Steep Trails California, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, the Grand Canyon , livre ebook

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. The papers brought together in this volume have, in a general way, been arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of twenty-nine years of Muir's life, during which they appeared as letters and articles, for the most part in publications of limited and local circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San Gabriel papers, were contributed, in the form of letters, to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin toward the end of the seventies. Written in the field, they preserve the freshness of the author's first impressions of those regions. Much of the material in the chapters on Mount Shasta first took similar shape in 1874. Subsequently it was rewritten and much expanded for inclusion in Picturesque California, and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, which Muir began to edit in 1888. In the same work appeared the description of Washington and Oregon. The charming little essay "Wild Wool" was written for the Overland Monthly in 1875. "A Geologist's Winter Walk" is an extract from a letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine literary quality, took the responsibility of sending it to the Overland Monthly without the author's knowledge

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819925415
Langue	English

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STEEP TRAILS
California-Utah-Nevada-Washington
Oregon-The Grand Canyon
by John Muir
EDITOR'S NOTE
The papers brought together in this volume have, ina general way, been arranged in chronological sequence. They span aperiod of twenty-nine years of Muir's life, during which theyappeared as letters and articles, for the most part in publicationsof limited and local circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, andthe two San Gabriel papers, were contributed, in the form ofletters, to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin toward the end ofthe seventies. Written in the field, they preserve the freshness ofthe author's first impressions of those regions. Much of thematerial in the chapters on Mount Shasta first took similar shapein 1874. Subsequently it was rewritten and much expanded forinclusion in Picturesque California, and the Region West of theRocky Mountains, which Muir began to edit in 1888. In the same workappeared the description of Washington and Oregon. The charminglittle essay “Wild Wool” was written for the Overland Monthly in1875. “A Geologist's Winter Walk” is an extract from a letter to afriend, who, appreciating its fine literary quality, took theresponsibility of sending it to the Overland Monthly without theauthor's knowledge. The concluding chapter on “The Grand Canyon ofthe Colorado” was published in the Century Magazine in 1902, andexhibits Muir's powers of description at their maturity.
Some of these papers were revised by the authorduring the later years of his life, and these revisions are a partof the form in which they now appear. The chapters on Mount Shasta,Oregon, and Washington will be found to contain occasionalsentences and a few paragraphs that were included, more or lessverbatim, in The Mountains of California and Our National Parks.Being an important part of their present context, these paragraphscould not be omitted without impairing the unity of the author'sdescriptions.
The editor feels confident that this volume willmeet, in every way, the high expectations of Muir's readers. Therecital of his experiences during a stormy night on the summit ofMount Shasta will take rank among the most thrilling of his recordsof adventure. His observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and onthe Indians gathering their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase ofWestern life that has left few traces in American literature. Many,too, will read with pensive interest the author's glowingdescription of what was one time called the New Northwest. Almostinconceivably great have been the changes wrought in that regionduring the past generation. Henceforth the landscapes that Muir sawthere will live in good part only in his writings, for fire, axe,plough, and gunpowder have made away with the supposedly boundlessforest wildernesses and their teeming life.
William Frederic Bade
Berkeley, California
May, 1918
STEEP TRAILS
I. WILD WOOL
Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have afriend who has a call to plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azaleathicket that falls under the savage redemption of his keen steelshares. Not content with the so-called subjugation of everyterrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he would fain discover somemethod of reclamation applicable to the ocean and the sky, that indue calendar time they might be brought to bud and blossom as therose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek to turn hisattention to wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and sky arealready about as rosy as possible— the one with stars, the otherwith dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical developments ofhis culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a smiling,benevolent aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a near viewdiscloses something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms not myfriend, charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever may be thecharacter of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos ofagricultural possibilities calling for grubbing-hoes andmanures.
Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea forwildness, when he good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in myface, reiterating his favorite aphorism, “Culture is an orchardapple; Nature is a crab. ” Not all culture, however, is equallydestructive and inappreciative. Azure skies and crystal waters findloving recognition, and few there be who would welcome the axeamong mountain pines, or would care to apply any correction to thetones and costumes of mountain waterfalls. Nevertheless, thebarbarous notion is almost universally entertained by civilizedman, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature somethingessentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by humanculture. I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild woolgrowing upon mountain sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta wasmuch finer than the average grades of cultivated wool. This FINEdiscovery was made some three months ago 1, while hunting among theShasta sheep between Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three fleeceswere obtained— one that belonged to a large ram about four yearsold, another to a ewe about the same age, and another to a yearlinglamb. After parting their beautiful wool on the side and manyplaces along the back, shoulders, and hips, and examining itclosely with my lens, I shouted: “Well done for wildness! Wild woolis finer than tame! ”
My companions stooped down and examined the fleecesfor themselves, pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning thembetween their fingers, and measuring the length of the staple, eachin turn paying tribute to wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake;finer than Spanish Merino. Wild wool IS finer than tame.
“Here, ” said I, “is an argument for fine wildnessthat needs no explanation. Not that such arguments are by any meansrare, for all wildness is finer than tameness, but because finewool is appreciable by everybody alike— from the most speculativepresident of national wool-growers' associations all the way downto the gude-wife spinning by her ingleside. ”
Nature is a good mother, and sees well to theclothing of her many bairns— birds with smoothly imbricatedfeathers, beetles with shining jackets, and bears with shaggy furs.In the tropical south, where the sun warms like a fire, they areallowed to go thinly clad; but in the snowy northland she takescare to clothe warmly. The squirrel has socks and mittens, and atail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse is densely feathereddown to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep, besides hisundergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair that shedsoff both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and adaptations inthe dresses of animals, relating less to climate than to the moremechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same consummateskill that characterizes all the love work of Nature. Land, water,and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests,underbrush, grassy plains, etc. , are considered in all theirpossible combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlingsis preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives maybe, she never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, livingalways in the dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter orthe wave-washed seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roamingthrough bushes, and leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wearsa dress so exquisitely adapted to its mountain life that it isalways found as unruffled and stainless as a bird.
On leaving the Shasta hunting grounds I selected afew specimen tufts, and brought them away with a view to makingmore leisurely examinations; but, owing to the imperfectness of theinstruments at my command, the results thus far obtained must beregarded only as rough approximations.
As already stated, the clothing of our wild sheep iscomposed of fine wool and coarse hair. The hairs are from about twoto four inches long, mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, thoughvarying somewhat with the seasons. In general characteristics theyare closely related to the hairs of the deer and antelope, beinglight, spongy, and elastic, with a highly polished surface, andthough somewhat ridged and spiraled, like wool, they do notmanifest the slightest tendency to felt or become taggy. A hair twoand a half inches long, which is perhaps near the average length,will stretch about one fourth of an inch before breaking. Thediameter decreases rapidly both at the top and bottom, but ismaintained throughout the greater portion of the length with a fairdegree of regularity. The slender tapering point in which the hairsterminate is nearly black: but, owing to its fineness as comparedwith the main trunk, the quantity of blackness is not sufficient toaffect greatly the general color. The number of hairs growing upona square inch is about ten thousand; the number of wool fibers isabout twenty-five thousand, or two and a half times that of thehairs. The wool fibers are white and glossy, and beautifully spiredinto ringlets. The average length of the staple is about an inchand a half. A fiber of this length, when growing undisturbed downamong the hairs, measures about an inch; hence the degree ofcurliness may easily be inferred. I regret exceedingly that myinstruments do not enable me to measure the diameter of the fibers,in order that their degrees of fineness might be definitelycompared with each other and with the finest of the domesticbreeds; but that the three wild fleeces under consideration areconsiderably finer than the average grades of Merino shipped fromSan Francisco is, I think, unquestionable.
When the fleece is parted and looked into with agood lens, the skin appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, andthe delicate wool fibers are seen growing up among the stronghairs, like grass among stalks of corn, every individual fiberbeing protected about as specially and effectively as if inclosedin a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine to stand by itself, thefibers being about as frail and invisible as the floating threadsof spiders, while the hairs against wh