No life of any sort is visible from here. Farther down toward the coast, over the forested moraines, the condor may be seen leaning against the wind at sunrise. On the edge of the abysmal cañons eagles make their nests and go dropping down the shadowy depths to seek their food from God, but they do not rise to these stark heights. Sometimes a clanging horde of water-fowl, beating up from the Gulf of California overland to the Canadian marshes, will grow bewildered in the face of the great wall-sided cliffs; circling they attempt the forward flight, only to circle and rise anew, until, wing-weary in that thin air, they sink exhausted to the margin of a mountain lake, satisfied at last to thread their way humbly along the creek-beds to open country. The live forces of the High Sierra are the forces of wind and light. One feels the push of tremendous currents flowing between the peaks as among rocky islands. Day by day they may be charted by the cloud fragments floating on them, by the banners of dry snow dust, streaming out like long grass from the island shores. Thundering fleets of cumuli drift up the wind rivers and assault the great domes of Whitney and Oppapago. The light breaks through all the varying cloud strata, and colours them with splendour; the glow of the clouds reflected on the snow is caught by the watchful mountain-lover far down the valleys of Inyo and San Joaquin. This painted hour of sunset is the apotheosis of mountains, but for me it has less of majesty than the morning after deep snows. These come usually early in the season. The air for days will be full of the formless stir, then the range withdraws itself behind a veil which closes from tented peak to peak, and includes sometimes the parallel desert ranges which lie along its eastern coast. Twenty feet will fall in a single session of the white gods behind the veil. Then comes a morning blue and sharp as a spear-thrust. Every tree is like an arrow feathered in green and white. Airy bridges built upon the bending stems shut in the water-courses; the moraines are smooth and soft as the backs of huddled sheep. By night the range shows from the valley as a procession of winged figures holding the snows upon their bosoms. And that, after all, is the business of mountains. The western front of the Sierra Nevada, which receives the full force of the Pacific storms, is rewarded with the stateliest forests. Before those extended snowy mountain arms lie the great Twin Valleys; behind them stretches the illimitable sage-brush country, the backyard of the Sierra. [Illustration: VALLEY OF THE YOSEMITE]