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Clothed with sage-brush at the lower end and rich grass further up, even to the very base of the mountains, it is, in some respects, the prettiest valley in the whole of this part of the Sierra Nevadas. The upper meadows are full of milk cows, quietly grazing or lying down and chewing their cuds, while just beyond the great dairy buildings is the unpretentious cottage of the Forest Ranger.
The largest trees in the world are those forest giants of California which grow on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, and nowhere else on the globe. People carelessly call these grand trees "redwoods" or "big trees," but their family name is Sequoia, an Indian chief's name. When the trees were first discovered, in 1853, accounts of their height and size were sent to England.
The annals of the mountain desert have never been written and can never be written. They are merely a vast mass of fact and tradition and imagining which floats from tongue to tongue from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas. A man may be a fact all his life and die only a local celebrity.
Through the whole state stretches the granite backbone of the Sierra Nevadas with its highest crest or ridge at the head-waters of the Kings and Kern rivers near Fresno. Here Mount Whitney and a dozen other great peaks of the High Sierras or California Alps lift their heads over thirteen thousand feet in the air.
The lovely little valley terminates all too soon, for in fifteen minutes I am footing it up another mountain; but it proves to be the entrance gate of a region containing grander pine-clad mountain scenery than anything encountered outside the Sierra Nevadas; in fact the famous scenery of Cape Horn, California, almost finds its counterpart at one particular point I traverse this morning; only instead of a Central Pacific Railway winding around the gray old crags and precipices, the enterprising Sivas Vali has built an araba road.
In a moment, to my great relief, I heard his voice, saying that he was all right and could hold out, if necessary, until night; that he had not answered Padarin because it was too much trouble, but that I need not be alarmed about his safety; and then I thought he added something about "worse storms in the Sierra Nevadas," which convinced me that he was far from being used up yet.
Possessed of an adventurous spirit, considerable initiative, and great persistence Frémont had already performed the feat of crossing the Sierra Nevadas by way of Carson River and Johnson Pass, and had also explored the Columbia River and various parts of the Northwest. Frémont now entered California by way of Walker Lake and the Truckee, and reached Sutter's Fort in 1845.
With trembling hand Georgia turned the pages, from the sickening details of the Star to the personal observations of Edwin Bryant, who in returning to the United States in the Summer of 1847, crossed the Sierra Nevadas with General Kearney and escort, reached the lake cabins June 22, and wrote as follows: A halt was called for the purpose of interring the remains.
In the Himalayas, Tertiary marine limestones occur sixteen thousand five hundred feet above sea level. In the Sierra Nevadas the Miocene river gravels of the valleys of the western slope, with their placer deposits of gold, were buried beneath streams of lava and beds of tuff. Volcanoes broke forth along the Rocky Mountains and on the plateaus of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Here, naturally, there was inclusion of practically all Southern California to a point near Santa Barbara. Thence the line ran northward and inland to the summit of the Sierra Nevadas, not far from Mt. Whitney.
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