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Vol. 4. No. 1.

are several ways of reaching Mono Lake, but for rugged beauty I believe none can equal the old Mono Trail, which leads up through the Pass and down Bloody Canyon. Just where this trail originaly started is not at present evident. One can strike it from the old Tioga road in the upper Tuolumne meadows. After leaving these broad flower-strewn stretches the trail dashes up some rocky slopes plentifully covered with sturdy lodge-pole pines and gray erratic boulders. These rocks vary in size and have a curious new look as if the glacier had run off and left them only a year or so ago. Much of the exposed rock still retains that polish, or sheen so characteristic of the glaciated areas of the high Sierras. After passing through several little meadows the trail finally works into a broad sulcus between Kuna Crest on the right and Mts. Dana and Gibbs on the left, when it strikes a southeasterly direction and follows the valley in a bee-line for the divide, at Mono Pass. Although the Belding spermophile has from time to time whistled in the little meadows, and the alpine chipmunk frisked about in sun-patches over rocks or among fallen trees, the scarcity of moving life is at once evident. It is now the first of September and perhaps the days have become a trifle cool. Along sunny edges of meadows, robins, Sierra juncos, Audubon warblers, mountain chickadees and creepers are feeding energetically, but the cooler parts of meadows and woods are almost deserted by birds, except perhaps for the occasional tap of a woodpecker or the flash of a passing flicker's wing. Among the dwarf gray-green willows that border small streams white-crowned sparrows are quietly attentive to passing events, and a seductive squeak may possibly induce a pileolated warbler to forsake its shelter and take a momentary swing on some low-bending Orthocarpus stalk.

The long meadow that occupies the hollow leading to Mono Pass rises very gradually, and a small stream runs down it toward the Tuolumne, from out the very throat of the pass itself. Here at the divide, 10599 feet above the ocean, is a little roundish pond that discharges its waters east and west—west into the Pacific and east into Mono Lake. The pass itself is the windiest place under heaven. Stunted and weather beaten, the white-barked pines stand on the very rim of the ridge, their branches painfully distorted. All the Clarke crows appear to go through this pass in great haste. When they attempt to fly westward against the wind they are sometimes obliged to tack, and I noted one lazy fellow who gave it up in disgust and turned tail, all his feathers trying to outstrip him in the race. The gentler grades of the west slope oft end at the summit. Appearances seem