e
rest. They were slowly settling into their places, chafing, grating
against one another, groaning, and whispering; but no motion was visible
except in a stream of small fragments pattering down the face of the
cliff. A cloud of dust particles, lighted by the moon, floated out
across the whole breadth of the Valley, forming a ceiling that lasted
until after sunrise, and the air was filled with the odor of crushed
Douglas spruces from a grove that had been mowed down and mashed like
weeds.

After the ground began to calm I ran across the meadow to the river to
see in what direction it was flowing and was glad to find that _down_
the Valley was still down. Its waters were muddy from portions of its
banks having given way, but it was flowing around its curves and over
its ripples and shallows with ordinary tones and gestures. The mud would
soon be cleared away and the raw slips on the banks would be the only
visible record of the shaking it suffered.

The Upper Yosemite Fall, glowing white in the moonlight, seemed to know
nothing of the earthquake, manifesting no change in form or voice, as
far as I could see or hear.

After a second startling shock, about half-past three o'clock, the
ground continued to tremble gently, and smooth, hollow rumbling sounds,
not always distinguishable from the rounded, bumping, explosive tones of
the falls, came from deep in the mountains in a northern direction.

The few Indians fled from their huts to the middle of the Valley,
fearing that angry spirits were trying to kill them; and, as I afterward
learned, most of the Yosemite tribe, who were spending the winter at
their village on Bull Creek forty miles away, were so terrified that
they ran into the river and washed themselves,--getting themselves clean
enough to say their prayers, I suppose, or to die. I asked Dick, one of
the Indians with whom I was acquainted, "What made the ground shake and
jump so much?" He only shook his head and said, "No good. No good," and
looked appealingly to me to give him hope that his life was to be
spared.

In the morning I found the few white settlers assembled in front of
the old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and meditating flight to the
lowlands, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. Shortly after
sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was
followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe
as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like