his
burden, he gazed stolidly for a few minutes in silent Indian fashion,
then cut off eight or ten pounds of venison for us, and begged a "lill"
(little) of everything he saw or could think of--flour, bread, sugar,
tobacco, whiskey, needles, etc. We gave a fair price for the meat in
flour and sugar and added a few needles. A strangely dirty and irregular
life these dark-eyed, dark-haired, half-happy savages lead in this clean
wilderness,--starvation and abundance, deathlike calm, indolence, and
admirable, indefatigable action succeeding each other in stormy rhythm
like winter and summer. Two things they have that civilized toilers
might well envy them--pure air and pure water. These go far to cover and
cure the grossness of their lives. Their food is mostly good berries,
pine nuts, clover, lily bulbs, wild sheep, antelope, deer, grouse, sage
hens, and the larvae of ants, wasps, bees, and other insects.

_August 13._ Day all sunshine, dawn and evening purple, noon gold, no
clouds, air motionless. Mr. Delaney arrived with two shepherds, one of
them an Indian. On his way up from the plains he left some provisions at
the Portuguese camp on Porcupine Creek near our old Yosemite camp, and I
set out this morning with one of the pack animals to fetch them. Arrived
at the Porcupine camp at noon, and might have returned to the Tuolumne
late in the evening, but concluded to stay over night with the
Portuguese shepherds at their pressing invitation. They had sad stories
to tell of losses from the Yosemite bears, and were so discouraged they
seemed on the point of leaving the mountains; for the bears came every
night and helped themselves to one or several of the flock in spite of
all their efforts to keep them off.

I spent the afternoon in a grand ramble along the Yosemite walls. From
the highest of the rocks called the Three Brothers, I enjoyed a
magnificent view comprehending all the upper half of the floor of the
valley and nearly all the rocks of the walls on both sides and at the
head, with snowy peaks in the background. Saw also the Vernal and Nevada
Falls, a truly glorious picture,--rocky strength and permanence combined
with beauty of plants frail and fine and evanescent; water descending in
thunder, and the same water gliding through meadows and groves in
gentlest beauty. This standpoint is about eight thousand feet above the
sea, or four thousand feet above the floor of the valley, and every
tree, though looking small