE, 
American Red Cross, Paris 


War Service Letters 473 


[The following is a translation of the German army order on which 
Mr. Malville’s letter was written. See original illustration opposite 
page 471.] 

VI RESERVE CORPS 
‘HIGH COMMAND 
IIA 10600. Imperial Headquarters, 


Order of the Day for the Corps—I. May 4, 1916 


The Iron Crosses granted by me today and yesterday will be, as far 
as possible, conferred on the 6th of this month, the birthday of his Im- 
perial and Royal Highness the Crown Prince. 


Order of the Day for the Corps—I]. 

1. (Ila) The troops are reminded that they are to immediately an- 
nounce to the Reserve Forces the arrival of officers in order to avoid 
further inquiry as to the whereabouts of such officers. 

2. (IIa) The 11th and 12th Divisions on the right, and the 2nd Di- 
vision on the left, will submit by the 15th of this month lists of posi- 
tions occupied according to their positions on May toth, 1916. 

3. (IIa) The money for the transmitted pictures, “The God-Child of 
the Fifth Army,” is to be remitted to the registering office of the Gen- 
eral Command by the 8th of this month. 

4. (IVa) According to an announcement of the War Department, 
only those troops and authorities within the scope of the command 
(jurisdiction) of the General Government of Belgium will receive im- 
mobile pay. 

Those attached to the Field Army, who are lodged in Belgium (e. g. 
Field Recruiting Depots), are qualified to receive mobile pay. 

V.s.d.G. 
(Signed) Baron von LEDEBUR 
Note: 

(1) At 7 o’clock, p.mM., on April 28th, a stretcher-bearer of the IId 
Bavarian Jager Reserve Regiment 13, was wounded unto death (severe- 
ly wounded) at the Bayerweg. He carried a sleeping-bag, blankets, 
and various pieces of laundry, everything packed in a tent. 

(2) A Red Cross dog, a German shepherd dog, wolf-gray with a 
black back, answering to the name of “Lux,” ran away at Septsarges. 
Communications to be sent to Reserve Red Cross Company 20, 

As to correctness : 
V. LINSINGEN, 
Major and Adjutant 


Headquarters Air Service, 
2nd Army, A. E. F., France, 


To Sierra Club friends, Greetings: Nov. 20, 1918 


A Merry Christmas to you one and all. May the New Year be happy 
and prosperous and bring us all together again for a glorious reunion. 


474 Sierra Club Bulletin 


Get things in shape for the 1919 outing and enter my name on the list. 


Bile there: BILLy GOLDSBOROUGH, 


ist Lt. A. yee 


THE NAVY CLUB 
For U.S. and Allied Sailors and Marines 
509 Fifth Avenue, New York 


Mine Sweeping Division, Base B, 


Secretary Sierra Club): Staten Island, N. Y. 

I would like some information regarding my standing in the Sierra 
Club. I am anxious to keep up in my club payments, as I do not want 
to be dropped from the rolls. The Sierra Club is doing too good a work 
not to allow myself to do my little bit in opening up those grand old 
mountains to the general public a little more than they are now, and it 
is only when you are in service this way, and so far away from their 
pine-clad ridges, that you can appreciate them to their fullest. There 
are no snow-clad peaks, mountain trails or evening campfires out on the 
briny, you know—only hard work. But the Kaiser’s finish is in sight, 
and then back again to our mountains. I want to go as a Sierra Club 
member though; so kindly tell me how I stand and how much I owe. 

S. F. address is 623 Third Avenue; but send this information to the 


: se. Tytarics 
Mine Sweeping Division. Verte eens Curae 


U.S. SS. Tananoe:’ 


Secretary Sierra Club: October 1, 1918 


This evening, as I was about to write and say hello, and to gently 
but firmly suggest that all the Sierra Club mail possible be sent to me 
in care of this my good ship, the mail orderly came aboard with a nice 
plump Sierra Club envelope, and I have lived over all the joys on the 
map of the proposed Sequoia National Park, all the way from Simpson 
Meadows to Cottonwood Pass. I sincerely trust the bill has had, or 
will have, the consideration it deserves, although the time for pressing 
it may not be just this moment. on account of war needs. 

The club’s circular is of great interest too, and the very last para- 
graph meets with a hearty response from me—“We shall all look for- 
ward eagerly tu the day when annual outings will be resumed and we 
meet again around the glowing campfire and listen to tales of our mem- 
bers who have been overseas.” 

Even in my short sea experience of less than two months I have more 
than once stood on the bridge in the inky darkness and seen—not dark- 
ness, but the beautiful meadows of the Sierras, and thought not war, 
but campfires and jolly folks, and Colby miles! But, Heaven willing, 
when this job is finished we will all have a grand get-together, and a 
happy day it will be. 


War Service Letters 475 


I am now serving as the Supply Officer of this very good little ship— 
not so little but that we can carry some millions of pounds of food to 
the army. We are in the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, and 
it’s proud of the service and the ship Iam! There’s work—lots of it; 
sleep—usually ; excitement—quite enough so far; in fact, there’s hardly 
anything that’s missing, war-time considered. 

I wish you would remember me to any of the Sierrans who may drift 
in; to friend Colby whether he drifts in or not; and you might also send 
my mail direct to the address below, for which thanks. And when the 
spirit moves, write. With kindest regards, I remain 

Sincerely, 


Address: Ensign Homer T. Miller, U.S. N.R.F.,, Homer T’. MILLER 
Us S:S.> Lanamo,” 
Care Postmaster, New York. 


Captain Ralph McGee has written many interesting letters from the 
Verdun front in France to his father. We quote this from a recent let- 
ter: “I started through the German lines, explored a German colonel’s 
dugout that had just been hastily abandoned; it was finished in mahog- 
any; climbed out of that and a few feet away stumbled over the body 
of one of my best friends, a young lieutenant who was married the same 
day I was. My heart stopped dead and I could not help cursing the 
Kaiser. This war isn’t so bad until you come face to face with some- 
thing on the muddy ground that a few hours before was an enthusiastic 
American youngster. The captured German officers are very haughty, 
but the captured German privates are disconsolate; all seem loyal to 
William, but bitter against the capital class in Germany, who, they say, 
started the war. I haven’t had a man sick for « month; they are all 
afraid that they will miss something if they go to the hospital.” 

In another letter he writes: “The Americans stormed the village, and 
an old, half-starved Frenchwoman stumbled out of a cellar, where she 
had hidden, against German orders. She heard the American infantry 
bayoneting the German guard in the streets. When rescued, she said, in 
French, that she had never heard English spoken and did not know a 
word of it, but the war-cry of the American soldiers as they were kill- 
ing the Germans so impressed itself on her mind that she would never 
forget the wonderful American words, although she did not know what 
they meant, as she only talked French. When asked to repeat these 
words, which she thought was the American war-cry, she said when the 
American infantry came down the street they all yelled at the top of 
their voices, ‘Damn you!’ And everybody laughed, while the old French- 
woman was much confused.” 


NATIONAL PARK NOTES 
> 


ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 


The director’s annual report for the year ending June 30, 1918, is so 
comprehensive and marks such an advance in the character of the 
work done under the direction of the recently established National 
Park Service that if we were to publish all the information that would 
be of interest to our members it would fill a volume of itself. 

It is the policy of the Park Service to prevent the grazing of sheep, 
because of their destructive nature, and allow only the grazing of cattle 
where such grazing will not injure the natural features of the park nor 
interfere with visitors. Timber is to be cut only where necessary for 
fire protection and where it will not injure the landscape. In order that 
the buildings and improvements in the parks shall harmonize with the 
natural surroundings, landscape engineers have been employed. Co- 
operation with other Government bureaus and with railroads is also an 
important object. In spite of the war, the attendance at many of the 
national parks was nearly up to normal last year, and an inter-park 
system of highways, so that one can motor from park to park, is also 
being worked out in co-operation with the state. 

The National Park Service has also taken up certain educational fea- 
tures, such as motion-picture films, lantern slides and photographs, 
which have been circulated, and has published quantities of portfolios 
and pamphlets containing illustrated descriptions of the various parks. 

The Sundry Civil Act of July 1, 1918, carried a total appropriation of 
a little over $1,000,000 for the national parks. The director recommends 
that the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, also the wonderful sand-dune area 
in Indiana on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, and a stand of Cali- 
fornia redwood along the Eel River be preserved as national parks. 


YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 


Since the soldiers were removed from the Yellowstone Park, an effi- 
cient ranger system has been established, and a bill is pending providing 
for the enlargement of the Yellowstone National Park by adding the 
land lying to the south and east of the present park, and in all likeli- 
hood this will pass. 


YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 


Two hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars was appropriated for the 
current year. The new power plant, completed at a total cost of $212,- 
000, can supply 2000 kilowats, and will take care of all the needs of the 
Yosemite Valley for a long time in the future. The old power plant 
will probably be sent to the Sequoia National Park, where it is badly 


National Park Notes ATT 


needed. The El Portal Road is being widened to twenty feet, and rock 
copings and concrete ditches and culverts are being built, so that by the 
end of this year it will be a boulevard of very slight grade from El 
Portal to the valley. Three new trails were constructed during the 
season. One leading from Lake Merced up Emerick Creek, and crossing 
the low divide into Tuolumne Meadows, will enable travel to enter the 
Tuolumne Meadows by this route much earlier than over Vogelsang 
Pass. Another new trail leaves the Tioga Road at Yosemite Creek; 
crossing and following up Yosemite Creek, it enters the Ten Lake 
Basin. We understand that the trail proposed by the Sierra Club to 
cross the Tuolumne Cafion at Pate Valley will be undertaken this sum- 
mer. The third trail built last summer is the Ledge Trail back of Camp 
Curry, which was made safe and improved. The Tioga Road justified 
its existence last year, when hundreds of automobiles took advantage of 
this opportunity to cross the Sierra through this park. In co-operation 
with the State Fish and Game Commission, a fish hatchery is to be es- 
tablished in Yosemite near the site of the old power plant, and it is 
hoped that this new hatchery will be in operation this summer. 


SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK 


The discovery of a large limestone cave in the Sequoia National Park 
has added materially to the park’s attractions. Explorers have entered 
the cave 4000 feet thus far, and some of the caverns are unusually beau- 
tiful. It is the director’s idea to have this cave lighted by indirect 
lighting, and to use electricity, thus avoiding the blackening of the walls 
by the use of torches. The road was built from the Giant Forest down 
to the Marble Fork and a bridge constructed across this fork. A wood- 
en stairway was also built to the top of Moro Rock and a hundred miles 
of trail cleared up and repaired. 


GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK 
Plans for a new and larger camp and an extension of the road and 
water system were prepared by the landscape engineer sent out for the 
purpose. 
MT. RAINIER NATIONAL PARK 
Travel to this park taxed to the limit the capacity of the hotels and 
camps last summer. Many new trails leading out from Paradise Valley 
were constructed, and the trail encircling the mountain was put in ex- 
cellent condition, with well-constructed shelter cabins along the route. 
CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK 
The grading of the rim road was continued and a splendid new trail 
built from the lodge to the shore of the lake. 
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK 


This park has again justified its existence by last season’s travel, 
which exceeded 100,000. The annual appropriation of $10,000 is so small 


478 Sierra Club Bulletin 


that it is difficult to administer this park properly. A bill is pending be- 
fore Congress to remove this handicap and provide adequate appropri- 
ation. 

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 


The war’s effect on railroad travel interfered materially with the at- 
tendance, but in spite of this important road and trail improvements 
were carried on. A fish hatchery was established and new administra- 
tion buildings constructed. 


HAWAII NATIONAL PARK 


The Hawaii National Park, containing three active volcanoes, is on 
this account one of the unique world parks, and there are many plans 
for the improvement of these three areas. 


Those who are interested in the details of park improvements and 
what has been done in the other various national parks and monuments 
will find this 1918 report of the National Park Service full of the most 
interesting information. Mr. Mather, the director, and his able assis- 
tant, Mr. Horace M. Albright, are to be congratulated, not only for this 
excellent report, but for the splendid work which they have been carry- 
ing on in the various parks and which makes such a report possible. 


STATEMENT OF NATIONAL PARK PoLicy 
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 


Dear Mr. Mather: Washington, May 13, 1918 

The National Park Service has been established as a bureau of this 
department just one year. During this period our efforts have been 
chiefly directed toward the building of an effective organization while 
engaged in the performance of duties relating to the administration, pro- 
tection, and improvement of the national parks and monuments, as re- 
quired by law. This constructive work is now completed. The new 
Service is fully organized; its personnel has been carefully chosen; it 
has been conveniently and comfortably situated in the new Interior De- 
partment Building; and it has been splendidly equipped for the quick 
and effective transaction of its business. 

For the information of the public an outline of the administrative 
policy to which the new Service will adhere may now be announced. 
This policy is based on three broad principles: “First, that the national 
parks must be maintained in absolutely unimpaired form for the use of 
future generations as well as those of our time; second, that they are set 
apart for the use, observation, health, and pleasure of the people; and 
third, that the national interest must dictate all decisions affecting pub- 
lic or private enterprise in the parks.” 

Every activity of the Service is subordinate to the duties imposed 
upon it to faithfully preserve the parks for posterity in essentially their 


National Park Notes 479 


natural state. The commercial use of these reservations, except as 
specially authorized by law, or such as may be incidental to the accom- 
modation and entertainment of visitors, will not be permitted under any 
circumstances. 

In all the national parks except Yellowstone you may permit the graz- 
ing of cattle in isolated regions not frequented by visitors, and where no 
injury to the natural features of the parks may result from such use. 
The grazing of sheep, however, must not be permitted in any national 
park. 

In leasing lands for the operation of hotels, camps, transportation 
facilities, or other public service under strict Government control, con- 
cessioners should be confined to tracts no larger than absolutely neces- 
sary for the purposes of their business enterprises. 

You should not permit the leasing of park lands for summer homes. 
It is conceivable, and even exceedingly probable, that within a few 
years under a policy of permitting the establishment of summer homes 
in national parks, these reservations might become so generally settled 
as to exclude the public from convenient access to their streams, lakes, 
and other natural features, and thus destroy the very basis upon which 
this national playground system is being constructed. 

You should not permit the cutting of trees except where timber is 
needed in the construction of buildings or other improvements within 
the park and can be removed without injury to the forests or disfigure- 
ment of the landscape, where the thinning of forests or cutting of vistas 
will improve the scenic features of the parks, or where their destruction 
is necessary to eliminate insect infestations or diseases common to for- 
ests and shrubs. 

In the construction of roads, trails, buildings, and other improve- 
ments, particular attention must be devoted always to the harmonizing 
of these improvements with the landscape. This is a most important 
item in our program of development and requires the employment of 
trained engineers who either possess a knowledge of landscape architec- 
ture or have a proper appreciation of the esthetic value of park lands. 
All improvements will be carried out in accordance with a preconceived 
plan developed with special reference to the preservation of the land- 
scape, and comprehensive plans for future development of the national 
parks on an adequate scale will be prepared as funds are available for 
this purpose. 

Wherever the Federal Government has exclusive jurisdiction over 
national parks it is clear that more effective measures for the protection 
of the parks can be taken. The Federal Government has exclusive jur- 
isdiction over the national parks in the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, 
Wyoming, Montana, Washington, and Oregon, and also in the terri- 
tories of Hawaii and Alaska. We should urge the cession of exclusive 
jurisdiction over the parks in the other states, and particularly in Cali- 
fornia and Colorado. ; 


480 Sierra Club Bulletin 


There are many private holdings in the national parks, and many of 
these seriously hamper the administration of these reservations. All of 
them should be eliminated as far as it is practicable to accomplish this 
purpose in the course of time, either through Congressional appropria- 
tion or by acceptance of donations of these lands. Isolated tracts in 
important scenic areas should be given first consideration, of course, in 
the purchase of private property. 

Every opportunity should be afforded the public, wherever possible, to 
enjoy the national parks in the manner that best satisfies the individual 
taste. Automobiles and motorcycles will be permitted in all of the 
national parks; in fact, the parks will be kept accessible by any means 
practicable. 

All outdoor sports which may be maintained consistently with the ob- 
servation of the safeguards thrown around the national parks by law 
will be heartily indorsed and aided wherever possible. Mountain climb- 
ing, horseback riding, walking, motoring, swimming, boating, and fishing 
will ever be the favorite sports. Winter sports will be developed in the 
parks that are accessible throughout the year. Hunting will not be per- 
mitted in any national park. 

The educational, as well as the recreational, use of the national parks 
should be encouraged in every practicable way. University and high- 
school classes in science will find special facilities for their vacation- 
period studies. Museums containing specimens of wild flowers, shrubs, 
and trees, and mounted animals, birds, and fish native to the parks, and 
other exhibits of this character will be established as authorized. 

Low-priced camps operated by concessioners should be maintained, as 
well as comfortable and even luxurious hotels wherever the volume of 
travel warrants the establishment of these classes of accommodations. 
In each reservation, as funds are available, a system of free camp sites 
will be cleared, and these grounds will be equipped with adequate water 
and sanitation facilities. 

As concessions in the national parks represent in most instances a 
large investment, and as the obligation to render service satisfactory to 
the department at carefully regulated rates is imposed, these enterprises 
must be given a large measure of protection, and, generally speaking, 
competitive business should not be authorized where a concession is 
meeting our requirements, which, of course, will as nearly as possible 
coincide with the needs of the traveling public. 

All concessions should yield revenue to the Federal Government, but 
the development of the revenues of the parks should not impose a bur- 
den upon the visitor. 

Automobile fees in the parks should be reduced as the volume of 
motor travel increases. 

For assistance in the solution of administrative problems in the parks 
relating both to their protection and use the scientific bureaus of the 
Government offer facilities of the highest worth and authority. In the 


National Park Notes 481 


protection of the public health, for instance, the destruction of insect 
pests in the forests, the care of wild animals, and the propagation and 
distribution of fish, you should utilize their hearty co-operation to the 
utmost, 

You should utilize to the fullest extent the opportunity afforded by 
the Railroad Administration in appointing a committee of western rail- 
roads to inform the traveling public how to comfortably reach the na- 
tional parks; you should diligently extend and use the splendid co- 
operation developed during the last three years among chambers of 
commerce, tourist bureaus, and automobile highway associations for the 
purpose of spreading information about our national parks and facilitat- 
ing their use and enjoyment; you should keep informed of park move- 
ments and park progress, municipal, county, and state, both at home and 
abroad, for the purpose of adapting, whenever practicable, the world’s 
best thought to the needs of the national parks. You should encourage 
all movements looking to outdoor living. In particular, you should 
maintain close working relationship with the Dominion parks branch of 
the Canadian department of the interior and assist in the solution of 
park problems of an international character. 

The department is often requested for reports on pending legislation 
proposing the establishment of new national parks or the addition of 
lands to existing parks. Complete data on such park projects should be 
obtained by the National Park Service and submitted to the department 
in tentative form of report to Congress. 

In studying new park projects you should seek to find “scenery of 
supreme and distinctive quality or some natural feature so extraordi- 
mary or unique as to be of national interest and importance.” You 
should seek “distinguished examples of typical forms of world archi- 
tecture,” such, for instance, as the Grand Cafion, as exemplifying the 
highest accomplishment of stream erosion, and the high, rugged portion 
of Mount Desert Island as exemplifying the oldest rock forms in Amer- 
ica and the luxuriance of deciduous forests. 

The national park system as now constituted should not be lowered 
in standard, dignity, and prestige by the inclusion of areas which express 
in less than the highest terms the particular class or kind of exhibit 
which they represent. 

It is not necessary that a national park should have a large area. The 
element of size is of no importance as long as the park is susceptible of 
effective administration and control. 

You should study existing national parks with the idea of improving 
them by the addition of adjacent areas which will complete their scenic 
purposes or facilitate administration. The addition of the Teton Moun- 
tains to the Yellowstone National Park, for instance, will supply Yel- 
lowstone’s greatest need, which is an uplift of glacier-bearing peaks; 
and the addition to the Sequoia National Park of the Sierra summits 
and slopes to the north and east, as contemplated by pending legislation, 


482 Sierra Club Bulletin 


will create a reservation unique in the world, because of its combination 
of gigantic trees, extraordinary cafions, and mountain masses, 

In considering projects involving the establishment of new national 
parks or the extension of existing park areas by delimination of national 
forests, you should observe what effect such delimination would have 
on the administration of adjacent forest lands, and, wherever practic- 
able, you should engage in an investigation of such park projects jointly 
with officers of the Forest Service, in order that questions of national 
park and national forest policy as they affect the lands involved may be 
thoroughly understood, Cordially, yours, 


} 


FRANKLIN K, LANE, 


Mr. STEPHEN T. MATHER, 
Secretary 


Director, National Park Service 


FORESTRY NOTES 


By WALTER MULFoRD 


- 
LAGUNA MOUNTAIN RECREATION AREA 


An important new development of recreation in the open is taking place 
in San Diego County on the Cleveland National Forest. This is the 
Laguna Mountain recreation area, very careful plans for which were 
worked out in advance by the United States Forest Service. The plans 
are being carried out under expert supervision, and the Forest Service 
has already spent about $60,000 in the development of the area. It is 
situated only 14% miles from the San Diego-Imperial Valley state high- 
way, with which it is connected by an excellent automobile road. It 
can be reached in a few hours by the people of the hot interior valleys. 
It has both public camping-grounds and private lots which are leased 
to individuals for a term of years, thus making it worth while for the 
lessees to build substantial cabins. Many people are already taking ad- 
vantage of the opportunity, and Laguna Mountain bids fair to become 
one of the best outing areas in southern California. 


