PREFACE
I confess to a great liking for the Indian fashion
of name-giving: every
man known by that phrase which best expresses him
to whoso names him.
Thus he may be Mighty-Hunter, or Man-Afraid-of-a-Bear,
according as he
is called by friend or enemy, and Scar-Face to those
who knew him by the
eye’s grasp only. No other fashion, I think,
sets so well with the
various natures that inhabit in us, and if you agree
with me you will
understand why so few names are written here as they
appear in the
geography. For if I love a lake known by the
name of the man who
discovered it, which endears itself by reason of the
close-locked pines
it nourishes about its borders, you may look in my
account to find it so
described. But if the Indians have been there
before me, you shall have
their name, which is always beautifully fit and does
not originate in
the poor human desire for perpetuity.
Nevertheless there are certain peaks, cañons, and
clear meadow spaces
which are above all compassing of words, and have
a certain fame as of
the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names.
Guided by these you
may reach my country and find or not find, according
as it lieth in you,
much that is set down here. And more. The
earth is no wanton to give up
all her best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate
intimacy for
each. But if you do not find it all as I write,
think me not less
dependable nor yourself less clever. There is
a sort of pretense allowed
in matters of the heart, as one should say by way
of illustration, “I
know a man who…,” and so give up his dearest
experience without
betrayal. And I am in no mind to direct you to
delectable places toward
which you will hold yourself less tenderly than I.
So by this fashion of
naming I keep faith with the land and annex to my
own estate a very
great territory to which none has a surer title.
The country where you may have sight and touch of
that which is written
lies between the high Sierras south from Yosemite—east
and south over a
very great assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death
Valley, and on
illimitably into the Mojave Desert. You may come
into the borders of it
from the south by a stage journey that has the effect
of involving a
great lapse of time, or from the north by rail, dropping
out of the
overland route at Reno. The best of all ways
is over the Sierra passes
by pack and trail, seeing and believing. But
the real heart and core of
the country are not to be come at in a month’s
vacation. One must summer
and winter with the land and wait its occasions.
Pine woods that take
two and three seasons to the ripening of cones, roots
that lie by in the
sand seven years awaiting a growing rain, firs that
grow fifty years
before flowering,—these do not scrape acquaintance.
But if ever you
come beyond the borders as far as the town that lies
in a hill dimple at
the foot of Kearsarge, never leave it until you have
knocked at the door
of the brown house under the willow-tree at the end
of the village
street, and there you shall have such news of the
land, of its trails
and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can
give to another.
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Publishers feel that they have been peculiarly
fortunate in securing
Mr. E. Boyd Smith as the illustrator and interpreter
of Mrs. Austin’s
charming sketches of the “Land of Little Rain.”
His familiarity with the
region and his rare artistic skill have enabled him
to give the very
atmosphere of the desert, and graphically to portray
its life, animal
and human. This will be felt not only in the
full-page compositions, but
in the delightful marginal sketches, which are not
less illustrative,
although, from their nature, it is impracticable to
enumerate them in a
formal list.
