Preview
Circa Date
circa 1887
Transcription
39
half past 3 o’clock which caused a second rock avalanche in the same place as the first, that is the back of the Hutchings hotel. [And then fell] & a few 1000 ton blocks from the front of the Liberty Cap. How many hundreds more throughout the other Yosemite valleys & steep walled canons of the range who will ever be able to say. [Every] Comparatively trivial occurrences in human history every day nothings are chronicled & beaten about in type & solemnly carried far & near over the seas & under the seas by the mails & wires [protection & sanction of the Law, but who keeps the records of Nature’s deeds].
The few Indians [in the valley were greatly alarmed &] fled at the first shock from their huts to the middle of the valley fearing the fall of avalanches. Some at their winter village on Bull Creek 40 miles away were so terrified that they ran into the river & washed themselves. Getting themselves clean enough to say their prayers I suppose or to die. I asked Dick on meeting him in the morning what made the ground shake & jump so much last night but he only shook his head & said “no good” “no good” & looked appealingly to me to give him hope his life was to be spared.
The whites of the valley were frightened too, most of
40
them, though with few exceptions they settled quietly back to their employment as soon as the rocks settled.
See pg [page] 55
In the morning about sunrise I found Mr Shephard Perkins, Leidig, Hazeltine & [some] others [with myself were] standing near the bridge opposite Hutchings comparing notes & impressions when another [severe] shock occurred causing a most interesting solemnity to fall on the usually [very] undevout group. (I was so anxious to see what I could learn about it all that as Shephard said “Muir hadn’t sense enough to be afraid & I felt like knocking him down when he began saying it was all so fine.”)
After the first sudden scare caused by the novel motion & tremendous noise it seemed as if Mother Nature were kindly trotting us on her knee
I noticed a pair of robins in an oak near me
When the shock came the branches were so violently shaken that the birds flew out with frightened cries. The pines did not wave much but the quick shocks [thrills] that made the elastic needles flash & quiver [suddenly] in the sunlight were exceedingly interesting & [also] the waving up & down of the branches all around while the trunks stood rigid No one could fail to see that such agitation was indeed strange
I felt that I [was] were getting a [ground] fine new lesson [from] while Nature [she] was trotting [all her children] us on her knee [while giving us a lesson]
Date Occurred
1871-1874
Resource Identifier
MuirReel31 Notebook11 Img023.jpg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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