@ e 


LARGE TIMBER SALE IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 


One hundred million board feet of national forest timber in Siskiyou, 
Trinity and Shasta counties has been sold by the United States Forest 
Service to the Weed Lumber Company. The three counties will re- 
ceive about $70,000 from this sale, as an act of Congress provides that 
twenty-five per cent of all national forest receipts be paid to the coun- 
ties within which the forests are located. 


GRAZING ANIMALS ON THE NATIONAL FORESTS 


To help in meeting war needs, the United States Forest Service in 1918 
continued its efforts to secure full utilization of the forage resources of 
the national forests. In 1917, because of the war, 23,000 more cattle and 
71,000 more sheep were placed on the national forests of California than 
had ever been grazed on them previously. In 1918 the numbers were 
still further increased by 18,000 cattle and 114,000 sheep. This is said 
to make an almost complete utilization of the grazing ranges of the 
national forests. 


SENTIMENT, CENTS AND SENSE 


A great recreation center at Laguna Mountain; a large sale of timber 
in the Shasta region to meet the needs of mankind for wood products; 


484 Sierra Club Bulletin 


a greatly increased use of the national forest range to enable greater 
production of meat, wool and leather—such are some of the uses of for- 
ests, each legitimate when in its proper locality and under proper con- 
trol. Let stockman and lumberman grant that forests are needed for 
playgrounds as well as to make lumber-piles and stockyards. Let them 
also realize that love for the forest is a sentiment greatly to be desired, 
which is already a force in public opinion and is destined to become 
stronger. On the other hand, let camper and hunter and forest-lover 
concede that forests must have their purely commercial side, and that 
it is right that it should be so. Our various interests must needs over- 
lap. Each must yield something, In getting together, we all need 
broad-minded common sense. 


ForeEST INDUSTRIES COM MITTEE 


An example of this common-sense, get-together-around-the-table policy 
is shown in the work of the Forest Industries Committee. No changes 
have occurred in the organization and personnel of this committee as 
described in the “Forestry Notes” of a year ago. In 1917 California 
fires burned more than 15,000 acres of standing grain, valued in normal 
times at more than $375,000; 233,000 acres of timber, valued at about 
$315,000; and nearly half a million acres of grazing and brush land, a 
large part of which would have supported grazing animals. Further- 
more, Forest Service data showed that it took 1600 ‘“man-months,” or 
the equivalent of 400 men working every day for four months, to put 
out the 1000 man-caused, or preventable, fires which occurred on the 
national forests of California in 1917. In the light of these facts, the 
Forest Industries Committee decided to concentrate its energies for 
I9I8 on a vigorous fire-protection campaign. 


THE I918 FOREST FIRE RECORD 


The campaign produced results. On the national forests there was a 
reduction in 1918, as compared with 1917, of about forty-nine per cent in 
the number of man-caused fires, seventy-two per cent in the amount of 
damage done, and seventy-seven per cent in the cost of fighting them. 
This result was due in part to the vigorous law-enforcement campaign 
of the Forest Service, which secured 100 convictions out of a total of 
110 arrests for starting forest fires. Outside the national forests, 
twenty-six counties were organized in 1918 for protection against grain, 
grass, brush and timber fires. Two counties had been organized in 1917. 
In the twenty-eight counties thus operative in 1918, there were 412 rural 
fire companies, with over 500 sets of fire-fighting equipment and more 
than 6000 members pledged to fight fire. The territory thus protected 
is estimated at over 16,000 square miles, and includes about fifty-six per 
cent of the grain-producing area of the state. Fire-protection ordi- 
nances have been passed by fourteen counties. 


———— 


Forestry Notes 485 


The United States Forest Service, the State Forester, the farm bu- 
reaus and the Division of Forestry of the University of California have 
all contributed largely to the fire-protection campaign. Much has been 
accomplished, but the present system is entirely inadequate for the pro- 
tection of forests outside the national forests and national parks. It is 
reported from the State Forester’s office that one forest fire in 1918, 
in Humboldt County, destroyed timber and other property valued at 
about a million dollars. The State Redwood Park in the Santa Cruz 
Mountains is frequently threatened. Why can we not all unite in se- 
curing thoroughgoing fire protection by the state? 


ONE STORM CAUSES TWO HUNDRED FIRES 


Lightning started about 200 forest fires between Lake Tahoe and the 
Oregon line in one storm, on June 28, 1918. The fires were particularly 
serious in the Klamath region. 


STATE ForesT NURSERY 


At the 1917 session of the legislature the State Forester was authorized 
to expend $14,000 for the establishment of a forest nursery. But the 
law stipulated that the nursery must be located on state land or on land 
donated for the purpose. As no suitable area was found which met the 
provisions of the law, the establishment of the nursery was postponed. 
This year the State Forester will make an effort to secure from the 
legislature authorization and funds to buy or rent a suitable site. The 
plan is that the nursery will furnish stock for planting along the state 
highways, on school grounds and in small parks in rural communities. 


INFORMATION REGARDING Woop AND ITs USEs 


The State Forester has established a wood-utilization service, to give 
information regarding the properties, uses, markets and available sup- 
plies of wood products. Inquiries should be addressed to the State For- 
ester, Sacramento. 


CALIFORNIA WHITE AND SUGAR PINE MANUFACTURERS’ ASSOCIATION 


Early in the war the California White and Sugar Pine Manufacturers’ 
Association pledged its resources to the Government without reserva- 
tion. About eighty per cent of the pine cut in 1918 in California has 
gone into uses recognized as war-time essentials by the Government, 
and the industry has therefore been given preference in cars, materials 
of construction and labor. In 1918 the association provided instruction 
in first aid and sanitation at logging-camps and sawmills. Some of the 
pine operators have pooled their resources for the purpose of advertis- 
ing California pine in eastern markets. 


486 Sierra Club Bulletin 


CALIFORNIA REDWoop ASSOCIATION 


There are twenty-two sawmill operators now cutting the coast redwood. 
The California Redwood Association includes sixteen of these opera- 
tors. The association is conducting a national educational campaign 
regarding the properties and uses of redwood. Its engineering depart- 
ment has been active in developing the use of redwood for wood-block 
flooring. A Redwood Emergency Bureau was organized to assist the 
Government in its war program. 


WAR AND THE FOREST SERVICE 


War caused many changes in the United States Forest Service. Non- 
essential work was suspended. Many projects were postponed until the 
return of normal times. Short-cut methods have been adopted. Men 
eligible for military duty were replaced by women or by men not eligi- 
ble for such service. Much direct help has been given to the various 
war boards and to the War Department itself. 


TAHOE- YOSEMITE TRAIL 


Among the Forest Service projects postponed because of the war is the 
completion of the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail. It is but one of the many 
things on which no work was done in 1918, 


FORESTRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


One hundred per cent of the juniors, seniors and alumni of the Division 
of Forestry of the University of California joined the colors, and most 
of the men are still in France. Instruction in professional forestry was 
therefore almost discontinued in 1918, but work in the elements of for- 
estry for non-professional students was given as usual. In the fall of 
1918 the forestry faculty gave a course in military mapping to over two 
hundred men of the Students’ Army Training Corps. The normal work 
of the forest school will be resumed in August, 1919. 


MEMORIAL TREES FOR SAILORS AND SOLDIERS 


Memorial trees for sailors and soldiers who gave their lives in the 
struggle to overthrow autocracy are called the finest tribute that can be 
paid those heroes in hundreds of letters to the American Forestry Asso- 
ciation in Washington. The association is urging the proper setting of 
memorial trees for whatever memorial may be adopted by the various 
municipalities. An “Avenue of the Allies,” lined with trees in honor of 
the allied nations, is one suggestion. Another plan being worked out is 
for the planting of memorial trees along the transcontinental motor 
highways by the various counties through which such highways pass. 
The Lincoln Highway Association has taken up this plan. 


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SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. X. PLATE CCXLII. 


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Ss 
74 


TENAYA PEAK AND LAKE TENAYA 
From Tioga Road, Yosemite National Park 
Photo by Lee L. Stopple 


BOOK REVIEWS 


ELizABETH M. Bape, Acting Editor 
> 


Steep All who have found John Muir’s interpretation of the moun- 
TRAILS* tains to be the most beautiful in literature will rejoice in this 

new collection of papers and letters which Professor Badé has 
so sympathetically compiled. 

Eventually it will be seen that Muir’s greatest service was that of 
recognizing and revealing God as the Infinite Personality who is work- 
ing in and through nature. Never was he confused by the outward ap- 
pearance, or by the evolutionary process, for his attitude of mind was 
that in which he perceived the Creator manifesting Himself in all that 
is true and beautiful. This insight illumined Muir’s heart, and it fills 
his message with power and life. Personality in God and man; indi- 
viduality in bird, and tree, and flower, each created for itself but inter- 
related with all life. 

All great souls are in a measure solitary, for their companionship is 
with the invisible. With the unawakened spirit they may have little 
true converse. Theirs is an inner world of reality, and they deal with 
causes rather than with effects. John Muir was most at home when 
alone in the mountains, for there he found a freedom of spirit that rose 
above the bondage of city-bound humanity. In Steep Trails there are 
many of these trips into the open paradise of our western country. Up 
glacier-polished Tenaya Cafion, Muir made so difficult a trip that few 
have been able to follow him. For a hundred miles around the flower- 
strewn slopes of mighty Shasta he strolled alone in joyous content. 
Early and late in the season he forced his way through storm and night 
to its distant summit, finding in each new experience a fresh revelation 
of Divine love and purpose. 

In all the annals of mountaineering one may hardly find a more thrill- 
ing night upon a mountain than was the one which Muir spent upon Mt. 
Shasta. In order to complete barometric observations he remained on 
its summit with a companion until overtaken by a blinding storm. Per- 
ilous in the extreme was their unseen route along a dangerous ridge, 
while beyond their progress was halted by the force of the wind and 
the uncertain darkness. Knowing no fear, Muir would have continued 
down the icy slope, but, respecting the wish of his companion, he re- 
traced his steps to the fumaroles near the summit, where they spent the 
night. Unable to stand against the storm, they were compelled to lie in 
the boiling mud and fight for their lives amid its poisonous gases. 

* Steep Trails. By Joun Muir. Edited by Witt1aAm Freperic Bapk.- Hough- 


ton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1918. Pages, xi + 390. Illustrated. 
Price, $3.00. Large paper edition, $5.00. 


