The whole canyon is a mine of
fossils, in which five thousand feet of horizontal strata are exposed
in regular succession over more than a thousand square miles of wall-space, and on the adjacent plateau region there is another series of
beds twice as thick, forming a grand geological library - a collection
of stone books covering thousands of miles of shelving, tier on tier,
conveniently arranged for the student. And with what wonderful
scriptures are their pages filled - myriad forms of successive floras
and faunas, lavishly illustrated with colored drawings, carrying us
back into the midst of the life of a past infinitely remote. And as
we go on and on, studying this old, old life in the light of the life
beating warmly about us, we enrich and lengthen our own.
THE END
Footnotes [by the editor of the 1918 original of this text]:
[1] This essay was written early in 1875.
[2] The wild sheep of California are now classified as Ovis nelsoni.
Whether those of the Shasta region belonged to the latter species, or
to the bighorn species of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, is still an
unsettled question.
[3] An excerpt from a letter to a friend, written in 1873.
[4] Muir at this time was making Yosemite Valley his home.
[5] An obsolete genus of plants now replaced in the main by
Chrysothamnus and Ericameria.
[6] An early local name for what is now known as Lassen Peak, or Mt.
Lassen. In 1914 its volcanic activity was resumed with spectacular
eruptions of ashes, steam, and gas.
[7] Pronounced Too'-lay.
[8] Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 15, 1877."
[9] Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 19, 1877."
[10] Letter dated "Lake Point, Utah, May 20, 1877."
[11] Letter dated "Salt Lake, July, 1877."
[12] Letter dated "September 1, 1877."
[13] Letter written during the first week of September, 1877.
[14] The spruce, or hemlock, then known as Abies Douglasii var.
macrocarpa is now called Pseudotsuga macrocarpa.
[15] Written at Ward, Nevada, in September, 1878.
[16] See footnote 5.
[17] Written at Eureka, Nevada, in October, 1878.
[18] Now called Pinus monophylla, or one-leaf pinyon.
[19] Written at Pioche, Nevada, in October, 1878.
[20] Written at Eureka, Nevada, in November, 1878.
[21] Date and place of writing not given. Published in the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin, January 15, 1879.
[22] November 11, 1889; Muir's description probably was written toward
the end of the same year.
[23] This tree, now known to botanists as Picea sitchensis, was named
Abies Menziesii by Lindley in 1833.
[24] Also known as "canoe cedar," and described in Jepson's Silva of
California under the more recent specific name Thuja plicata.
[25] Now classified as Tsuga mertensiana Sarg.
[26] Now Abies grandis Lindley.
[27] Chamaecyparis lawsoniana Parl. (Port Orford cedar) in Jepson's
Silva.
[28] 1889.
[29] A careful re-determination of the height of Rainier, made by
Professor A. G. McAdie in 1905, gave an altitude of 14,394 feet. The
Standard Dictionary wrongly describes it is "the highest peak (14,363
feet) within the United States." The United States Baedeker and
railroad literature overstate its altitude by more than a hundred
feet.
[30] Doubtless the red silver fir, now classified as Abies amabilis.
[31] Lassen Peak on recent maps.
[32] Pseudotsuga taxifolia Brit.
[33] Thuja plicata Don.
[34] Muir wrote this description in 1902; Major J. W. Powell made his
descent through the canyon, with small boats, in 1869.
Note from the transcriber:
A phrase Muir uses that readers might doubt: "fountain range," by
which he means a mountainous area where rain or snow fall that is the
source of water for a river or stream downslope. So it is not a
typographical error for "mountain range"! Another odd phrase is
"(something) is well worthy (something else)" rather than "well worth"
or "well worthy of." He uses this at least twice in this work. - jg
End of Steep Trails by John Muir
