the Sierras of the Snows are better worth while than
most Broadways, though the choice of them is like the choice of streets,
not very well determined by their names. There is always an amount of
local history to be read in the names of mountain highways where one
touches the successive waves of occupation or discovery, as in the old
villages where the neighborhoods are not built but grow. Here you have
the Spanish Californian in Cero Gordo and pinon; Symmes and Shepherd,
pioneers both; Tunawai, probably Shoshone; Oak Creek, Kearsarge,--easy
to fix the date of that christening,--Tinpah, Paiute that; Mist Canon
and Paddy Jack's. The streets of the west Sierras sloping toward the
San Joaquin are long and winding, but from the east, my country, a day's
ride carries one to the lake regions. The next day reaches the passes
of the high divide, but whether one gets passage depends a little on
how many have gone that road before, and much on one's own powers. The
passes are steep and windy ridges, though not the highest. By two and
three thousand feet the snow-caps overtop them. It is even possible to
wind through the Sierras without having passed above timber-line, but
one misses a great exhilaration.

The shape of a new mountain is roughly pyramidal, running out into
long shark-finned ridges that interfere and merge into other
thunder-splintered sierras. You get the saw-tooth effect from a
distance, but the near-by granite bulk glitters with the terrible keen
polish of old glacial ages. I say terrible; so it seems. When those
glossy domes swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how
long and imperturbable are the purposes of God.

Never believe what you are told, that midsummer is the best time to go
up the streets of the mountain--well--perhaps for the merely idle or
sportsmanly or scientific; but for seeing and understanding, the best
time is when you have the longest leave to stay. And here is a hint if
you would attempt the stateliest approaches; travel light, and as much
as possible live off the land. Mulligatawny soup and tinned lobster will
not bring you the favor of the woodlanders.

Every canon commends itself for some particular pleasantness; this
for pines, another for trout, one for pure bleak beauty of granite
buttresses, one for its far-flung irised falls; and as I say, though
some are easier going, leads each to the cloud shouldering citadel.
First, near the canon mouth you get the low-heading fu