488 | Sierra Club Bulletin 


Frozen, blistered and starved, they long awaited the dawn, when the 
storm ceased and they made their way slowly downward to warmth and 
safety. 

In other chapters of poetic beauty Muir describes the wild wool of 
mountain sheep and relates his experiences and climbs in Utah and 
Nevada, in southern California, and in Oregon and Washington. Every- 
where he studied glaciers and trees, roaming amid the continuous for- 
ests which thirty years ago surrounded Puget Sound, and reveling in 
the luxuriant flora which clothes the lower slopes of Mt. Rainier. He 
climbed this greatest of all our glacier-hung mountains, 14,408 feet in 
height, with a party which bivouacked at 10,000 feet on its cheerless 
stones. Since then the spot has been known as Camp Muir, but it was 
neither referred to by Muir nor by those who have followed him as an 
abode of peaceful memories! Under ordinary conditions, Rainier may 
test the endurance of any climber, but in wind and storm its summit 
slopes are exceedingly dangerous. 

In 1902 John Muir visited the Grand Cafion, describing it with char- 
acteristic charm and power. No one has more nearly succeeded in pic- 
turing its size, its architecture and sculpturing, and its marvelous col- 
oring. One must view the cafion with his own eyes to realize its gran- 
deur, for an adequate conception may not be conveyed by brush or pen. 
It contains many groups of mountains of fantastic form and varied hues 
that glow with sunrise and sunset splendors, or are veiled majestically 
by clouds and storms. To linger in the presence of the cafion inspires 
one to nobler thoughts, to truer understanding, and to a deeper realiza- 
tion of the beauty and the immensity of God’s creation. Inevitably it 
measures the development of the person who views it. Some are noisy, 
but the great soul is silent. LEROY JEFFERS 


JuNncLE William Beebe, director of the Tropical Research Station in 
Peace* British Guiana and curator of the ornithological section of 

the New York Zoological Park, is more than a naturalist. He 
knows how to set forth the results of tropical research in a fascinating 
manner, It would be hard to find a book that reveals the life of the 
tropics in a more interesting way. Here, in a chapter on “The Hoat- 
zins at Home,” we have the best description in English literature of 
that curious bird which still preserves, in the clawed wings of its young, 
the evidence of its reptilian ancestry. Even the inherited association 
with the water, from which the original bird-reptile emerged, is not 
wanting. A thrilling episode in another chapter is the noosing of a 
bushmaster eight feet long for the New York Zoological Park. This is 
one of the most dreaded serpents of the tropics, and the capture of this 
monster was a real adventure. “The snake lashed and curled and 
whipped up a whirlpool of debris, while one of us held grimly on to the 


*Jungle Peace. By Witi1AM BeEeEsBE. Illustrated from photographs. Henry 
Holt & Company, New York. 1918. Pages, 297. Price, $1.75 net. 


Book Reviews A89Q 


noose and the rest”—but the story is too long to be reported in a re- 
view, and no lover of literature and wildness must be provided with an 
excuse for not reading this remarkable book. 

The dedication to Colonel and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt calls to mind 
another of the many interests of the greatest American citizen of our 
time who has just passed on. Mr. Beebe relates that when the idea of 
a tropical research station occurred to him, Colonel Roosevelt was the 
first person with whom he discussed it. “In all my undertakings under 
the auspices of the New York Zoological Society,’ he writes, “I have 
found his attitude always one of whole-souled sympathy, checked and 
practicalized by trenchant criticism and advice. For Colonel Roosevelt, 
besides his other abilities and interests, is one of the best of our Ameri- 
can naturalists. To a solid foundation of scientific knowledge, gained 
direct from nature, he adds one of the widest and keenest experiences 
in the field. His published work is always based on a utilization of the 
two sources, and is characterized by a commendable restraint and the 
leaven of a philosophy which combines an unalterable adhesion to facts, 
with moderation of theory and an unhesitating use of the three words 
which should be ready for instant use in the vocabulary of every honest 
scientist, ‘I don’t know.’” A 


Sunset After the holidays are over and regularity once more pre- 
CANADA* vails, we begin to plan for the summer outing. Which of 

the many alluring retreats is going to be our choice for this 
year? After reading Sunset Canada, by Archie Bell, it seems impos- 
sible not to scheme and plot some way to arrive in that part of Canada 
where sets the golden sun. So ardently does the author describe his 
various western visits that all his pages seem to lead one involuntarily 
thither. 

The first chapters are about Victoria and its environs. From this 
quaint city the author passes to her granddaughter, Vancouver, with 
her modern buildings and magnificent parks. In the luxuriant forests 
around the city can be seen the spectacular and thrilling operation of 
hauling logs over a mountain by means of a cable attached to a rail- 
road locomotive. Prettily interwoven with the wildwood descriptions 
are rare Indian legends. 

Then come chapters on Prince Rupert, its origin, and outlying dis- 
tricts, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, with its points of interest, 
and the thoroughly Anglican communities—for the English always 
bring their habits with them. One is constantly surprised to find agri- 
cultural lands amidst such rugged and inspiring scenes. As in Nor- 
way, the hanging meadows, seen from a distance, look like framed pic- 
tures on a wall of gray cliff. 

* Sunset Canada, British Columbia, and Beyond. By ArcHIE BELL. With illus- 


trations in black and white and in color. The Page Company, Boston. Pages, 
320. Price, $3.50 and postage. 


490 Sierra Club Bulletin 


A dazzling array of marvels is exhibited in the chapters on Jasper 
Park, Mt. Robson Park, Maligne Lake—more beautiful, according to the 
author, than the accepted jewel of them all, Lake Louise—Banff, and 
Field, with their entourage. 

The author makes one feel that western Canada is enchanted ground, 
created for the relaxation and enjoyment of him who turns for his 
diversion to the vast out-of-doors. Here forest and cliff, lake and gla- 
cier, work that spell which enables one to return to his regular routine 
with renewed strength. oe Lena R. CARLTON 


Far AWAy AND There is much in the writings of W. H. Hudson that 
Lone Aco* tempts one to call him the John Muir of South Ameri- 

ca. The comparison is not based upon similarity of 
style, for in that respect their work differs widely. Muir’s style sug- 
gests the dignified beauty of the mountains; Hudson’s, the graceful 
curves cut by leisurely streams on the green plains of Argentina. But 
the two men resemble each other strongly in their intense love of na- 
ture. Both, too, were naturalists with a fine poetic insight that enabled 
them to relate their observations in a captivating manner. In this book 
Hudson tells the story of his boyhood on the illimitable Argentine pam- 
pas. It is a wonderful tale of strange characters who dwelt in those 
vast solitudes; of the gauchos, or Argentine cowboys, and their quar- 
rels and primitive modes of life; of Buenos Aires in the 40’s when the 
long-forgotten Dictator Rosas was ruling the city with murder and vio- 
lence; of swashbucklers, Jack the Killers, and women strange and beau- 
tiful. Into this varied human material he has woven the story of his 
early life, with fascinating descriptions of birds, trees, flowers, arma- 
dillos, and vizcachas. In point of interest and importance this book de- 
serves to rank among the twelve best books of the year. Any lover of 
the great outdoors who leaves this book unread cuts himself off from a 


great enjoyment. W.E. B. 


TENTING ‘The name of the author alone will assure the reader of a 
ToNIGHTYT treat in store. It is the story of a summer adventure which 
carries one to Glacier National Park. But, more than that, 
the party crosses Gunsight Pass and enters a region unknown to the 
tourist, a region of fascinating forest, trail and stream. The culmi- 
nating event of the season is a four-day boat trip through the cafion of 
the Flathead River. Rapids are run, portages are made, and with suc- 
cess comes the reward briefly told: “It has never been done before.” 
Incidentally the writer gives a capital picture of camp life of the type 
in which neither time nor money has been spared. H Mine 


*Far Away and Long Ago. By W. H. Hupson. E. P. Dutton & Company, 
New York. 1918. Price, $2.50 net. 


{Tenting Tonight. By Mary Roserts RINEHART. Houghton Mifflin Company, 
Boston and New York. Illustrated. Price, $1.75 net. 


Book Reviews 4QI 


Our Well written, well illustrated, well printed; enjoyable in the 
NaTIONAL reading, and leaving such a good after-taste that anyone in- 
Forests* terested in our national forests will want to keep it on his 
shelves—such is this recently published book descriptive of 
the purposes and methods of the national forests, The four sections 
of the book deal respectively with the creation and organization of the 
national forests—their administration, their protection, and the sale 
and rental of national forest resources. W.M. 


CAMPING In this book the editor of Field and Stream gives in compact 
OuttT form, and from the experience of over thirty years, advice 

for those who desire to enjoy real camping out. He takes 
up the subject from the point of view of different modes of travel, such 
as packing afoot (or, as we call it, “knapsacking”’), traveling with pack 
animals, on horseback, or in canoe. He also considers it from the 
point of view of degree of comfort in camping, from the simple and 
compact outfit necessary for, say, a packing trip in the Adirondacks in 
midwinter, to the luxurious permanent camp or automobile camp. In 
addition, the book is a delightful narrative as well, and is exceedingly 
interesting reading for anyone fond of outdoor life. The material is, 
however, applicable more to camping conditions east of the Rocky 
Mountains than to our style of camping in the Sierra Nevada Moun- 


tains. Wi EG 


PRACTICAL This book contains subject-matter of interest to tourna- 
Bait-CasTINGt ment casters and anglers. The first half of it gives an 

excellent description of the rods, lines, reels and lures 
used for practical (as also scientific) bait-casving, followed by lessons 
in the proper methods of using them. These are illustrated by photo- 
graphic prints, to make them clear to the reader; and the subject of the 
photographs is one of America’s famous tournament casters and fisher- 
men, snapped in action. The second half of the book describes the ap- 
plication of the tackles and methods of the first half to actual fishing 
conditions, 

This is not a large or an expensive book, but it contains a store of 
valuable fishing advice and wisdom, and belongs in the library of all 
anglers or would-be anglers, and is especially recommended to Cali- 
fornians for the following reasons: The principles described and the 
practice of them are well known in the eastern states, chiefly as used in 

*Our National Forests. A short popular account of the work of the United 


States Forest Service on the national forests. By RicHarp H. Douvar BoerkeEr. 
The Macmillan Company, New York. 1918. Price, $2.50. 


+ Camping Out. By Warren H. Mitier. George H. Doran Company, New 
York. tor8. Price, $1.50 net. 


tPractical Bait-Casting. By Larry St. Joun. Illustrated. The Macmillan 
Company, New York. Price, $1.00. 


