gether, as
if the river was the only desirable part of the world. Aside from mere
money profit one would rather herd wolves than sheep. As soon as they
clambered up the opposite bank, they began baaing and feeding as if
nothing unusual had happened. We crossed the meadows and drove slowly up
the south rim of the valley through the same woods I had passed on my
way to Cathedral Peak, and camped for the night by the side of a small
pond on top of the big lateral moraine.

_September 10._ In the morning at daybreak not one of the two thousand
sheep was in sight. Examining the tracks, we discovered that they had
been scattered, perhaps by a bear. In a few hours all were found and
gathered into one flock again. Had fine view of a deer. How graceful and
perfect in every way it seemed as compared with the silly, dusty,
tousled sheep! From the high ground hereabouts had another grand view to
the northward--a heaving, swelling sea of domes and round-backed ridges
fringed with pines, and bounded by innumerable sharp-pointed peaks, gray
and barren-looking, though so full of beautiful life. Another day of the
calm, cloudless kind, purple in the morning and evening. The evening
glow has been very marked for the last two or three weeks. Perhaps the
"zodiacal light."

_September 11._ Cloudless. Slight frost. Calm. Fairly started downhill,
and now are camped at the west end meadows of Lake Tenaya--a charming
place. Lake smooth as glass, mirroring its miles of glacier-polished
pavements and bold mountain walls. Find aster still in flower. Here is
about the upper limit of the dwarf form of the goldcup oak,--eight
thousand feet above sea-level,--reaching about two thousand feet higher
than the California black oak (_Quercus Californica_). Lovely evening,
the lake reflections after dark marvelously impressive.

_September 12._ Cloudless day, all pure sun-gold. Among the magnificent
silver firs once more, within two miles of the brink of Yosemite, at the
famous Portuguese bear camp. Chaparral of goldcup oak, manzanita, and
ceanothus abundant hereabouts, wanting about the Tuolumne meadows,
although the elevation is but little higher there. The two-leaved pine,
though far more abundant about the Tuolumne meadow region, reaches its
greatest size on stream-sides hereabouts and around meadows that are
rather boggy. All the best dry ground is taken by the magnificent silver
fir, which here reaches its greatest size and forms a well-defined
bel