Our National Parks — Ch 8, Part 2

[Illustration: A Mountain Stream in June (Merced Creek and Vernal Falls, Yosemite).

] About the same may be said of the spring gladness of blood when the red streams surge and sing in accord with the swelling plants and rivers, inclining animals and everybody to travel in hurrahing crowds like floods, while exhilarating melody in color and fragrance, form and motion, flows to the heart through all the quickening senses.

In early summer the streams are in bright prime, running crystal clear, deep and full, but not overflowing their banks,—about as deep through the night as the day, the variation so marked in spring being now too slight to be noticed.

Nearly all the weather is cloudless sunshine, and everything is at its brightest,—lake, river, garden, and forest, with all their warm, throbbing life.

Most of the plants are in full leaf and flower; the blessed ousels have built their mossy huts, and are now singing their sweetest song on spray-sprinkled ledges beside the waterfalls.

In tranquil, mellow autumn, when the year’s work is about done, when the fruits are ripe, birds and seeds out of their nests, and all the landscape is glowing like a benevolent countenance at rest, then the streams are at their lowest ebb,—their wild rejoicing soothed to thoughtful calm.

All the smaller tributaries whose branches do not reach back to the perennial fountains of the Summit peaks shrink to whispering, tinkling currents.

The snow of their basins gone, they are now fed only by small moraine springs, whose waters are mostly evaporated in passing over warm pavements, and in feeling their way from pool to pool through the midst of boulders and sand.

Even the main streams are so low they may be easily forded, and their grand falls and cascades, now gentle and approachable, have waned to sheets and webs of embroidery, falling fold over fold in new and ever changing beauty.

Two of the most songful of the rivers, the Tuolumne and Merced, water nearly all the Park, spreading their branches far and wide, like broad-headed oaks; and the highest branches of each draw their sources from one and the same foundation on Mount Lyell, at an elevation of about thirteen thousand feet above the sea.

The crest of the mountain, against which the head of the glacier rests, is worn to a thin blade full of joints, through which a part of the glacial water flows southward, giving rise to the highest trickling affluents of the Merced; while the main drainage, flowing northward, gives rise to those of the Tuolumne.

After diverging for a distance of ten or twelve miles, these twin rivers flow in a general westerly direction, descending rapidly for the first thirty miles, and rushing in glorious apron cascades and falls from one Yosemite valley to another.

Below the Yosemites they descend in gray rapids and swirling, swaying reaches, through the chaparral-clad cañons of the foothills and across the golden California plain, to their confluence with the San Joaquin, where, after all their long wanderings, they are only about ten miles apart.

The main cañons are from fifty to seventy miles long, and from two to four thousand feet deep, carved in the solid flank of the range.

Though rough in some places and hard to travel, they are the most delightful of roads, leading through the grandest scenery, full of life and motion, and offering most telling lessons in earth sculpture.

The walls, far from being unbroken, featureless cliffs, seem like ranges of separate mountains, so deep and varied is their sculpture; rising in lordly domes, towers, round-browed outstanding headlands, and clustering spires, with dark, shadowy side cañons between.

But, however wonderful in height and mass and fineness of finish, no anomalous curiosities are presented, no “freaks of nature.

” All stand related in delicate rhythm, a grand glacial rock song.

Among the interesting and influential of the secondary features of cañon scenery are the great avalanche taluses, that lean against the walls at intervals of a mile or two.

In the middle Yosemite region they are usually from three to five hundred feet high, and are made up of huge, angular, well-preserved, unshifting boulders, overgrown with gray lichens, trees shrubs, and delicate flowering plants.

Some of the largest of the boulders are forty or fifty feet cube, weighing from five to ten thousand tons; and where the cleavage joints of the granite are exceptionally wide apart a few blocks may be found nearly a hundred feet in diameter.

These wonderful boulder piles are distributed throughout all the cañons of the range, completely choking them in some of the narrower portions, and no mountaineer will be likely to forget the savage roughness of the roads they make.

Even the swift, overbearing rivers, accustomed to sweep everything out of their way, are in some places bridled and held in check by them.

Foaming, roaring, in glorious majesty of flood, rushing off long rumbling trains of ponderous blocks without apparent effort, they are not able to move the largest, which, withstanding all assaults for centuries, are left at rest in the channels like islands, with gardens on their tops, fringed with foam below, with flowers above.

[Illustration: A Sierra Cañon (King’s River Cañon from Lookout Peak).

] On some points concerning the origin of these taluses I was long in doubt.

Plainly enough they were derived from the cliffs above them, the size of each talus being approximately measured by a scar on the wall, the rough angular surface of which contrasts with the rounded, glaciated, unfractured parts.

I saw also that, instead of being slowly accumulated material, weathered off, boulder by boulder, in the ordinary way, almost every talus had been formed suddenly, in a single avalanche, and had not been increased in size during the last three or four centuries; for trees three or four hundred years old were growing on them, some standing at the top close to the wall, without a bruise or broken branch, showing that scarcely a single boulder had fallen among them since they were planted.

Furthermore, all the taluses throughout the range seemed, by the trees and lichens growing on them, to be of the same age.

All the phenomena pointed straight to a grand ancient earthquake.

But I left the question open for years, and went on from cañon to cañon, observing again and again; measuring the heights of taluses throughout the range on both flanks, and the variations in the angles of their surface slopes; studying the way their boulders were assorted and related and brought to rest, and the cleavage joints of the cliffs from whence they were derived, cautious about making up my mind.

