The revival brought about by bread and tea was as
complete as the exhaustion from excessive enjoyment and toil. Then I
crept beneath the pine-tassels to bed. The wind was frosty and the fire
burned low, but my sleep was none the less sound, and the evening
constellations had swept far to the west before I awoke.
After thawing and resting in the morning sunshine, I sauntered
home,--that is, back to the Tuolumne camp,--bearing away toward a
cluster of peaks that hold the fountain snows of one of the north
tributaries of Rush Creek. Here I discovered a group of beautiful
glacier lakes, nestled together in a grand amphitheater. Toward evening,
I crossed the divide separating the Mono waters from those of the
Tuolumne, and entered the glacier basin that now holds the fountain
snows of the stream that forms the upper Tuolumne cascades. This stream
I traced down through its many dells and gorges, meadows and bogs,
reaching the brink of the main Tuolumne at dusk.
A loud whoop for the artists was answered again and again. Their
camp-fire came in sight, and half an hour afterward I was with them.
They seemed unreasonably glad to see me. I had been absent only three
days; nevertheless, though the weather was fine, they had already been
weighing chances as to whether I would ever return, and trying to decide
whether they should wait longer or begin to seek their way back to the
lowlands.
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