This book, originally published in 1871, has long been out of print, though in constant demand. Its publication was discontinued owing to the desire of the author to make certain emendations in the text, a work that the arduous activities of a professional scientific life left him no leisure to perform. A few changes, indicated by him, have been made. Otherwise the text of the present edition is that of the last, the revised and enlarged edition of 1874. Only the fastidiousness to which the extr

* * * * * * * Mountaineers will realize, from these descriptions of Sierra climbs, how few dangers we encountered which might not have been avoided by time and caution. Since the uncertain perils of glacier work and snow copings do not exist in California, except on the northeast flank of Mount Shasta, our climbs proved safe and easy in comparison with the more serious Alpine ascents. And now that the topography of the higher Sierra has been all explored by the Geological Survey, nearly every pe

The western margin of this continent is built of a succession of mountain chains folded in broad corrugations, like waves of stone upon whose seaward base beat the mild, small breakers of the Pacific. By far the grandest of all these ranges is the Sierra Nevada, a long and massive uplift lying between the arid deserts of the Great Basin and the Californian exuberance of grain-field and orchard; its eastern slope, a defiant wall of rock plunging abruptly down to the plain; the western, a long, gr

Visalia is the name of a small town embowered in oaks upon the Tulare Plain in Middle California, where we made our camp one May evening of 1864. Professor Whitney, our chief, the State Geologist, had sent us out for a summer’s campaign in the High Sierras, under the lead of Professor William H. Brewer, who was more sceptical than I as to the result of the mission. Several times during the previous winter Mr. Hoffman and I, while on duty at the Mariposa goldmines, had climbed to the top of Mount

Morning dawned brightly upon our bivouac among a cluster of dark firs in the mountain corridor opened by an ancient glacier of King’s River into the heart of the Sierras. It dawned a trifle sooner than we could have wished, but Professor Brewer and Hoffman had breakfasted before sunrise, and were off with barometer and theodolite upon their shoulders, purposing to ascend our amphitheatre to its head and climb a great pyramidal peak which swelled up against the eastern sky, closing the view in th

To our surprise, upon sweeping the horizon with my level, there appeared two peaks equal in height with us, and two rising even higher. That which looked highest of all was a cleanly cut helmet of granite upon the same ridge with Mount Tyndall, lying about six miles south, and fronting the desert with a bold, square bluff which rises to the crest of the peak, where a white fold of snow trims it gracefully. Mount Whitney, as we afterward called it, in honor of our chief, is probably the highest l

Our return from Mount Tyndall to such civilization as flourishes around the Kaweah outposts was signalized by us chiefly as to our cuisine , which offered now such bounties as the potato, and once a salad, in which some middle-aged lettuce became the vehicle for a hollow mockery of dressing. Two or three days, during which we dined at brief intervals, served to completely rest us, and put in excellent trim for further campaigning all except Professor Brewer, upon whom a constant toothache wore p

After trying hard to climb Mount Whitney without success, and having returned to the plains, I enjoyed my two days’ rest in hot Visalia, where were fruits and people, and where I at length thawed out the last traces of alpine cold, and recovered from hard work and the sinful bread of my fortnight’s campaign. I considered it happiness to spend my whole day on the quiet hotel veranda, accustoming myself again to such articles as chairs and newspapers, and watching with unexpected pleasure the few

Late in the afternoon of October 5, 1864, a party of us reached the edge of Yosemite, and, looking down into the valley, saw that the summer haze had been banished from the region by autumnal frosts and wind. We looked in the gulf through air as clear as a vacuum, discerning small objects upon valley-floor and cliff-front. That splendid afternoon shadow which divides the face of El Capitan was projected far up and across the valley, cutting it in halves,—one a mosaic of russets and yellows with

From every commanding eminence around the Yosemite no distant object rises with more inspiring greatness than the Obelisk of Mount Clark. Seen from the west it is a high, isolated peak, having a dome-like outline very much flattened upon its west side, the precipice sinking deeply down to an old glacier ravine. From the north this peak is a slender, single needle, jutting two thousand feet from a rough-hewn pedestal of rocks and snow-fields. Forest-covered heights rise to its base from east and

Delightful oaks cast protecting shadows over our camp on the 1st of June, 1866. Just beyond a little cook-fire where Hoover was preparing his mind and pan for an omelet stood Mrs. Fremont’s Mariposa cottage, with doors and windows wide open, still keeping up its air of hospitable invitation, though now deserted and fallen into decay. A little farther on, through an opening, a few clustered roofs and chimneys of the Bear Valley village showed their distant red-brown tint among heavy masses of gre

One October day, as Kaweah and I travelled by ourselves over a lonely foothill trail, I came to consider myself the friend of woodpeckers. With rather more reserve as regards the bluejay, let me admit great interest in his worldly wisdom. As an instance of co-operative living the partnership of these two birds is rather more hopeful than most mundane experiments. For many autumn and winter months such food as their dainty taste chooses is so rare throughout the Sierras that in default of any cli

We escaped the harvesting season of 1870. I try to believe all its poetry is not forever immolated under the strong wheels of that pastoral Juggernaut of our day, the steam-reaper, and to be grateful that Ruths have not now to glean the fallen wheat-heads, and loaf around at questionable hours, setting their caps for susceptible ranchers. Whatever stirring rhythm may to-day measure time with the quick fire-breath of reaping-machines shall await a more poetic pen than this. Some modern Virgil com

There are certain women, I am informed, who place men under their spell without leaving them the melancholy satisfaction of understanding how the thing was done. They may have absolutely repulsive features, and a pretty permanent absence of mind; without that charm of cheerful grace before which we are said to succumb. Yet they manage to assume command of certain. It is thus with mules. I have heard them called awkward and personally plain, nor is it denied that their disposition, though rich in

There lay between Carson and Mount Whitney a ride of two hundred and eighty miles along the east base of the Sierra. Stage-driving, like other exact professions, gathers among its followers certain types of men and manners, either by some mode of natural selection, or else after a Darwinian way developing one set of traits to the exclusion of others. However interesting it might be to investigate the moulding power of whip and reins, or to discover what measure of coachman there is latent in eve

If mankind were offspring of isothermal lines and topography, we might arrive at a just criticism of Sierra Nevada people by that cheap and rapid method so much in vogue nowadays among physical geographers. Their practice of dragooning the free-agent with wet and dry bulb thermometers would help us to predict the future of Sierra society but little more securely than Madam Saint John, who also deals in coming events. I fear we have no better than the old way of developing what lies ahead logical