an hour one may swoop down
from winter to summer, from an Arctic to a torrid region, through as
great changes of climate as one would encounter in traveling from
Labrador to Florida.

The Indians I had met near the head of the canyon had camped at the foot
of it the night before they made the ascent, and I found their fire
still smoking on the side of a small tributary stream near Moraine
Lake; and on the edge of what is called the Mono Desert, four or five
miles from the lake, I came to a patch of elymus, or wild rye, growing
in magnificent waving clumps six or eight feet high, bearing heads six
to eight inches long. The crop was ripe, and Indian women were gathering
the grain in baskets by bending down large handfuls, beating out the
seed, and fanning it in the wind. The grains are about five eighths of
an inch long, dark-colored and sweet. I fancy the bread made from it
must be as good as wheat bread. A fine squirrelish employment this wild
grain gathering seems, and the women were evidently enjoying it,
laughing and chattering and looking almost natural, though most Indians
I have seen are not a whit more natural in their lives than we civilized
whites. Perhaps if I knew them better I should like them better. The
worst thing about them is their uncleanliness. Nothing truly wild is
unclean. Down on the shore of Mono Lake I saw a number of their flimsy
huts on the banks of streams that dash swiftly into that dead sea,--mere
brush tents where they lie and eat at their ease. Some of the men were
feasting on buffalo berries, lying beneath the tall bushes now red with
fruit. The berries are rather insipid, but they must needs be wholesome,
since for days and weeks the Indians, it is said, eat nothing else. In
the season they in like manner depend chiefly on the fat larvae of a fly
that breeds in the salt water of the lake, or on the big fat corrugated
caterpillars of a species of silkworm that feeds on the leaves of the
yellow pine. Occasionally a grand rabbit-drive is organized and hundreds
are slain with clubs on the lake shore, chased and frightened into a
dense crowd by dogs, boys, girls, men and women, and rings of sage brush
fire, when of course they are quickly killed. The skins are made into
blankets. In the autumn the more enterprising of the hunters bring in a
good many deer, and rarely a wild sheep from the high peaks. Antelopes
used to be abundant on the desert at the base of the interior
mountain-ranges. Sag