AQ2 Sierra Club Bulletin 


the successful taking of black bass. But, although this fish is now 
abundant in many parts of California, proper methods for its taking are 
not either well known or in general use. It is a game fish, a tough 
fighter after being hooked, and excellent for eating. And the fisherman 
who will master such wisdom as is contained in Mr. St. John’s book, 
and put it in practice along the streams of California’s central valley, 
will find such fishing as will almost satisfy the longings of an angler’s 


soul. Cue 


OvurCities To the layman this book appears something prophetic, 
AWAKE* somewhat on the plane of the ideal; yet it abounds in sta- 

tistics and tabular statements of facts which represent ac- 
tual achievements in a city awake and up and doing! 

Everything from garbage disposal to community singing and child 
welfare comes under the head of “Public Works” in a city where the 
mayor and the director of public works combined unselfish love of their 
kind with efficiency and practical sense. 

In conclusion, the author says: “As America calls millions for mili- 
tary duty overseas, so she calls tens of millions for civic duty here. The 
goal is absolutely the same—the enfranchisement of the human spirit.” 

HOM cae: 


Tue Human For boys who still think it the funniest joke ever to tie 
SIDE OF a tin can to a dog’s tail, or to heave a stone at a cat, no 
ANIMALS} better book than this could be written. Thoughtless 

grown-up people, too, could learn from this book how to 
treat their dumb neighbors as fellow beings. 

What is usually accepted as instinct in animals the author interprets 
as intellect. He examines many kinds of animal, from the cat and cow 
of our own home-place to the lemming of Scandinavia and the zebra of 
African wilds. He shows us how these animals live as human beings. 
The young of a species play to exercise their muscles and to strengthen 
those which will be most used later in life. All animals prepare, with 
their own individual weapons, for the great and terrible war which has 
always existed in the world. The warfare of nations has stopped, but 
the battles of individuals will long continue. Are not animals even bet- 
ter equipped for strife than superior man? 

Perhaps the most interesting chapter—unless we except the one on 
the “Allies of Men’—is the one on food conservation. Let us here- 
upon release the polecat from a part of his huge burden of odium. He 
makes a storehouse near his home, and this he fills with frogs and liz- 
ards and insects, so that his children may have plenty of fresh meat. 


*Our Cities Awake. By Morris LLEwELLYN Cooke. Doubleday, Page & Co., 
New York. 1918. Price, $2.50 net. 


_ +The Human Side of Animals. By Royar Dixon. Illustrations in color and 
in black and white. Frederick A. Stokes Company. Cloth, 8vo. Price, $1.75 net. 


Book Reviews 493 


His victims are so cleverly bitten through the head that they remain 
alive but are unable to escape. Thus are the young cats provided with 
fresh meat, which they have the joy of catching themselves. Let us 
laugh at the odd appearance of Mrs. Porcupine. She decides on grapes 
today for the menu of her family. She goes forth to a vine where 
plenty abounds, shakes the vine, rolls carefully in the grapes as only 
porcupines know how, and proceeds homeward, a grape on the end of 
each quill! 

In the last chapter the author gives remarkable Biblical proof of the 
immortality of the animal soul. Lena R. CARLTON 


THE WortH WHILE This is a convenient little volume to tuck in a 
IN THE SOUTHWEST* suitcase. Even if you do not visit all the Indian 
villages in the leisurely fashion advised by the 
author, you may at least become better acquainted with the picturesque 
pueblos, the arts, legends and ceremonial dances of the Hopis and 
Zunis. There is fascination in the mellow tints of mesa and cliff, won- 
der for the sixteenth-century Spanish explorers, and awe for the pre- 
historic dwellings of Montezuma’s descendants. Particularly interesting 
are the chapters on the village of Acoma and El Morro, the autograph 
rock of the Conquistadores. 12 fea Gee 


Tue Metopy This is a collection of garden and nature poems selected 
oF EARTHT by Mrs. Waldo Richards from the poets of the present 

day or those who have written within the last ten years. 
Most of the poems are by American writers, but we also find the names 
of Verhaeren, Rabindranath Tagore, Yates, Noyes, Masefield and other 
English and Irish writers in the list of authors represented. 

The headings of the different groups of poems indicate the variety of 
garden pictures—“Within Garden Walls,” “The Pageantry of Gardens,” 
“The Gardens of Yesterday,” “The Lost Gardens of the Heart.” There 
are poems of every season—of lilac time and Indian summer, of the 
roses of June and the snows of winter. There are exquisite songs of 
the coming of spring birds, of the nightingale at sunset, of the whirring 
hummingbird and dainty butterfly. Every phase of garden life is pic- 
tured, from the romances of the stately old gardens overseas to the 
homely virtues of the vegetable gardens of the present day, with a spe- 
cial “Grace for Gardens,” for the “beans and peas and the corn full on 
the ear,” which should have been chanted by every war-gardener. 

In the group called “Pasture and Hillside” we are taken farther 
afield, and in “Underneath the Bough” we find poems not only to the 


* Finding the Worth While in the Southwest. By CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS. 
Illustrated. Robert McBride & Co., New York. 10918. Price, $1.25 net. 


{The Melody of Earth. Edited by Mrs. Watpo RicHarps. Houghton Mifflin 
Company, Boston and New York. 1918. Price, $1.50 net. 


494 Sierra Club Bulletin 


familiar trees that become garden friends, but also a song to one known 
to Sierrans in the high mountains, “A Lady of the Snows,” as Miss 
Harriet Monroe charmingly describes the mountain hemlock. 

Even the mountain climber who agrees with Joyce Kilmer when he 


Says, “T think that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree,”’ 


will find this collection a very delightful book to have with him for a 
noon-hour in the shade of a pine. EsLe Ro 
A GuIDETOTHE ‘This is a practical guide to the national parks, deal- 
NATIONAL PaRKS ing more with routes, accommodations, etc., than 
oF AMERICA* with scenic descriptions. The author takes up the 

parks in the general order of their magnitude and 
importance, beginning with the Yellowstone. Here will be found de- 
tailed information concerning rail and stage transportation, hotels and 
camps, with fares and daily rates as authorized by the Government. All 
tours, either by stage or by pack train, are included. The author also 
gives advice on the necessary equipment for the national park visitor, 
and the more important park regulations in force at present. 


JON: 


Sicn More than twenty years of serious study of the sign-language 
TaLk}t of the American Indian lie behind Ernest Thompson Seton’s 

preparation of this illustrated dictionary of 1600 signs used by 
the Indians of the Great Plains. He is conversant with all the elabo- 
rate codes prepared by American army officers, with the writings of 
Indian agents and missionary workers who were experts in gesture 
language, and has taken his own manuscript from tribe to tribe for con- 
sultation with the best sign-talkers of the present day. The sign-talk 
of the Cheyenne tribe is taken as a standard, as theirs has been simpli- 
fied to become largely a one-hand code; but some signs of other tribes 
have also been added, as well as a hundred or more used by the deaf in 
Europe and America. 

So enthusiastic is the author about the uses of sign-language that he 
proposes it as the future universal world language. With this thought 
in view, he has added the French and German equivalents of the Eng- 
lish word expressing the root-idea of each sign. Among the many ad- 
vantages which the author finds for the Indian sign-language over the 
complete sign code of the deaf is that the former expresses ideas in- 
stead of spelling out words, and therefore can be used by people with 

*A Guide to the National Parks of America. Compiled and edited by EpWaArp 


Frank ALLEN, editor of ‘‘Travel.’”? Robert McBride & Company, New York. 1918. 
Price, $1.25 net; postage extra. 


tj Sign Talk. By Ernest TuHompson Seton. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden 
City and New York. Price, $3.00. 


Book Reviews 495 


no knowledge of the spelling of words, and between people who know 
different languages. 

Even if we do not share in the anticipation of a future of universal 
sign-talking, we should be grateful for the patient research which re- 
sults in preserving to us so much of the fast-disappearing life of our 
American Indians. Ee Lee! 


a 


GUIDE TO Published by the Department of the Interior, Ottawa, 
JASPER Park* this guide to Jasper Park gives a very comprehensive 
description of one of Canada’s largest and most beauti- 
ful playgrounds. An account of the early history of the region, quoting 
from thrilling narratives of the first explorers, fur-traders, and mis- 
sionaries to the Indians, forms an interesting chapter. The descriptive 
material is profusely illustrated with beautiful photographs, not only of 
the scenic wonders of the park, but also of the fauna and flora. A list 
is given of trips to be taken in the region, with details of distance, time, 
and height of peaks, that makes one wish to follow each careful direc- 
tion and see for one’s self the lofty peaks, snowy cirques, glacial rivers 
and quiet lakes of this Rocky Mountain park. 
It is well printed and bound in an attractive green flexible binding. 
Six topographical maps go with it. ELE Be. 


In THE Witps_ ‘This book embodies the experiences of a field naturalist 
OF SOUTH and collector during six years in the tropical wilder- 
AMERICAT nesses of South America. Altogether Mr. Miller cov- 
ered over 150,000 miles in his expeditions, circling the 

coast region of all that part of the southern continent which lies north 
of Buenos Aires. The opening chapters relate to explorations in Colom- 
bia, Then follows the story of his adventures and observations dur- 
ing an ascent of the Orinoco to the mysterious Mt. Duida. The reader 
catches glimpses of rubber camps where orgies of dissipation and occa- 
sional wholesale murders take place, when the bands of natives, return- 
ing from the forest, are paid for their deliveries of rubber. A chapter 
on “Life in the Guiana Wilds” tells of the interesting custom, called 
“bheena,’ among the Patamona Indians, which is thought to insure suc- 
cess on a hunt. Several chapters are devoted to the Roosevelt South 
American Expedition, to which Mr. Miller was attached as field natu- 
ralist. The chapter entitled “A Forty Days’ Ride Through Wildest 
Matto Grosso” should satisfy the most exacting reader of exploration 
literature. Here is found a description of the Salto Bello Falls, where 
* Description of and Guide to Jasper Park. Published by the Department of the 


Interior, Ottawa. 1917. Pages, 97. Price, 50 cents. Sold by Railway News Com- 
pany, Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

tIn the Wilds of South America. By Lro E. MItter, of the American Museum 
of Natural History. With over 70 illustrations and a map. Charles Scribners’ 
Sons, New York. 1918. 8vo. Pages, xiv + 424. Price, $4.50 net. 


