Fishing, minor side trips, some fish-planting, and all the attractions of outdoor camp life occupied a week in the lower Kern Valley. Then camp was removed ten miles up the canyon to the junction of the Big Arroya and the Kern, whence were engineered ascents of the Red Kaweah and of Whitney, highest of all the mountains in the United States, each reached through side trips of several days' duration, and each opening up a fresh, new field of highland delights. The trails of the Sierra, like trails the world over, are endlessly appealing--only the Sierran footways seem somehow richer in variety than others known to me. The entire mountain world unfolds from the shifting vantage points of these ribbons, threading its most sacred temples, clear and strong through the valleys, distinguishable only by the presence of many blazes upon the tree trunks where pine needles plot their obliteration, zigzagging dizzily up steep slopes, crossing rivers on perilous logs or buried knee-deep beneath the rushing waters of the ford, skirting sky-reflecting lakes, hiding beneath summer snowbanks, or traversing waste highlands, marked only by the cairns that lift their welcome heads against the sky. Underfoot there is the needle carpet, springy ground, shoe-cutting rocks, or deep-trodden dust, where the wayfarer comes to the journey's end a monument of ghostly gray. Overhead is always the tender blue of the summer California sky, with here and there a snowy cloud, for contrast's sake. Most impressive is the trail that clambers among the snow-clad heights, where the chilling air of the peaks makes the blood run fast and the heart rejoice; its beauty most appreciable where it follows brawling brooks and shadowed valleys, or meanders among woods, pillared with great trees and roofed with swaying boughs, ever and anon emerging into tiny, exquisite glades. Such is the Sierra trail, each mile a thing of individual charm and happy memory.