low. The east wall is considerably longer than the Yosemite walls, the west not quite so long. Like the other yosemites, a large tributary stream seems to have sustained a causal relation to the formation of the valley. This is Crown creek. It is somewhat larger than Yosemite creek, and its entrance is not at the head but in the center of the valley.

The most striking rock in Tehipite is the Dome, a massive, sheer-fronted monolith of

GORGE OF DESPAIR, EAST WALL, TEHIPITE VALLEY Pluto's Portal

Throne of Jove

naked granite rising on the west wall over five thousand feet above its base and about 9,300 feet above the sea. Its true form is almost exactly similar to that of El Capitan, but owing to its much greater height and to a certain circumstance of perspective, its summit appears to the spectator in the

valley as a perfectly formed dome, slenderly and with perfect grace capping the wall out of which it rises. In this view it may be said to combine and reconcile the several different forms of domes and rocks to be seen in Yosemite, though certainly none of these can compare with it in the symmetry

and beauty of its design, though perhaps many critics might not consider it on the whole as superior to El Capitan or Half Dome.

It is principally, however, the remarkable sculpture of its eastern wall that gives to Tehipite valley its unique and extraordinary place among the yosemites of the Sierra. The general character of this sculpture may be described as pyramidal, and it is interesting to remark that in a less striking degree the same is true of most of the cañon-walls of King's River streams. I dare say it would be a baffling question to the geologist to determine why the granite here weathers into these unusual forms, but certainly the richness and variety of effect thus produced is not an inconsiderable addition to the wealth of the scenery of the region. The picture entitled "A Hundred Pyramids" best shows this sculpture. Much has been lost in the reproduction. The wall is perhaps seven thousand feet in height, the lower few thousand being about as sheer as the average wall of Yosemite valley, and the remainder varying greatly in steepness from slopes sufficiently gentle to permit the growth of forest trees to angles and façades of wall-like abruptness.

It would be quite idle to attempt a real description of the chief features of ten miles of such scenery. There is nothing with which to compare them fittingly. Cathedrals and pyramids, and towers and turrets, and that numerous sort of thing, are not only stale and weak as comparisons, but would be infinitely belittling, and scarcely, accurate either. These rocks are too wild and irregular; nothing in art can be so spontaneous and original, even though art were not stunted to the scale and stature of the pygmy race that made it. These stupendous clefts carved by mile high torrents, these corrugations worn by avalanches of rock and snow, this splendid discord of spires and pinnacles that harrow and vex the great, grim wall,- what diction shall be so perfect in form and color phrases, what art of words so subtle, ingenious, and complete, as to translate things like these into pictures that the mind can read and the soul thrill to? We can make our language describe a cube of white marble shaped by a human workman, but when we bid it describe natural rocks it is dumb, impotent. Ask one who has seen Yosemite whether the photographs are like it. He will answer, no. And if the camera has

told little, how much less have words told. Yosemite has never and will never be described, and neither will Tehipite.

Yosemite is truly a valley. It is long and wide and several thousand broad acres spread level in its bottom. There is little suggestion of the cañon about it, for above it the spreading pedestal of Half Dome all but conceals the trench of the river and the gorge of Tenaya creek, and below one rarely looks below.

All the other yosemites, on the contrary, with the possible exception of HetchHetchy, are scarcely true valleys. They are narrow, their bottoms contain little level ground, and they seem exactly what they are, local widenings of river cañons.

So it is with Tehipite. It is called a valley in virtue of this widening of the trench and the fact of a level deposit of

cañon debris which forms a small floor. But it is only a widening of the cañon, after all, the mile-deep flume of the Middle fork is above it and through it and below it, and this the eye always sees. But we call Tehipite a yosemite, and we think of and compare it with the famous prototype, because of certain great and distinguishing characteristics the two possess in common.

If one stands in the center of the meadow on the western side of the river and looks about him, the lawn, the brushy river, the groves stretching to the talus, and the dazzling granite-piled cliff, crag upon crag, combine to suggest Yosemite so forcibly that no circumstance of size or form can quench the thought that Nature has here repeated a work, which for forty years has drawn to Mariposa county men and women from all the world and made them weep.

LARK, of the Oregon House, is telling this story. Clark, with his pipe in his mouth and a reminiscent expression in his gray eyes. He is lying under the rough shed of the old blacksmith shop, which, like a big bat, clings to the mountain side just where the great North Yuba makes a sharp bend and roars down the cañon towards Climmin's point. Before him, at his feet, there are a few yards of almost level ground, a sort of platform, in fact, -dug out of the steep mountain-side, on which stands the shop. From the outer edge of this platform, it is a sheer drop of a hundred feet to the bed of the river below; and above it the mountain rises so steeply, and so woodedly, that one cannot see its top. From one side of the platform, a narrow, twisting trail leads down to the river; and from the other side, a rutty wagon-road winds up

at a very steep grade and disappears from view among the gray nut-pines and the green poison-oak bushes that cover the hills. It was down this narrow road that Clark and his outfit came. Two wagons

and four horses, to say nothing of a dog and a rough looking boy, comprise Clark's "outfit," and Clark is a peddler who runs fruit and vegetable wagons between Marysville and Brown's valley.

