Among the early scientists who ranged throughout California were many men and women whose scientific expertise was evenly matched by their sense of wonder and their ability to capture their feelings in words.
. . . here among silent, rigid crater rims and stark fields of volcanic sand, we walked upon ground lifeless and lonely beyond description: a frozen desert at nine thousand feet altitude. Among the huge rude forms of lava we tramped along, happy when the tracks of mountain sheep suggested former explorers, and pleased if a snowbank under rock shadow gave birth to spring or pool. But the severe impression of arctic dreariness passed off when, reaching a rim, we looked over and down upon the volcano's north foot, a superb sweep of forest country waved with ridgy flow of lava and gracefully curved moraines.
Afar off, the wide sunny Shasta Valley, dotted with miniature volcanoes, and checked with the yellow and green of grain and garden, spread pleasantly away to the north, bounded by Klamath hills and horizoned by the blue rank of Siskiyou Mountains. . .
King was head of the United States Geologic Survey between 1878 and 1881 and then became a private mining engineer. In his lively account of his travels in California's high country, though, he created a model blend of aesthetic fancy and scientific description.
"Clarence King in 1869 after he had completed three seasons with the Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel. The photograph was taken in Washington D.C. when King was 27. (Clarence King Memoirs, 1904)," photographer unknown, 1869. Larger.
Californians bow to no one in their enthusiasm for good company. But sometimes it's better to leave your friends alone and take your leisure among the trees.
When the "good old pandemonium" of Gold Rush high jinks became too much for veteran mountaineer Clarence King, he wandered into the foothills where he could find a bit of peace and the companionship of mighty oaks.
Mountain oaks, less wonderful than great straight pines, but altogether domestic in their generous way of reaching out low long boughs, roofing in shade, are the only trees on the Pacific slope which seem to me at all allied to men; and these quiet foot-hill summits, these islands of modest, lovely verdure floating in an ocean of sunlight, lifted enough above San Joaquin plains to reach pure high air and thrill your blood and brain with mountain oxygen, are yet far enough below the rugged wildness of pine and ice and rock to leave you in peace, and not forever challenge you to combat. They are the only places in the Sierras impressing me as rightly fitted for human company.
"East Face of Mt. Whitney as seen from the way up on Whitney Portal," photograph by Wikipedia user Geographer , 2003. Larger.
In 1871 Clarence King thought he was the first European to reach the summit of Mount Whitney. But unfortunately for King, he climbed the wrong mountain.
King learned of his mistake only after he brought out his 1872 volume Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, which included a vivid description of his mistaken triumph.
When all else was buried in cloud we watched the great west range. Weird and strange, it seemed shaded by some dark eclipse, Here and there through its gaps and passes, serpent-like streams of mist floated in and crept slowly down the cañons of the hither slope. . . .
Just for a moment every trace of vapor cleared away from the east, unveiling for the first time spurs and gorges and plains. I crept to the brink and looked down into the Whitney cañon, which was covered with light. Great scarred and ice-hewn precipices reached down four thousand feet, curving together like a ship, and holding in their granite bed a thread of a brook, the small sapphire gems of alpine lake, bronze dots of pine, and here and there a fine enamelling of snow.
King acknowledged his error in a subsequent edition of his book. And despite his mistake, the one-time head of the US Geologic Survey left a marvelous description of climbing the high Sierra at a time when that realm remained little known.
Clarence King near Salt Lake City. October 1868. Larger.
As often as one camps at twelve thousand feet in the Sierra, the charm of crystally pure air, these cold, sparkling, gem-like tints of rock and alpine lake, the fiery bronze of foliage, and luminous though deep-toned sky, combine to produce an intellectual and even a spiritual elevation. Deep and stirring feelings come naturally, the present falls back into its true relation, one's own wearying identity shrinks from the broad, open foreground of the vision, and a calmness born of reverent reflections encompasses the soul.
At eleven o'clock next morning Knowles and I stood together on the topmost rock of Mount Whitney. We found there a monument of stones, and records of the two parties who had preceded us,—the first, Messrs. Hunter and Crapo, and afterward, that of Rabe of the Geological Survey. The former were, save Indian hunters, the first, so far as we know, who achieved this dominating summit. Mr. Rabe has the honor of the first measurement by barometer. Our three visits were all within a month.
King's ascent of the true Mount Whitney was first included in a fourth edition of Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, which appeared in 1874.
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