496 Sierra Club Bulletin 


the Papagayo River, fully five hundred feet wide and containing an 
enormous flow of water, plunges into a gorge in a sheer drop of two 
hundred and eighty feet. The height of the fall exceeds that of Niagara 
by more than a hundred feet, and the roar of the water is said to be 
awe-inspiring in the extreme. After leaving the Roosevelt Expedition, 
Mr. Miller went down the west coast of Peru, crossed the central Bo- 
livian highlands, and passed down into Argentina. Any one who is 
interested in the little-known savages of South America should read his 
chapter on “The Yuracaré Indians of the Rio Chimoré.” Throughout 
the volume the natural-history interest of the reader is satisfied by de- 
lightful descriptions of South American birds and mammals, many of 
them quite rare. Who would not like to know about the habits of a 
night-monkey no bigger than a good-sized mouse, or an ant-eater, with 
a wonderful golden fur, that lives a diurnal life in the tree-tops? We 
regret that we are unable to devote as much space to the volume as it 
deserves. We recommend it warmly as a most entertaining and in- 
forming volume. It contains a map and more than seventy photographic 
illustrations, The frontispiece is a beautiful color plate of the cock-of- 
the-rock, a rare bird of gorgeous plumage, whose nest and eggs Mr. 
Miller found for the first time. We B 


“TourtnGc This little work is well worth reading, and is of the greatest 
Aroor’* possible interest to all trampers and mountaineers. It is also 
of a special interest to knapsackers, those who “back-pack.” 
While we do not agree with everything the author says, largely because 
western conditions are somewhat different from those found in the east, 
he gives every evidence of knowing what he is writing about. His sug- 
gestions on the various kinds of back-packs, footwear, making of caps, 
outdoor beds, food list and light-weight mess kit are full of valuable 
suggestions. WE. C 


We are in receipt of the 1918 Annual of the Mountain Club of South 
Africa, published by the Cape Town Section. It is a publication of 158 
pages, with a large number of photo-engravings which convey a clear 
idea of mountain scenery in the Transvaal and in the vicinity of Cape 
Town. There are a number of interesting articles illustrating climbs 
undertaken by South African mountaineers. We welcome to our library 
this new acquaintance from the antipodes. 


*Touring Afoot. By C. P. Forpyce. Outing Publishing Company, New York. 
Price, 80 cents. 


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to retake. 


AFTER YOU COME BACK 


you will want them developed and printed in a mod- 
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workmen to get the best possible results from your 
exposures. From the best ones you will want some 
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These are some of the advantages we have 
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A book for every outdoor lover 


STEEP TRAILS 


BY JOHN MUIR 
EDITED BY WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 


Some of John Muir’s best writing is to be found in this last of 
his posthumous books, which begins with a charming paper on 
the mountain sheep, or bighorn, of the Sierra Nevada and ends 
with a glowing account of the Grand Cafion. Other vivid chap- 
ters deal with Mt. Shasta, Mt. Rainier, Puget Sound, Oregon, 
Utah, the Nevada desert, the Sierra, and the San Gabriel 
Mountains, and include stories of strenuous adventures as 
well as such delightful description of the scenery and wild life 
of the West as only John Muir could write. 


“No one who loves the out-of-doors should 
fail to read this volume. Perhaps no other 
book so adequately presents the scope of 
Muir’s genius.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer 


Illustrated. $3.00 net 
Boston HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY new York 


H. C. Golcher 
Company 


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MEMBERS OF SIERRA CLUB & FRIENDS 


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rything for the “Lovers of Outdoor Life. 


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HIKING OUTFITS, RUCKSACKS, 
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U.S. Knapsacks, Shelter Tents, Ponchos and many of 
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Wholesale and Retail 


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We carry everything for the camping trip, such as 
condensed soups, potted meats, beef extracts and deli- 
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We take great pains to pack according to instruc- 
tions left, and try to please in every way. 

When you are far away you want fresh goods of 
the best quality, and they must be packed properly. 


Mazin Store and Shipping Depot 
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SPALDING 


Life in the Open in 
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Drab for Men 
ws and Women 
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Traverses Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt 
Counties, the territory that appeals to the hiker and lover of primi- 
tive out-of-door sports 


EVERY TWO HOURS 


during the day, a fast electric train leaves 
San Francisco, Key Route Ferry Depot 


to SACRAMENTO 


Fast comfortable service through some of 
the prettiest spots in Central California. 


Write for Time Table and Rates 


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Studio, where you will find much of interest 
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TAMALPAIS HIKERS 


In Order to Popularize Hiking on the Mountain 


THE MT. TAMALPAIS & 
MUIR WOODS RAILWAY 


will establish the following rates between intermediate points 
on its line, effective March 1 to October I, 1917 
OneWay RoundTrip 


Between Mill Valley and Ah ec 


Muir 
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Between Mesa and 4 West Point 


Between West Point and Maite 

Between Tavern and Muir Woods 
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| Muir 35 
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ON A HIKE—12z Witt Need 

IT WILL SERVE YOU FOR 
MOTELS. 
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OU HAVE WALKED 


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Yosemite National Park 


CALIFORNIA’S GREAT SCENIC ATTRACTION 
Tue DirEcT AND COMFORTABLE WAY IS VIA THE 


Yosemite Valley Railroad 


A scenic trip through the Merced Cafion. Observation-parlor cars by 
day, Pullman cars by night from Los Angeles and San Francisco. 


YOSEMITE TRANSPORTATION CO. AUTOMOBILE LINE 
From El Portal to hotel or camp in the valley, over a macadam road, 
wide and smooth, sprinkled daily to keep down the dust. Passes in full 
vAGy of many of the scenic features—El Capitan, Bridal Veil Falls, Half 
ome. 
THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 


The Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa Groves may be visited by short 
automobile trips from El Portal or Yosemite, without loss of time. 


BUY ROUND-TRIP TICKETS TO YOSEMITE 


Via Southern Pacific or Santa Fe to Merced and the Yosemite Valley 
Railroad. This is the direct way; this is the comfortable way; the way 
most people go, a combination of rail and auto unexcelled. See any rail- 
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THE CRUISE 
OF THE CORWIN 


BY JOHN MUIR 
EDITED BY WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE 


Every lover of nature and travel books will relish 
this volume describing John Muir’s adventures and 


experiences while a member of the Corwin expedition 
to the far North in search of the Artic explorer DeLong. 


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The admirable work of the editor is worthy 
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Market Street SPIRO aS Broadway 
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corer) The Camper, Hiker, Autoist and 

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: MD bj ‘WF  stockall the necessaries that add com- 

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Yosemite National Park 


CALIFORNIA’S GREAT SCENIC ATTRACTION 


THE DIRECT AND COMFORTABLE Way IS VIA THE 


Yosemite Valley Railroad 
A scenic trip through the Merced Cajfion. Observation-parlor cars by 
day, Pullman cars by night from Los Angeles and San Francisco. 
YOSEMITE TRANSPORTATION CO. AUTOMOBILE LINE 
From El Portal to hotel or camp in the valley, over a macadam road, 
wide and smooth, sprinkled daily to keep down the dust. Passes in full 
view of many of the scenic features—El1 Capitan, Bridal Veil Falls, Half 
Dome. 
THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 


The Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa Groves may be visited by short 
automobile trips from El] Portal or Yosemite, without loss of time. 


BUY ROUND-TRIP TICKETS TO YOSEMITE 


Via Southern Pacific or Santa Fe to Merced and the Yosemite Valley 
Railroad. This is the direct way; this is the comfortable way; the way 
most people go, a combination of rail and auto unexcelled. See any rail- 
way ticket agent for information and folder, or address: 


Yosemite Valley Railroad Company. 
MERCED, CAL. 


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The most complete variety of boots is 
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Prices as low as good material, work- 


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Season June 15 to October 1 


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plan to follow its skyland trails over the Continental Divide. Varied tours 
by auto-stage and saddle-horse are available; mammoth hotels-in-the-mountains and 
Alpine chalet groups afford unique entertainment enroute. The 

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Wool Sox 
Rollups 
Folding Lanterns 


Write for Catalogue 


Gue-{ij 


Yee 
*SsoRs TO DYAS- 


cine © 


214 West Third Street and 
Spring at Sixth 


LOS ANGELES 


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Members are urged to deal with our advertisers 


NEW OUTDOOR BOOKS 


JOHN MUIR’S 


A THOUSAND-MILE WALK 
TO THE GULF 


This is John Muir’s journal of his tramp from Indiana to Florida 
in 1867, and of his trip thence to Cuba and finally to California. 
This was Muir’s first adventure into the world of his life work as 
a student of nature—his matriculation, as he himself would have 
put it, in the “University of the Wilderness,” and he writes with 
all the fresh enthusiasm of such an adventure at twenty-nine, and 
with good measure of the literary art that distinguishes his later 
writing. It was primarily a botanizing trip, but the journal is de- | 
voted mostly to the general aspects of the country and to experi- 
ences with more or less hospitable humans and woods that were 
always hospitable. The book will be warmly welcomed, because it is 
interesting in itself as well as in the light it throws on the devel- 
opment of the great naturalist’s aims. The journal has been 
skilfully edited by Prof. William F. Badé, who did a like ser- 
vice for Muir’s “Travels in Alaska.” 


Illustrated. Large cr. 8vo, $2.50 net. Also a large paper edition of 
550 copies, of which 500 are for sale. Price, $5.00 net. 


ON ALPINE HEIGHTS AND 
BRITISH CRAGS 
By GEORGE D. ABRAHAM 


“One of the most fascinating books of mountaineering I 
have ever read. It ranks among the first half dozen books 
which would be missed from any real mountaineer’s li- 
brary.”—William Frederic Badé, editor of The Sierra Club 
Bulletin and one of the directors of the Sierra Club. 

24 illustrations. $2.50 net. 


BIRD THE STORY OF 


FRIENDS SCOTCH 
By GILBERT H. TRAFTON By ENOS A. MILLS 


For the nature lover no gift could “Not even Rab or Stickeen lays a 
be more appropriate than this beau- stronger hold on the reader’s affec- 
tiful volume, which tells everything tions than the faithful and intelligent 
about birds that anyone, even a spe- dog Scotch, whose tragic history is 
cial student, would want to know. told in this book.’—The Dial. 
Profusely illustrated in color. $2 net. Illustrated. 50 cents net. 


“HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 


BOSTON NEW YORK 


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Members are urged to deal with our advertisers 


Huntington Lakeand the Grand 
Canyon of the San Joaquin 
@ 


ALIFORNIA’S great scenic attraction. Do not fail to see 

beautiful Huntington Lake, surrounded by its snow-clad 
mountain peaks and the Grand Cafion of the San Joa- 
quin, with its massive walls and domes, stupendous water- 
falls. It’s a galaxy unsurpassed elsewhere. Only a few hours 
from Los Angeles and San Francisco—either Southern Pacific 
Company or Santa Fe Railroad to Cascada, thence by auto 
service to the Lake. Good Hotel service at Huntington Lodge. 
Descriptive folders on application. For through tickets and 
connections see Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroad tick- 
et agents, or address: 


San Joaquin 's Eastern R. R. Company 
730 P. E. Building Los Angeles, Cal. 


Goldberg, Bowen & Co. 