A mile or so down the river, at Climmin's point, there are Indians at work in the gravel, and once a week Clark comes down here to sell them fruit. On the little platform in front of the old shop he camps, and the Indians, in parties of two, three, and half dozens, come up the twisting trail from the river and dicker with him for all sorts of fruit. They are not stingy, these Indians, what to them are the little particles of bright stuff they wash from the river-bed, when they are hungry for watermelons and such things, and Clark shows them how much he will give them in ex

change? And Clark weighs the dust in the little scales "that never lie," and they go back to their rude wind-break, or rough shanty, minus their week's earnings, but enriched by boxes of plums, and other fruits.

Once in a while Clark camps over night at this old shop, and whenever he does, all the Indians near there, some two or three dozen, come up and camp with him. Wild times they have then; for Clark always brings a big jug of bad whisky when he comes, and somehow the Indians get hold of it. Clark himself has not told me this, - Clark avers that the stuff that transforms "ScarFaced Dick" from a peaceable citizen to the "Terror of the Hills," is brought to the Yuba in bottles and drawn from a barrel which reposes behind the bar of a saloon in French Corral, five or six miles away. But however this may be, whisky the Indians get; and the more whisky they get, the more trade Clark enjoys. Guileless Clark!

Clark has made his sales, and his wagon is almost empty. The boy and the dog and one team have gone up the valley, and Clark is only waiting to smoke a bit before he also pulls out. And so, while he rests, lying on the soft, smooth pine-needles that have sifted in under the shed, his pipe in his mouth and his long legs out-stretched, he is telling a story to a man who is devouring some big blue plums as though he had been tramping over the hills for two long hours. And this is the story he tells:

But bebefore he

"There's somethin' goin' on down here among the Injuns. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think its somethin' concernin' old Potts. Who's Potts? Well, I'll tell you who Potts is. Potts is a squaw-man; but that ain't all, Potts is crazy. fore he became a squaw-man became a lunatic who was he? Well, he was Potts, that's all Levi Potts of Ohio. He came out to California in the early days and he went into mining. He did n't pan out much at it, did n't get into the savvey of it, I guess; anyway, he did n't get rich, and so he went to work for people up here in the hills. You know Charley Coles's ranch at Bridgeport? Well, you 've noticed them. stone walls, one each side o' the road there by the house? Potts built them. He put all them big rocks in place with his hands, one on top the other, till he had a fence made that I reckon will last a good while

longer 'n he will. longer 'n he will. It was no picnic to build them walls, either, for them rocks was pretty hefty, I tell you. But Potts was strong the strongest man at liftin' that ever came into the hills. Did you ever see him? No? Well he's a six-footer, broad-shouldered, straight, and with arms long and jist big bunches of muscles. He's not as strong now as he was once, but in spite of the life he's led and the years he's passed, he's strong enough to handle two or three ordinary men.

'Well, after Potts was in the hills here for awhile he got to teamin' on the road. It was while he was teamin' that he began to git looney. The long, heavy grades, the hot summer, the sweat and the dust, seemed to break him down. I don't much wonder at it, for it ain't very pleasant work — teamin' ain't. Goin' up them steep grades with two wagons loaded with all they'll carry, and twelve or fourteen horses and mules to handle and sometimes balkin' it ain't cheerful work. In the first place, the road ain't straight it's as full of crooks and turns as the Yuba there," waving his pipe. "Of course you drive with a jerk-line, though the team generally knows as much. about bringin' them wagons around a turn as you do. But the grade is so steep, and the wagons loaded so heavy, that you can't go more than a few yards at a time; and its the everlastin' stoppin' and startin' that wears a man plum' out.

"Every time you start, the horses and mules has to scratch gravel to git the wagons movin' and the dust comes up pretty thick and nigh smothers you. Why, I've seen teamsters on the road that didn't look any more like human bein's than as if they was made altogether of yaller dirt. Even their eyes seemed to have a coat of dust on 'em; and as for their thoats, well, these here teamsters generally try to keep up some sort of communication with their internal arrangements by means of a bottle.

"It might have been this permiscus whisky drinkin' that knocked old Potts off his nut instead of the hard teamsterin', but I can't say. But anyway, Potts went sort o' daft, and finally left the road and tuk up with the Injuns. Before he went crazy, and before he left teamin', Potts was the genialest kind of a feller. Everybody liked him. He was n't educated much, but he