thin a journey of a week or two from
his Wawona home. On these trips he was always alone and could indulge
in tranquil enjoyment of Nature to his heart's content. He said that
on those trips, when he was a sufficient distance from home in a
neighborhood where he wished to linger, he always shot a deer, sometimes
a grouse, and occasionally a bear. After diminishing the weight of a
deer or bear by eating part of it, he carried as much as possible of the
best of the meat to Wawona, and from his hospitable well-supplied cabin
no weary wanderer ever went away hungry or unrested.

The value of the mountain air in prolonging life is well examplified in
Mr. Clark's case. While working in the mines he contracted a severe cold
that settled on his lungs and finally caused severe inflammation and
bleeding, and none of his friends thought he would ever recover. The
physicians told him he had but a short time to live. It was then that
he repaired to the beautiful sugar pine woods at Wawona and took up a
claim, including the fine meadows there, and building his cabin, began
his life of wandering and exploring in the glorious mountains about him,
usually going bare-headed. In a remarkably short time his lungs were
healed.

He was one of the most sincere tree-lovers I ever knew. About twenty
years before his death he made choice of a plot in the Yosemite cemetery
on the north side of the Valley, not far from the Yosemite Fall, and
selecting a dozen or so of seedling sequoias in the Mariposa grove he
brought them to the Valley and planted them around the spot he had
chosen for his last rest. The ground there is gravelly and dry; by
careful watering he finally nursed most of the seedlings into good,
thrifty trees, and doubtless they will long shade the grave of their
blessed lover and friend.

Chapter 16

Hetch Hetchy Valley

Yosemite is so wonderful that we are apt to regard it as an exceptional
creation, the only valley of its kind in the world; but Nature is not
so poor as to have only one of anything. Several other yosemites have
been discovered in the Sierra that occupy the same relative positions
on the Range and were formed by the same forces in the same kind of
granite. One of these, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, is in the Yosemite
National Park about twenty miles from Yosemite and is easily accessible
to all sorts of travelers by a road and trail that leaves the Big Oak
Flat road at Bronson Meadows a few miles below Crane