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mountain being in many places so boggy that our mules sunk to their bellies in the mire. We reached the upper end of the lake at four o'clock, and encamped on the left of the trail, in a small grassy opening surrounded by tall and dense timber. The forest in the narrow but fertile bottom of the lake, and on the sides of the mountains, where there is any soil for its sustenance, is dense, and the trees are of immense size. A brilliantly green and highly ornamental moss covers the limbs of many of the trees. The rock composing the mountains here, is chiefly granite.
Just beyond us, and overlooking the gap where we expect to-morrow to pass the crest of the Sierra Nevada, is a high mountain with a natural fortification upon its extreme summit, which but for its cyclopean magnitude, the wild and desolate country in which it is situated, and its unapproachable height, the observer would at once say was the work of human hands, so apparently regular and perfect is the construction of its walls, turrets, and bastions.
While travelling along the side of the mountain near the shore of the lake, we found a most delicious variety of the raspberry, ripe and in full perfection. Its flavor is, I think, fully equal, if not superior to any raspberry I have before tasted. Were it cultivated in our gardens, I cannot doubt that it would supersede the varieties which they produce, and which we so much prize.
After we encamped, Jacob and McClary ascended one of the rocky peaks of the mountain, the base of which rested near us. When they returned, which they did not until it was nearly dark, they informed us that they saw on the mountain a female grisly bear with cubs. Brown killed a fat deer just before sunset, on the densely-timbered bottom of the lake near our camp, the meat of which in our nearly destitute condition was highly acceptable. Nothing can exceed the almost awful profoundness of the solitude by which we are surrounded. Distance 24 miles.
August 26.—We did not leave our encampment until the sun, rising above the lofty mountains to the east, dispensed its
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