Only after I had seen one made did all doubt as to their formation vanish.

In Yosemite Valley, one morning about two o’clock, I was aroused by an earthquake; and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange, wild thrilling motion and rumbling could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, near the Sentinel Rock, both glad and frightened, shouting, “A noble earthquake!

” feeling sure I was going to learn something.

The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, one had to balance in walking as if on the deck of a ship among the waves, and it seemed impossible the high cliffs should escape being shattered.

In particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, which rises to a height of three thousand feet, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a big pine, hoping I might be protected from outbounding boulders, should any come so far.

I was now convinced that an earthquake had been the maker of the taluses, and positive proof soon came.

It was a calm moonlight night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or two save a low muffled underground rumbling and a slight rustling of the agitated trees, as if, in wrestling with the mountains, Nature were holding her breath.

Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar.

The Eagle Rock, a short distance up the valley, had given way, and I saw it falling in thousands of the great boulders I had been studying so long, pouring to the valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime and beautiful spectacle,—an arc of the fifteen hundred feet span, as true in form and as steady as a rainbow, in the midst of the stupendous roaring rock storm.

The sound was inconceivably deep and broad and earnest, as if the whole earth, like a living creature, had at last found a voice and were calling to her sister planets.

It seemed to me that if all the thunder I ever heard were condensed into one roar it would not equal this rock roar at the birth of a mountain talus.

Think, then, of the roar that arose to heaven when all the thousands of ancient cañon taluses throughout the length and breadth of the range were simultaneously given birth.

The main storm was soon over, and, eager to see the new-born talus, I ran up the valley in the moonlight and climbed it before the huge blocks, after their wild fiery flight, had come to complete rest.

They were slowly settling into their places, chafing, grating against one another, groaning, and whispering; but no motion was visible except in a stream of small fragments pattering down the face of the cliff at the head of the talus.

A cloud of dust particles, the smallest of the boulders, floated out across the whole breadth of the valley and formed a ceiling that lasted until after sunrise; and the air was loaded with the odor of crushed Douglas spruces, from a grove that had been mowed down and mashed like weeds.

Sauntering about to see what other changes had been made, I found the Indians in the middle of the valley, terribly frightened, of course, fearing the angry spirits of the rocks were trying to kill them, The few whites wintering in the valley were assembled in front of the old Hutchings Hotel, comparing notes and meditating flight to steadier ground, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians.

It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.

Shortly after sunrise, a low blunt muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect.

Then the groups of talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime.

One in particular of these winter neighbors, a rather thoughtful, speculative man, with whom I had often conversed, was a firm believer in the cataclysmic origin of the valley; and I now jokingly remarked that his wild tumble-down-and-engulfment hypothesis might soon be proved, since these underground rumblings and shakings might be the forerunners of another Yosemite-making cataclysm, which would perhaps double the depth of the valley by swallowing the floor, leaving the ends of the wagon roads and trails three or four thousand feet in the air.

Just then came the second series of shocks, and it was fine to see how awfully silent and solemn he became.

His belief in the existence of a mysterious abyss, into which the suspended floor of the valley and all the domes and battlements of the walls might at any moment go roaring down, mightily troubled him.

To cheer and tease him into another view of the case, I said: “Come, cheer up; smile a little and clap your hands, now that kind Mother Earth is trotting us on her knee to amuse us and make us good.

” But the well-meant joke seemed irreverent and utterly failed, as if only prayerful terror could rightly belong to the wild beauty-making business.

Even after all the heavier shocks were over, I could do nothing to reassure him.

On the contrary, he handed me the keys of his little store, and, with a companion of like mind, fled to the lowlands.

In about a month he returned; but a sharp shock occurred that very day, which sent him flying again.

The rocks trembled more or less every day for over two months, and I kept a bucket of water on my table to learn what I could of the movements.

The blunt thunder-tones in the depths of the mountains were usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting, upjolting movements.

Judging by its effects, this Yosemite, or Inyo earthquake, as it is sometimes called, was gentle as compared with the one that gave rise to the grand talus system of the range and did so much for the cañon scenery.

Nature, usually so deliberate in her operations, then created, as we have seen, a new set of features, simply by giving the mountains a shake,—changing not only the high peaks and cliffs, but the streams.

As soon as these rock avalanches fell every stream began to sing new songs; for in many places thousands of boulders were hurled into their channels, roughening and half damming them, compelling the waters to surge and roar in rapids where before they were gliding smoothly.

Some of the streams were completely dammed, driftwood, leaves, etc. , filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and level reaches; and these, again, after being gradually filled in, to smooth meadows, through which the streams now silently meander; while at the same time some of the taluses took the places of old meadows and groves.

Thus rough places were made smooth, and smooth places rough.

But on the whole, by what at first sight seemed pure confusion and ruin, the landscapes were enriched; for gradually every talus, however big the boulders composing it, was covered with groves and gardens, and made a finely proportioned and ornamental base for the sheer cliffs.

In this beauty work, every boulder is prepared and measured and put in its place more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples.

If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, tie your mountain shoes firmly over the instep, and with braced nerves run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed.

You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of rock piles,—a fine lesson; and all nature’s wildness tells the same story.

Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, “convulsions of nature,” etc. , however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God’s love.