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Steep Trails-Part35_John Muir(1838-1914)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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in a mesquite grove. This trail, built by brave Hance, begins on the

highest part of the rim, eight thousand feet above the sea, a thousand



feet higher than the head of Bright Angel Trail, and the descent is a

little over six thousand feet, through a wonderful variety of climate



and life. Often late in the fall, when frosty winds are blowing and

snow is flying at one end of the trail, tender plants are blooming in



balmy summer weather at the other. The trip down and up can be made

afoot easily in a day. In this way one is free to observe the scenery



and vegetation, instead of merely clinging to his animal and watching

its steps. But all who have time should go prepared to camp awhile on



the riverbank, to rest and learn something about the plants and

animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In cool, shady



amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white

silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall



snowy mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam,

ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf



oak, and other small shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses

and sun-beaten crags are sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave,



etc. Where springs gush from the rocks there are willow thickets,

grassy flats, and bright, flowery gardens, and in the hottest recesses



the delicate abronia, mesquite, woody compositae, and arborescent

cactuses.



The most striking and characteristic part of this widely varied

vegetation are the cactaceae--strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants



with beautiful flowers and fruit, in every way able and admirable.

While grimly defending themselves with innumerable barbed spears, they



offer both food and drink to man and beast. Their juicy globes and

disks and fluted cylindrical columns are almost the only desert wells



that never go dry, and they always seem to rejoice the more and grow

plumper and juicier the hotter the sunshine and sand. Some are



spherical, like rolled-up porcupines, crouching in rock-hollows

beneath a mist of gray lances, unmoved by the wildest winds. Others,



standing as erect as bushes and trees or tall branchless pillars

crowned with magnificent flowers, their prickly armor sparkling, look



boldly abroad over the glaring desert, making the strangest forests

ever seen or dreamed of. Cereus giganteus, the grim chief of the



desert tribe, is often thirty or forty feet high in southern Arizona.

Several species of tree yuccas in the same desert, laden in early



spring with superb white lilies, form forests hardly less wonderful,

though here they grow singly or in small lonely groves. The low,



almost stemless Yucca baccata, with beautiful lily flowers and sweet

banana-like fruit, prized by the Indians, is common along the canyon



rim, growing on lean, rocky soil beneath mountain mahogany, nut pines,

and junipers, beside dense flowery mats of Spiraea caespitosa and the



beautiful pinnate-leaved Spiraea millefolia. The nut pine (Pinus

edulis) scattered along the upper slopes and roofs of the canyon



buildings, is the principal tree of the strange dwarf Coconino Forest.

It is a picturesque stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high,



usually with dead, lichened limbs thrust through its rounded head, and

grows on crags and fissured rock tables, braving heat and frost, snow



and drought, and continuing patiently, faithfullyfruitful for

centuries. Indians and insects and almost every desert bird and beast



come to it to be fed.

To civilized people from corn and cattle and wheat-field countries the



canyon at first sight seems as uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse,

utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless it is the home of the



multitude of our fellow-mortals, men as well as animals and plants.

Centuries ago it was inhabited by tribes of Indians, who, long before



Columbus saw America, built thousands of stone houses in its crags,

and large ones, some of them several stories high, with hundreds of






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