All streets of the mountains lead to the citadel¹; steep or slow they go up to the core of the hills. Any trail that goes otherwhere must dip and cross, sidle and take chances. Rifts² of the hills open into each other, and the high meadows are often wide enough to be called valleys by courtesy; but one keeps this distinction in mind,—valleys are the sunken places of the earth, canons are scored out by the glacier³ ploughs of God. They have a better name in the Rockies for these hill-fenced open glades⁴ of pleasantness; they call them parks. Here and there in the hill country one comes upon blind gullies fronted by high stony⁵ barriers. These head also for the heart of the mountains; their distinction is that they never get anywhere.  
All mountain streets have streams to thread them, or deep grooves⁶ where a stream might run. You would do well to avoid that range uncomforted by singing floods. You will find it forsaken⁷ of most things but beauty and madness and death and God. Many such lie east and north away from the mid⁸ Sierras, and quicken the imagination with the sense of purposes not revealed, but the ordinary traveler brings nothing away from them but an intolerable thirst.
 
The river canons of the Sierras of the Snows are better worth while than most Broadways, though the choice of them is like the choice of streets, not very well determined⁹ by their names. There is always an amount of local history to be read in the names of mountain highways where one touches the successive waves of occupation or discovery, as in the old villages where the neighborhoods are not built but grow. Here you have the Spanish Californian in Cero Gordo and pinon; Symmes and Shepherd, pioneers both; Tunawai, probably Shoshone; Oak Creek¹⁰, Kearsarge,—easy to fix the date of that christening,—Tinpah, Paiute that; Mist Canon and Paddy Jack's. The streets of the west Sierras sloping toward the San Joaquin are long and winding¹¹, but from the east, my country, a day's ride carries one to the lake regions. The next day reaches the passes of the high divide, but whether one gets passage depends a little on how many have gone that road before, and much on one's own powers. The passes are steep and windy ridges¹², though not the highest. By two and three thousand feet the snow-caps overtop them. It is even possible to wind through the Sierras without having passed above timber-line, but one misses a great exhilaration.
 
The shape of a new mountain is roughly pyramidal, running out into long shark-finned ridges that interfere¹³ and merge¹⁴ into other thunder-splintered sierras. You get the saw-tooth effect from a distance, but the near-by granite¹⁵ bulk glitters with the terrible keen polish of old glacial ages. I say terrible; so it seems. When those glossy¹⁶ domes¹⁸ swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how long and imperturbable¹⁹ are the purposes of God.
 
Never believe what you are told, that midsummer is the best time to go up the streets of the mountain—well—perhaps for the merely idle or sportsmanly or scientific; but for seeing and understanding, the best time is when you have the longest leave to stay. And here is a hint if you would attempt the stateliest approaches; travel light, and as much as possible live off the land. Mulligatawny soup and tinned lobster²² will not bring you the favor of the woodlanders.
 
Every canon commends itself for some particular pleasantness; this for pines, another for trout²³, one for pure bleak²⁴ beauty of granite buttresses²⁵, one for its far-flung irised falls; and as I say, though some are easier going, leads each to the cloud shouldering citadel. First, near the canon mouth you get the low-heading full-branched, one-leaf pines. That is the sort of tree to know at sight, for the globose, resin-dripping cones²⁶ have palatable²⁷, nourishing kernels²⁸, the main harvest of the Paiutes. That perhaps accounts for their growing accommodatingly below the limit of deep snows, grouped sombrely on the valley-ward slopes. The real procession of the pines begins in the rifts with the long-leafed Pinus jeffreyi, sighing its soul away upon the wind. And it ought not to sigh in such good company. Here begins the manzanita, adjusting its tortuous²⁹ stiff stems to the sharp waste of boulders³⁰, its pale olive leaves twisting edgewise to the sleek³¹, ruddy, chestnut³² stems; begins also the meadowsweet, burnished³³ laurel, and the million unregarded trumpets³⁴ of the coral-red pentstemon. Wild life is likely to be busiest about the lower pine borders. One looks in hollow trees and hiving rocks for wild honey. The drone of bees, the chatter³⁶ of jays, the hurry and stir of squirrels, is incessant³⁷; the air is odorous and hot. The roar of the stream fills up the morning and evening intervals³⁸, and at night the deer feed in the buckthorn thickets³⁹. It is worth watching the year round in the purlieus of the long-leafed pines. One month or another you set sight or trail of most roving mountain dwellers⁴⁰ as they follow the limit of forbidding snows, and more bloom than you can properly appreciate.
 
Whatever goes up or comes down the streets of the mountains, water has the right of way; it takes the lowest ground and the shortest passage. Where the rifts are narrow, and some of the Sierra canons are not a stone's throw from wall to wall, the best trail for foot or horse winds considerably⁴¹ above the watercourses; but in a country of cone-bearers there is usually a good strip of swardy sod along the canon floor. Pine woods, the short-leafed Balfour and Murryana of the high Sierras, are sombre, rooted in the litter of a thousand years, hushed, and corrective to the spirit. The trail passes insensibly into them from the black pines and a thin belt of firs. You look back as you rise, and strain for glimpses of the tawny²¹ valley, blue glints of the Bitter Lake, and tender cloud films on the farther ranges. For such pictures the pine branches make a noble frame. Presently they close in wholly; they draw mysteriously near, covering your tracks, giving up the trail indifferently, or with a secret grudge⁴². You get a kind of impatience⁴³ with their locked ranks, until you come out lastly on some high, windy dome¹⁷ and see what they are about. They troop thickly up the open ways, river banks, and brook⁴⁴ borders; up open swales of dribbling⁴⁵ springs; swarm⁴⁶ over old moraines; circle the peaty swamps and part and meet about clean still lakes; scale the stony gullies; tormented⁴⁷, bowed, persisting to the door of the storm chambers⁴⁸, tall priests to pray for rain. The spring winds lift clouds of pollen⁴⁹ dust, finer than frankincense, and trail it out over high altars, staining the snow.
 
No doubt they understand this work better than we; in fact they know no other. "Come," say the churches of the valleys, after a season of dry years, "let us pray for rain." They would do better to plant more trees.
 
It is a pity we have let the gift of lyric⁵⁰ improvisation⁵¹ die out. Sitting islanded on some gray peak above the encompassing⁵² wood, the soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad of the pines. They have no voice but the wind, and no sound of them rises up to the high places. But the waters, the evidences of their power, that go down the steep and stony ways, the outlets^{53............}