Shortly after sunrise one fresh morning we made a point of putting the packs on very securely, and, getting into our saddles, rode out toward the Sierras.
The group of farms surrounding Visalia is gathered within a belt through which several natural, and many more artificial, channels of the Kaweah flow. Groves of large, dark-foliaged oaks follow this irrigated zone; the roads, nearly always in shadow, are flanked by small ranch-houses, fenced in with rank jungles of weeds and rows of decrepit pickets.
There is about these fresh ruins, these specimens of modern decay, an air of social decomposition not pleasant to perceive. Freshly built houses, still untinted by time, left in rickety disorder, half-finished windows, gates broken down or unhinged, and a kind of sullen neglect staring everywhere. What more can I say of the people than that they are chiefly immigrants who subsist upon pork?
Rare exceptions of comfort and thrift shine out sometimes, with neat dooryards, well-repaired dwellings, and civilized-looking children. In these I never saw the mother of the family sitting cross-legged, smoking a corncob pipe, nor the father loafing about with a fiddle or shot-gun.
Our backs were now turned to this farm-belt, the road leading us out upon the open plain in our first full sight of the Sierras.
Grand and cool swelled up the forest; sharp and rugged rose the wave of white peaks, their vast fields of snow rolling over the summit in broad, shining masses.
Sunshine, exuberant vegetation, brilliant plant life, occupied our attention hour after hour until the middle of the second day. At last, after climbing a long, weary ascent, we rode out of the dazzling light of the foot-hills into a region of dense woodland, the road winding through avenues of pines so tall that the late evening light only came down to us in scattered rays. Under the deep shade of these trees we found an air pure and gratefully cool. Passing from the glare of the open country into the dusky forest, one seems to enter a door and ride into a vast covered hall. The whole sensation is of being roofed and enclosed. You are never tired of gazing down long vistas, where, in stately groups, stand tall shafts of pine. Columns they are, each with its own characteristic tinting and finish, yet all standing together with the air of relationship and harmony. Feathery branches, trimmed with living green, wave through the upper air, opening broken glimpses of the far blue, and catching on their polished surfaces reflections of the sun. Broad streams of light pour in, gilding purple trunks and falling in bright pathways along an undulating floor. Here and there are wide, open spaces, around which the trees group themselves in majestic ranks.