IX

BLOODY CANYON AND MONO LAKE

_August 21._ Have just returned from a fine wild excursion across the
range to Mono Lake, by way of the Mono or Bloody Canon Pass. Mr. Delaney
has been good to me all summer, lending a helping, sympathizing hand at
every opportunity, as if my wild notions and rambles and studies were
his own. He is one of those remarkable California men who have been
overflowed and denuded and remodeled by the excitements of the gold
fields, like the Sierra landscapes by grinding ice, bringing the harder
bosses and ridges of character into relief,--a tall, lean, big-boned,
big-hearted Irishman, educated for a priest in Maynooth College,--lots
of good in him, shining out now and then in this mountain light.
Recognizing my love of wild places, he told me one evening that I ought
to go through Bloody Canon, for he was sure I should find it wild
enough. He had not been there himself, he said, but had heard many of
his mining friends speak of it as the wildest of all the Sierra passes.
Of course I was glad to go. It lies just to the east of our camp and
swoops down from the summit of the range to the edge of the Mono Desert,
making a descent of about four thousand feet in a distance of about four
miles. It was known and traveled as a pass by wild animals and the
Indians long before its discovery by white men in the gold year of 1858,
as is shown by old trails which come together at the head of it. The
name may have been suggested by the red color of the metamorphic slates
in which the canyon abounds, or by the blood stains on the rocks from the
unfortunate animals that were compelled to slide and shuffle over the
sharp-angled boulders.

Early in the morning I tied my notebook and some bread to my belt, and
strode away full of eager hope, feeling that I was going to have a
glorious revel. The glacier meadows that lay along my way served to
soothe my morning speed, for the sod was full of blue gentians and
daisies, kalmia and dwarf vaccinium, calling for recognition as old
friends, and I had to stop many times to examine the shining rocks over
which the ancient glacier had passed with tremendous pressure, polishing
them so well that they reflected the sunlight like glass in some places,
while fine striae, seen clearly through a lens, indicated the direction
in which the ice had flowed. On some of the sloping polished pavements
abrupt steps occur, showing that occasionally large masses of the rock
had give