Wholesale and Retail 


Grocers 


TEA, COFFEE AND WINE MERCHANTS 


Established 1850 


We carry everything for the camping trip, such as 
condensed soups, potted meats, beef extracts and deli- 
cacies of all kinds. 

We take great pains to pack according to instruc- 
tions left, and try to please in every way. 

When you are far away you want fresh goods of 
the best quality, and they must be packed properly. 


Mazin Store and Shipping Depot 
242 SUTTER STREET SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 


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Members are urged to deal with our advertisers 


HIKING OUTFITS 
SLEEPING BAGS 
RUCKSACKS 


TENTS 


CAMP SUPPLIES 
EASTMAN KODAKS AND SUPPLIES 


SAN FRANCISCO 


PURVEYORS TO THE 


Lovers of the Outdoor Life 


The Camper, Hiker, Autoist and Sportsman can 

find in our varied stock all the necessaries that 

add comfort to the body, the camp or the trip 
en route 


| Army and Navy Goods | 


SOLE DISTRIBUTORS 


The regulation U. Ps Army Tramping Shoes 
U. S. Olive Drab Shirts 
U. S Olive Drab Blankets 


U. S. Knapsacks, Shelter Tents, Ponchos and many of the 
other useful articles required in the 
U.S. Army and Navy Service 


ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE FREE 
BRANCH STORE, 1026 BROADWAY, OAKLAND 


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SIERRA CLUB 
402 MILLS BUILDING : SAN FRANCISCO 


ATO EE IIT ncn 
ao =. 


ec aan laine 
un Sf nian ASty¢, a‘ 


, 
oF 5 


Yo. 


“Zonal mused - 
ANNOUNCEMENT — 
EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL 


QUTING OF THE SIERRA CLUB 
JULY 1ith TO AUGUST 10th, 1919 


dows, through Yosemite, with 
main trips to Mt. Ritter region, 
WAI} Chousand Island Lake, Shad- 

Mow Lake, Devils Post Pile, 
Rainbow Falls and during the last week to Ten 
Lake Basin and vicinity. 


This will make the trip interesting to those 
who have visited the Meadows on previous 
occasions. Persons desiring to take this out- 
ing should notify the Secretary in writing at 
once so as to aid in the preparations. 

The region about Mt. Ritter is one of the 
most striking and spectacular from the stand- 
point of mountaineering in the Sierra, while 
Ten Lake Basin contains one of the most ex- 


‘i 


quisite groups of lakes that are to be foun 
in the whole range. In all probability a knap 
sack party will go down the Tuolumne Cafio 
to Pate Valley and rejoin the main party i 
Ten Lake Basin. 


MAPS 


A folding map of the entire Yosemit 
National Park can be secured of the Directo 
of the U. S. Geological Survey, Washington 
D. C., or from Isaac Upham Co., 510 Marke 
StiSan Francisco: 


LITERATURE | 

For literature on this trip members are re 

ferred to back numbers of the “Sierra Club 

Bulletin,’ which can be read at the Club 
Rooms and several local public libraries. 


See also “My First Summer in the Sierra,” 
and “The Yosemite,” by John Muir. 


For. a very good description of Mt. Ritter 
and Ten Lake Basin, see “The Mountains of 
California,” by John Muir, pp. 53-73 and p. 
100. 

PERSONNEL 

This outing is intended for members of the 
Club and their relatives. Members of other 
mountaineering clubs are also welcome. 
Friends of members, properly recommended, 
may also join the outing on payment of $5 as 
an enrollment fee. 


ITINERARY 


The main party will leave San Francisco 
and Los Angeles in special Sierra Club Pull- 


2 


man cars attached to regular trains, Friday 
evening, July 11th, and will arrive at the Sierra 
Club camp in Yosemite the afternoon of the 
12th. The party will remain in Yosemite one 
day and the morning of July 14th will start for 
Tuolumne Meadows via Mirror Lake Trail and 
will camp the first night near Lake Tenaya. 
They will reach the Soda Springs camp in 
Tuolumne Meadows on July 15th and from this 
central camp trips will be taken down the 
Grand Cafion of the Tuolumne, and climbs of 
Mts. Hoffman, Conness, Dana, Lyell and Rit- 
ter will be made. - There is a vast wilderness 
to explore and no region in the Sierra is more 
attractive. Those who prefer may stay at 
the base camp in the Meadows and enjoy the 
splendid trout fishing (be sure and get your 
State fishing licenses before you start) or take 
the numberless interesting one-day trips to 
nearby lakes and peaks. 

~The party will return via Ten Lake Basin 
and Yosemite Creek, leaving Yosemite the 
afternoon of August 9th and arriving in San 
Francisco and Los Angeles the morning of 
August 10th. 


TWO WEEKS PARTY 


This party will leave San Francisco and Los 
Angeles on the regular trains the evening of 
July 25th, arriving in Yosemite the 26th, stay- 
ing at any of the regular camps that night. 
The pack train will be at the Le Conte Memo- 
rial Lodge the morning of the 27th and the 
members of the party should see that their 


3 


dunnage bags are at the Lodge by 7 o’clock 
a.m. at the latest. Each of the regular camps 
will, upon request, see that the bags are de- 
livered. Information can be obtained at the 


Lodge the evening before or the morning 
of the 27th. 


OUTING DEPOSIT 


The Outing Deposit will be $65.00 for the 
main trip of four weeks, or $40.00 for two 
weeks. The increase in price is rendered nec- 
essary by the great advance in cost of provi- 
sions and all material used on the trip. 


Since the provisions and outfit must be 
purchased for cash, and will have to be for- 
warded several weeks prior to the main start, 
it will be necessary for each person who de- 
sires to take this trip to send the Secretary 
of the Sierra Club the deposit of $65.00 for 
the main trip or $40.00 for two weeks to cover 
the expense, so as to reach him not later than 
the 24th of May. Send amount by check, 
money or express order, and payable to the 
Secretary of the Sierra Club. 


The deposit will in all probability, cover all 
Club expenses so that no further assessment 
need be made. 


Since a large outlay will have to be made 
several weeks in advance, the deposits of those 
who find themselves unable to join the Out- 
ing will be refunded only in case their places 
are filled by the Committee from those who 
make subsequent application or in case any 


4 


balance remains after paying all Outing ex- 
penses, though there has been in the past no 
difficulty in refunding, at least, the major por- 
tion of the deposit. 


DUNNAGE BAGS 


No personal baggage will be accepted for 
transportation on the pack-train unless packed 
in dunnage bags of dimensions and shapes as 
follows: Cylindrical canvas bags not to ex- 
ceed, when packed, three feet in length and 
eighteen inches in diameter, plainly marked 
with the names and home addresses of their 
respective owners. These should be painted 
on the bags in large letters. Each person is 
allowed one bag only. 

Weight of each individual’s personal bag- 
gage when packed in bag is not to exceed 
thirty-five pounds. 


SADDLE HORSES 


A few saddle horses will be available for 
use. The charge per animal for the entire 
trip, including its care, will probably be $45.00. 
The Club assumes no responsibility of any 
sort for these, but has consented to their use 
by members of the party who may wish to 
ride. If you wish to engage an animal for the 
trip, let us know at once and one will be or- 
dered for you. 


PERSONAL OUTFIT 


Each member of the party must provide his 
own personal effects. 


THE ESSENTIALS 


1. Sleeping Outfit. This should consist of 
a sleeping bag made by doubling two wool 
comforters, so as to give the bag the great- 
est length, and sewing securely together 
across the bottom and two-thirds of the way 
up the side. This bag should be lined and 
covered with gingham or sateen, which should 
project a foot or two beyond the top as a 
loose flap. The wool comforters may be 
sewed up into separate bags as indicated, and 
one lined and the other covered. One bag 
can then be slipped inside the other for ordi- 
nary use and removed easily for knapsack 
trips where economy of weight is desirable. 
A tall person will require extra length com- 
forters. Blankets are too heavy and cotton 
comforters are not desirable. 


A waterproof sheet or covering at least 6x6 
feet should also be taken. Canvas and the or- 
dinary rubber blanket are entirely too heavy 
for this purpose. The most serviceable and sat- 
isfactory material is waterproof silk. It is 
strong, durable, perfectly waterproof, and very 
light. A piece five yards in length, cut in half 
and sewed together along one side, will make 
a large sheet that will protect the sleeping bag 
from the ground and form a covering as well. 
Firms who advertise at the end of this an- 
nouncement carry this very’ desirable material 
and will fill orders by mail. 


2. A tramping suit of stout material—cordu- 
roy, denim, khaki, etc. One suit should suffice 


6 


for the entire trip. Men should have an extra 
pair of khaki trousers or overalls, and an extra 
light-weight flannel overshirt. Overcoats are 
not taken, but each one should have a sweater. 
If a coat is worn it should be made of khaki or 
some light-weight material. Women should 
have an extra, light-weight skirt and waist to 
wear about camp. The skirts, especially the 
tramping skirt, should be short and should 
reach not many inches below the knee. Under 
the skirt shorter knickerbockers of the same 
color should be worn. These latter are essen- 
tial for the more difficult mountain climbs 
where skirts are dangerous to wear. 


3. The underclothing should be such as one 
would wear in average winter weather in Cali- 
fornia—i. e., of medium weight, and one change 
should be taken. 

One of the Chinamen provided by the man- 
‘agement will probably be able to do washing 
at reasonable rates for those who may desire 
it while in permanent camp. 


4. Footwear is an all-important question. 
One pair, at least, of stout, well-fitting, easy- 
wearing shoes, with extra heavy soles contain- 
ing hob-nails, is essential for tramping. These 
should be thoroughly broken in before the 
Outing. The wear and tear on footwear on 
these trips is very great, and novices have fre- 
quently had their trips nearly spoiled by un- 
derestimating the necessity for stout shoes. A 
light pair of shoes to wear about the camp 
after the day’s tramp will be conducive to 


7 


comfort, such as tennis shoes or moccasins. 

5. Leggings are recommended unless high 
boots are worn, and women will find them de- 
sirable for wearing about camp with light 
shoes. 

6. Several pairs of moderately heavy and 
serviceable socks or stockings should be taken. 
Experience has proven that if two pairs of me- 
dium weight woolen socks are worn (or a 
single pair of extra heavy weight) the feet will 
not suffer from chafing and blistering. Women 
will find a pair of stockings and a pair of boy’s 
size woolen socks to serve the same purpose, 
and this plan is highly recommended by women 
who have done a great deal of tramping in the 
mountains. Chamois skin heel protectors or 
Johnson’s zinc oxide-adhesive plaster applied 
in strips also serve as a protection against 
chafing, and each member of the party should 
be provided with a five-yard roll of l-inch tape 
and a small package of cotton. 

7. Any sort of light broad-brimmed hat can 
be worn. Large blanket safety pins have been 


found desirable to use in place of hat pins by 
the women. 


