To behold this Promised Land proved quite a different thing from
possessing it. Only the _silleros_ of the Andes, our mules, horses, and
selves, can understand how much like a nightmare of endless roof-walking
was the descent down the face of the precipice. A painful and most
circuitous dug-way, where our animals had constantly to stop, lest their
impetus should tumble them headlong, all the way past steeps where the
mere thought of a side-fall was terror, brought us in the twilight to a
green meadow, ringed by woods, on the banks of the Merced.
Here we pitched our first Yo-Semite camp,--calling it "Camp Rosalie,"
after a dear absent friend of mine and Bierstadt's. Removing our packs
and saddles, we dismissed their weary bearers to the deep green meadow,
with no farther qualification to their license than might be found in
ropes seventy feet long fastened to deep-driven pickets. We soon got
together dead wood and pitchy boughs enough to kindle a roaring
fire,--made a kitchen-table by wedging logs between the trunks of a
three-forked tree, and thatching these with smaller sticks,--selected a
cedar-canopied piece of flat sward near the fire for our bed-room, and
as high up as we could reach despoiled our fragrant _baldacchini_ for
the mattresses.
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