Chapter 1
Through the Foothills with a Flock of Sheep
In the great Central Valley of California
there are only two seasons — spring
and summer. The spring begins with the
first rainstorm, which usually falls in November.
In a few months the wonderful flowery
vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end
of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every
plant had been roasted in an oven.
Then the lolling, panting flocks and herds are
driven to the high, cool, green pastures of the
Sierra. I was longing for the mountains about
this time, but money was scarce and I couldn’t
see how a bread supply was to be kept up. While
I was anxiously brooding on the bread problem,
so troublesome to wanderers, and trying
to believe that I might learn to live like the wild
animals, gleaning nourishment here and there
from seeds, berries, etc., sauntering and climbing
in joyful independence of money or baggage,
Mr. Delaney, a sheep-owner, for whom I
had worked a few weeks, called on me, and offered
to engage me to go with his shepherd and
flock to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne
Rivers — the very region I had most in
mind. I was in the mood to accept work of any
kind that would take me into the mountains
whose treasures I had tasted last summer in the
Yosemite region. The flock, he explained, would
be moved gradually higher through the successive
forest belts as the snow melted, stopping
for a few weeks at the best places we came to.
These I thought would be good centers of observation
from which I might be able to make
many telling excursions within a radius of eight
or ten miles of the camps to learn something of
the plants, animals, and rocks; for he assured me
that I should be left perfectly free to follow my
studies. I judged, however, that I was in no way
the right man for the place, and freely explained
my shortcomings, confessing that I was wholly
unacquainted with the topography of the upper
mountains, the streams that would have to be
crossed, and the wild sheep-eating animals,
etc.; in short that, what with bears, coyotes,
rivers, cañons, and thorny, bewildering chaparral,
I feared that half or more of his flock would
be lost. Fortunately these shortcomings seemed
insignificant to Mr. Delaney. The main thing, he
said, was to have a man about the camp whom
he could trust to see that the shepherd did his
duty, and he assured me that the difficulties that
seemed so formidable at a distance would vanish
as we went on; encouraging me further by saying
that the shepherd would do all the herding,
that I could study plants and rocks and scenery
as much as I liked, and that he would himself
accompany us to the first main camp and make
occasional visits to our higher ones to replenish
our store of provisions and see how we prospered.
Therefore I concluded to go, though still
fearing, when I saw the silly sheep bouncing one
by one through the narrow gate of the home corral
to be counted, that of the two thousand and
fifty many would never return.
I was fortunate in getting a fine St. Bernard
dog for a companion. His master, a hunter with
whom I was slightly acquainted, came to me as
soon as he heard that I was going to spend the
summer in the Sierra and begged me to take
his favorite dog, Carlo, with me, for he feared
that if he were compelled to stay all summer on
the plains the fierce heat might be the death of
him. “I think I can trust you to be kind to him,”
he said, “and I am sure he will be good to you.
He knows all about the mountain animals, will
guard the camp, assist in managing the sheep,
and in every way be found able and faithful.”
Carlo knew we were talking about him, watched
our faces, and listened so attentively that I fancied
he understood us. Calling him by name, I
asked him if he was willing to go with me. He
looked me in the face with eyes expressing wonderful
intelligence, then turned to his master,
and after permission was given by a wave of the
hand toward me and a farewell patting caress, he
quietly followed me as if he perfectly understood
all that had been said and had known me always.
June 3, 1869. This morning provisions, campkettles,
blankets, plant-press, etc., were packed
on two horses, the flock headed for the tawny
foothills, and away we sauntered in a cloud of
dust: Mr. Delaney, bony and tall, with sharply
hacked profile like Don Quixote, leading the
pack-horses, Billy, the proud shepherd, a Chinaman
and a Digger Indian to assist in driving
for the first few days in the brushy foothills, and
myself with notebook tied to my belt.
The home ranch from which we set out is
on the south side of the Tuolumne River near
French Bar, where the foothills of metamorphic
gold-bearing slates dip below the stratified deposits
of the Central Valley. We had not gone
more than a mile before some of the old leaders
of the flock showed by the eager, inquiring
way they ran and looked ahead that they were
thinking of the high pastures they had enjoyed
last summer. Soon the whole flock seemed to
be hopefully excited, the mothers calling their
lambs, the lambs replying in tones wonderfully
human, their fondly quavering calls interrupted
now and then by hastily snatched mouthfuls
of withered grass. Amid all this seeming babel
of baas as they streamed over the hills every
mother and child recognized each other’s voice.
In case a tired lamb, half asleep in the smothering
dust, should fail to answer, its mother would
come running back through the flock toward the
spot whence its last response was heard, and refused
to be comforted until she found it, the one
of a thousand, though to our eyes and ears all
seemed alike.
The flock traveled at the rate of about a mile
an hour, outspread in the form of an irregular
triangle, about a hundred yards wide at the
base, and a hundred and fifty yards long, with
a crooked, ever-changing point made up of the
strongest foragers, called the “leaders,” which,
with the most active of those scattered along the
ragged sides of the “main body,” hastily explored
nooks in the rocks and bushes for grass and
leaves; the lambs and feeble old mothers dawdling
in the rear were called the “tail end.”
About noon the heat was hard to bear; the
poor sheep panted pitifully and tried to stop
in the shade of every tree they came to, while
we gazed with eager longing through the dun
burning glare toward the snowy mountains and
streams, though not one was in sight. The landscape
is only wavering foothills roughened here
and there with bushes and trees and outcropping
masses of slate. The trees, mostly the blue
oak (Quercus douglasii), are about thirty to forty
feet high, with pale blue-green leaves and white
bark, sparsely planted on the thinnest soil or in
crevices of rocks beyond the reach of grass fires.
The slates in many places rise abruptly through
the tawny grass in sharp lichen-covered slabs
like tombstones in deserted burying-grounds.
With the exception of the oak and four or five
species of manzanita and ceanothus, the vegetation
of the foothills is mostly the same as that of
the plains. I saw this region in the early spring,
when it was a charming landscape garden full of
birds and bees and flowers. Now the scorching
weather makes everything dreary. The ground
is full of cracks, lizards glide about on the rocks,
and ants in amazing numbers, whose tiny sparks
of life only burn the brighter with the heat, fairly
quiver...