Indeed, this is a natural "salt lick," and there are eight or ten piles of rock, behind which Indian and white hunters used to watch for the coming of the game they desired to kill.

Twenty years ago one could get game here practically every day.

The Washoes used to descend the western slope as far as this; the men for deer, the women for acorns, though they had to be on the alert as the Sierra Indians resented their intrusion.
Right and left as we rode on there were great "islands" of granite, fifty to one hundred feet high, masses that either had been hurled from the heights above in some cataclysm, or planed to their present shape by long-forgotten glaciers.

These granite masses alternate with flower and shrub-bestrewed meadows that once were glacial lakes.
At times we found ourselves in a dense forest where the trees were ancient monarchs, whose solitudes had never been disturbed by stroke of ax, or grate of saw.

Clumps of dogwood and chaparral of a dozen kinds confuse the tyro, and he loses all sense of direction.