ushes reduced to their lowest terms. I found patches of dwarf vaccinium
also forming smooth carpets, closely pressed to the ground or against
the sides of stones, and covered with round pink flowers in lavish
abundance as if they had fallen from the sky like hail. A little higher,
almost at the very head of the pass, I found the blue arctic daisy and
purple-flowered bryanthus, the mountain's own darlings, gentle
mountaineers face to face with the sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand
miracles, seeming always the finer and purer the wilder and stormier
their homes. The trees, tough and resiny, seem unable to go a step
farther; but up and up, far above the tree-line, these tender plants
climb, cheerily spreading their gray and pink carpets right up to the
very edges of the snow-banks in deep hollows and shadows. Here, too, is
the familiar robin, tripping on the flowery lawns, bravely singing the
same cheery song I first heard when a boy in Wisconsin newly arrived
from old Scotland. In this fine company sauntering enchanted, taking no
heed of time, I at length entered the gate of the pass, and the huge
rocks began to close around me in all their mysterious impressiveness.
Just then I was startled by a lot of queer, hairy, muffled creatures
coming shuffling, shambling, wallowing toward me as if they had no
bones in their bodies. Had I discovered them while they were yet a good
way off, I should have tried to avoid them. What a picture they made
contrasted with the others I had just been admiring. When I came up to
them, I found that they were only a band of Indians from Mono on their
way to Yosemite for a load of acorns. They were wrapped in blankets made
of the skins of sage-rabbits. The dirt on some of the faces seemed
almost old enough and thick enough to have a geological significance;
some were strangely blurred and divided into sections by seams and
wrinkles that looked like cleavage joints, and had a worn abraded look
as if they had lain exposed to the weather for ages. I tried to pass
them without stopping, but they wouldn't let me; forming a dismal circle
about me, I was closely besieged while they begged whiskey or tobacco,
and it was hard to convince them that I hadn't any. How glad I was to
get away from the gray, grim crowd and see them vanish down the trail!
Yet it seems sad to feel such desperate repulsion from one's fellow
beings, however degraded. To prefer the society of squirrels and
woodchucks to that of o