8. Toilet articles, soap and towels. 

9. A very fine mesh mosquito head-net and 
heavy gloves, preferably gauntlet, are neces- 
sary. 

10. For those who desire to climb moun- 
tains, colored glasses or goggles are essential. 
Women should also carry heavy, dark veils to 
protect the face from snow-burn and actor’s 
grease paint is one of the best protections. © 


8 


11. It is essential that each member of the 
party, unless provided with large pockets, take 
a small lunch-bag with shoulder-strap for use 
on daily trips. 

12. Canteen, drinking cup, and bathing-suit 
are desirable articles, though not absolute 
necessities. 


13. Tents are not essential and are seldom 
used to sleep in. Several women may combine 
and take a tent, using it as a dressing-room. A 
light weight 7x7 A-tent, with ridge rope, 
without poles or pins, or any other form of 
small tent, is recommended. This tent must be 
included in the prescribed limit and must be 
packed in the three-foot dunnage bag, unless 
ordered of the Secretary of the Club before 
May 20th, in which event it will be sent in with 
the Club tents. Such order must be accom- 
panied with $5.00 to cover rental and cost of 
transportation. 

A piece of dark-green percaline or silesia 
cloth, about six feet in width and 20 feet in 
length, strung up as an enclosure with heavy 
cord is an admirable substitute for a dressing- 
tent, and weighs but 2% pounds. Several 
women can combine and take one of these. 


14. A pocket roll facilitates the care and 
packing of one’s effects. It should be made of 
denim or drilling, as follows: A piece three 
feet square is first taken as a back, and three 
box-plaited pockets, each of a foot deep, and 
one above the other and extending the entire 
width, are securely sewed to the back and 


9 


bound with tape. The upper pocket can be di- 
vided into three divisions to hold small arti- 
cles. All these pockets can be closed with flaps 
or tied with tapes. Into this roll all one’s be- 
longings except bedding can be packed, and it 
can be arranged with eyelet and cord and hung 
to a tree when in camp. 


15. Dunnage bag three feet long and 
eighteen inches in diameter when packed. 
Each member must have a bag of this charac- 
ter, and these dimensions must not be ex-, 
ceeded. The carrying of this bag from place 
to place while in camp will be facilitated by 
having canvas handles riveted or sewed on 
bottom and side of bag. The owner’s name and 
home address in full must be painted on each 
bag in large letters, and each bag must be 
tagged with the special Sierra Club tag. 

16. For those purposing to. take arduous 
side-trips, a durable knapsack or pack harness 
is necessary. | 


17. It will be desirable to have two or three 
candles, and if each one will bring a small 
Chinese lantern the display will add to the at- 
tractiveness of the camp-fires. 


To properly pack one’s outfit, the bedding 
should be laid on the ground, extended full 
length and folded so as not to be more than 
three feet in width. On one end of the bedding 
lay the packed pocket roll and then roll it up 
inside of the bedding. Fasten the entire roll 
with a stout cord or straps and pull the dun- 
nage bag over it. 


10 


CHECK LIST AND WEIGHTS 
PERSONAL OUTFIT 


IN order that members of the party may have 
a more definite idea of what to take and the ap- 
proximate weights of the various articles, the 
following list has been carefully compiled: 


Sleeping bag— ‘ Lbs. zs. 
Wool comfort or eiderdown bag 8 8 O 
Sheet of waterproof silk, 6x7 ft. 1 10 

Total 9 10 


Clothing in addition to what is worn— 


Sweater 1 8 
Pajamas or nightgown 0 14 
1 suit underclothing 1 2 
Light pair shoes 2 0 
6 bandanas 0 8 
. Men Women 
1 pair trousers 1 skirt l 8 
1 overshirt 1 waist 0 10 
6 pair socks 6 pair stockings 1 0 
“Total 9 

Miscellaneous— 
Toilet articles 2 0 
Towels—1 bath, 2 face 1 4. 
Knapsack or pack harness 1 6 
Pocket roll (denim) 1 Z 
Dunnage bag Z 0 
Candles and lantern 0 8 
Wotal 8 4 


AI 


This is a liberal allowance and makes a grand 
total of about 27 pounds, leaving a small bal- 
ance for cloth enclosure, fishing tackle, writing | 
and sewing outfit, etc. 

Keep the weight as much below the pre- 
scribed limit as possible. 


RAILROAD AND OTHER EXPENSES 


The expense of the trip will be as follows: 
For those leaving San Francisco: 


(1) Outing deposit: (4 weeks)=2 =a $65.00 
(2) Round-trip fare, San Franeisco ‘to 
Yosemite 22.2. 3 ee 21.60 
(3) Pullman berth ($2.20 each way, 
lower) sec: ee 4.40 
(4) Meals enroute...:. 2 eee 2.00 
Total wi... 2 eee =$78:00- 


Los Angeles members will pay $35.10 for 
their round-trip tickets and the Pullman fare 
is the same as from San Francisco: $2.20 
lower, $1.76 upper, each way. 


Mr. Phil S. Bernays, 315 W. Third Street, 


Los Angeles, will give the members from 
southern California necessary information. 


Mail addressed care Sierra Club, Yosemite, 
Cal., will be brought to the party, and mail 
will be sent out at frequent intervals and a 
telephone in the Parsons Memorial Lodge in 
the Meadows will enable anyone to keep in 
touch with outside affairs. 


OUTING COMMITTEE, 
Per WM. E. COLBY, 
Chairman. 
Sierra Club, 402 Mills Building, San Fran- 
cisco. 
12 


ADVERTISERS IN SIERRA CLUB 
BULLETIN 


OUTING EQUIPMENT 


THE ELLERY ARMS COMPANY 
583-585 Market St., San Francisco 
Outing Equipment 


H. C. GOLCHER CO. 
508 Market St., San Francisco 
Outing Equipment 


W. A. PLUMMER MFG. COMPANY 
Pine and Front Sts., San Francisco 
Tents and Canvas Goods 


A. G. SPALDING & BROS. 
156 Geary St., San Francisco 
416 14th St., Oakland 
Outing Equipment 


THE SPIRO COMPANY 
307-309-311 Market St., San Francisco 
1127 Broadway, Oakland 
Outing Equipment 


DEHYDRATED VEGETABLES 


All the Vegetables used by the Sierra Club 
on their outings are put up by 
E. CLEMENS HORST CoO. 
235 Pine St., San Francisco 


fa 


PHOTOGRAPHIC SUPPLIES 


GEO. H. & HENRY KAHN 
34 Kearny St., San Francisco 
Kodaks Pedometers Field Glasses 


MARSH & COMPANY 
712 Market St., San Francisco 
Kodaks and Photo Supplies 


W. DAVIS & SONS 
333 Market St., San Francisco 
Outing Equipment 
Knapsacks, Blankets, Shoes, Etc. 


GROCERIES 


GOLDBERG, BOWEN & CO. 
242 Sutter St., San Francisco 


INSURANCE. 
WILLIAM T. GOLDSBOROUGH 
234 Bush Street, San Francisco 
Insurance of All Kinds 


BOOKS 


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
4 Park St., Boston, Mass. 
Books of Interest to Sierra Club Members 


14 


OUR CLUB PIN, 
above size, in oxidized silver or 
antique bronze, $1.00. 
In 14k rose gold, $2.50. 


For sale at Club office, 
402 Mills Building, San Francisco 


and by 


Mr. P. S. Bernays, 315 W. 3rd St., 
Los Angeles, Cal. 


15 


HELP TO PREVENT 
FOREST FIRES 


EVERY traveler or camper in forest regions) 
is urged to take the greatest precaution against 
the starting of forest fires. A match, cigarette 
or cigarstub tossed thoughtlessly away, a 
camp-fire left smouldering, may cause injury) 
and distress beyond calculation. 


Precautions with small fires will prevent big 
ones. All that is required is exercise of the 
same care with fire in forest regions that one) 
takes without question in his own home or in) 
a city. Before you leave a camp-fire, even for 
a short time, be sure it is out. The law re 
quires it, and imposes a heavy penalty on any 
one leaving a fire that is not absolutely put 
out. Notify the nearest U. S. Forest Ranger 
or State Fire Warden of any forest fire you 
see or hear of. ; 


Also aid wherever possible in the preserva- 
tion of wild life and discourage the wasteful | 
gathering of wild flowers. 


PLEASE OBSERVE ALL THE RULES 
OF THE PARK. 


SIERRA CLUB 
402 MILLS BUILDING 
_ SAN FRANCISCO™ 


16 


Members are urged to deal with our advertisers 


Fo HORST’S 
Evaporated Vegetables 


Perfected Process 


Food value, flavor and texture unimpaired. 
Great’ saving in weight and space. 


IDEAL FOR CAMPING 


Fresh or canned vegetables weigh from ten to twenty 
times that of HORST ’S EVAPORATED. 


As good as fresh vegetables—and better than canned. 
Sold only in sealed tins—absolutely weatherproof. 


At sporting goods stores and groceries. 


E. CLEMENS HORST COMPANY 


235 PINESTREET:SAN FRANCISCO 


/ 


ON A HIKE—10 Will Need 

: IT WILL SERVE YOU FOR 
ag a aor 
A | | i C a Omeler Ape a pan ne 


YOU HAVE WALKED 
A Field Glass PLEASURE OF Phe 


We Also Do HOG a Printing 


THE QUALITY KIND—FOR THE ONE WHO KNOWS 


GEO. H. & Ae ES ) 
HENRY KAHN & CO. 
Opticians &F Photo Supplies 
54 GEARY ST. and 590 MARKET ST.,SAN FRANCISCO 


When dealing with our advertisers mention the Bulletin 


Bache oN 
nt 
t 


985-85 MARKET S 
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL 


me SIGN" OF QUALITY 
The ‘Been There’ 


| Outing Goods Store 


Devoted exclusively to the needs of sportsmen and 
sportswomen—with 38 years of progressive camp 
experience to assist 


OUR SUITS ARE IN EXCLUSIVE: SIY¥igs 


Fashioned with “character” from standard gov- 
ernment grade khaki to the famous auto woolen— 
appropriate, practical and fairly priced 


ELLERY HIKING BOOTS GIVE GENUINE 
COMFORT 


They also are of our own creation, possessing 
leather, shape and construction which have made 
them “standard” to the royalty of the trail 


LEARN WHAT ELLERY QUALITY, SERVICE AND 
PRICE MEANS a 
Impossible to enumerate the hundreds of seasonable articles ae 
that cannot be bought elsewhere, so we invite your inspection, o hi 
with the reminder that attention to detail has Yan 
made our establishment eds, 


The Largest Outing Supply House in America 


ka Complete outing goods catalogue sent free on request 8 2, 


QUALITY 


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