downward, and the little stretches of climbing only served to remind us of the hard labor of the morning, and to emphasize the pleasant contrast of a downhill road. This side of the Pass had been more sheltered from the wind, and the snow lay as it had fallen, producing the most wonderful effects on the boughs of the spruce-trees. Each stump had its white cap, shaped like a blunt-nosed teninch shell. A tree-trunk slanted across the trail bore a mass of snow three feet deep and so narrow that it seemed as if it must fall at the first touch. For two hours we traveled down the Pass rejoicing in the beauty of the snow-laden woods. Four o'clock found us through the Pass and four miles from Clear Lake, where we hoped to find our lumber camp. The snow had stopped falling, and as we looked back at the cleft through which we had come the sun shone hazily through the clouds for a moment, as if he, too, were weary and wishing for the end of his day's journey. Our path now lay across land scarred and slashed by the lumberman's ax. There was no beauty to divert us, no sense of difficulties to be overcome to spur us on, no buoyancy of spirit to give spring to our muscles. We were conscious only of our weariness, of the length of the road before us, and of a craving for food and rest. We tramped along doggedly, interested only in covering the ground and absorbed in the business of avoiding the obstacles that became so surprisingly more numerous and annoying as we grew more tired. Little branches that in the morning we would have brushed aside without a thought slapped us viciously in the face, or held us prisoner till they were lifted laboriously over our heads. It was a distinct and painful effort to keep our equilibrium after a false step or an unwary slip. The snow-shoes were heavy with snow that had stuck to the strands of the webbing and frozen too tight to be easily shaken off. Thongs had loosened under the continual strain, and the crossbar of the snow-shoe was slippery with a coat of ice. We were no longer AVALANCHE LAKE, WITH THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT unconscious of our footgear, but were "On, on onward tramp! Will the journey never end?" Then, as a little ray of hope breaks through the gloom, "Over yonder lies the camp; Welcome waits us there, my friend." It seemed ages that we plodded along that gloomy road, passing a couple of deserted lumber camps, crossing Clear Lake, turning beyond into an old toteroad, long untraveled. We began to wonder if that lumber camp were not a myth, and to speculate dully on our chances of surviving a night in the snow. We had tramped a few thousand miles beyond the lake when we saw a group of buildings looming through the trees. A last reserve of energy that kind Nature always keeps for such emergencies suddenly infused our limbs. It was with something almost like our morning's vigor that we covered the hundred yards to the door of the shanty. It was a large, low-raftered room which we entered, lighted by two or three lanterns, and with a glorious stove in the middle. Three or four lumber-jacks were seated on benches near the stove. It was evident from sounds which came from the next room that the rest of the crew were at supper. We walked in, laid our snow-shoes in a corner, pulled off mittens and sweaters, and sat down to enjoy the warmth. It was a surprising reception for us who were used to the curiosity of civilization. Beyond a nod and a word of greeting, no more notice was taken of us than of a man who drops into his club at his accustomed hour. We were, naturally, a little proud of our achievement, and presently I ventured: "We've just come through Indian Pass from the Iron Works." "That so? Must be a lot of snow in the Pass now?" 66 Eight or ten feet, I guess." And that was all! The boss of the shanty came in pres ently from supper, with the rest of the crew, and greeted us a little more cordially. Their job was about finished, and they were closing the shanty in a day or two. They couldn't offer us much variety in the way of grub, but we were welcome to what there was. We needed no second invitation to supper, and disposed with alarming rapidity of an enormous quantity of food. We were no less ready for our bunks, and morning came in a moment. It was a glorious day, and we took up the trail again in high spirits. For the first few miles we traveled through the woods where our hosts of the night before and the lumbermen from a neighboring camp were finishing their season's work. Along the banks of a little stream that looked as if half a dozen logs would choke it were piled cord after cord of the raw material from which newspapers are made. The little stream in a few months would sweep those logs away like toothpicks and carry them down to their destination. We were soon out of the lumbered land into the virgin forest. The beauty of those woods was a silent but powerful protest against the devastation we had just left. To our lumber-jack the expanse of noble spruce-trees was simply so much pulp-wood waiting for his ax. He was busy selecting a spot for a shanty, laying out tote-roads, and estimating the number of "standards" to the acre, unconscious of any value in those trees except as food for a pulp-milk. The journey through Avalanche Pass is a pleasant contrast to the rigors of Indian Pass. There is hard climbing for short distances, but it lasts only long enough to remind you how easy the rest of it is. At the highest point in the Pass, where we stopped for a little lunch, fortunately unfrozen, and a smoke, we were only a few miles from the Colden Camp. There was no need of hurry, the sun was bright, the air was warm, and we loitered along, playing like boys in the feathery snow. We slid down inclines, generally falling head over heels half-way down. We tried impossible feats of climbing over rocks and up ledges, coming to grief inevitably and joyously. We ran races with wild hilarity, if our elephantine gait can be dignified by the name of running. We did all the stunts that our ingenuity could suggest, invariably ending with one or both of us headlong in a drift. The background of the toil and discomfort and cold of yesterday only increased our pleasure in the warmth and leisure of to-day. We reached Colden Camp early in the afternoon, where we found George with food, fire, and a hearty greeting. That day and the next we loafed around camp and took little trips of exploration to points not too far away. We had worked hard enough for one trip, and we wanted to be lazy. The next day took us back to the Club-House, satisfied with our tramp and a little proud of our pioneer achievement. LL the upper branches in September or October, sometimes in of the Sierra rivers August, in the midst of yellow Indian are buried every win- summer, when the goldenrods and genter beneath a heavy tians of the glacier meadows are in their mantle of snow, and glory. This Indian summer snow, howset free in the spring ever, soon melts, the chilled flowers in magnificent floods. spread their petals to the sun, and the Then, the thousand gardens as well as the streams are rethousand fountains full and overflowing, freshed as if only a warm shower had every living thing breaks forth into sing fallen. The storms that load the mouning, and the glad streams, outspread over tains with snow that is to form the main all the mountains, shine and fall in glori- fountain supply for the year seldom set ous light, shaking everything into music, in before the middle or end of November. making all the world a song. The first fall is usually from two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of fine, sunny weather, storm follows storm, heaping snow on snow, until from thirty to sixty feet has fallen; but on account of heavy settling and compacting and the loss from melting and evaporation, the depth over the middle forest region rarely exceeds ten feet. The great annual thaw begins in May in the forest region, and is in full overflowing prime over the high Sierra in June, varying somewhat both in time and fullness with the weather and depth of the snow. Toward the end of summer the streams are at their lowest ebb, few even of the strongest singing much above a whisper as they slip and ripple through gravel and boulder beds from pool to pool in the hollows of their channels, and fall in sheets of embroidery, fold over fold, down their stairways of precipices and polished inclines. But, however low their singing, it is always ineffably fine in tone, in harmony with the restful time of the year, when all the heavy work is finished. The first snow of the season that comes to the help of the streams usually falls When the first heavy storms stopped work on the mountains, I made haste down to Yosemite Valley, my glorious winter den, not to "hole up" and sleep the white months away like the marmots and bears. I was out every day, and often all night, sleeping but little, wading, climbing, sauntering among the blessed storms and calms, the so-called wonders and common things ever on show, rejoicing in almost everything alike that I could see or hear-the |