ter pine, awakening and warming all the mighty host to do gladly
their shining day's work. The great sun-gold noons, the alabaster
cloud-mountains, the landscape beaming with consciousness like the face
of a god. The sunsets, when the trees stood hushed awaiting their
good-night blessings. Divine, enduring, unwastable wealth.

CHAPTER IV

TO THE HIGH MOUNTAINS

_July 8._ Now away we go toward the topmost mountains. Many still, small
voices, as well as the noon thunder, are calling, "Come higher."
Farewell, blessed dell, woods, gardens, streams, birds, squirrels,
lizards, and a thousand others. Farewell. Farewell.

Up through the woods the hoofed locusts streamed beneath a cloud of
brown dust. Scarcely were they driven a hundred yards from the old
corral ere they seemed to know that at last they were going to new
pastures, and rushed wildly ahead, crowding through gaps in the brush,
jumping, tumbling like exulting hurrahing flood-waters escaping through
a broken dam. A man on each flank kept shouting advice to the leaders,
who in their famishing condition were behaving like Gadarene swine; two
other drivers were busy with stragglers, helping them out of brush
tangles; the Indian, calm, alert, silently watched for wanderers likely
to be overlooked; the two dogs ran here and there, at a loss to know
what was best to be done, while the Don, soon far in the rear, was
trying to keep in sight of his troublesome wealth.

[Illustration: DIVIDE BETWEEN THE TUOLUMNE AND THE MERCED BELOW HAZEL
GREEN]

As soon as the boundary of the old eaten-out range was passed the hungry
horde suddenly became calm, like a mountain stream in a meadow.
Thenceforward they were allowed to eat their way as slowly as they
wished, care being taken only to keep them headed toward the summit of
the Merced and Tuolumne divide. Soon the two thousand flattened paunches
were bulged out with sweet-pea vines and grass, and the gaunt, desperate
creatures, more like wolves than sheep, became bland and governable,
while the howling drivers changed to gentle shepherds, and sauntered in
peace.

Toward sundown we reached Hazel Green, a charming spot on the summit of
the dividing ridge between the basins of the Merced and Tuolumne, where
there is a small brook flowing through hazel and dogwood thickets
beneath magnificent silver firs and pines. Here, we are camped for the
night, our big fire, heaped high with rosiny logs and branches, is
blazing like