The few Indians fled from their huts to the middle of the Valley,
fearing that angry spirits were trying to kill them; and, as I afterward
learned, most of the Yosemite tribe, who were spending the winter at
their village on Bull Creek forty miles away, were so terrified that
they ran into the river and washed themselves,--getting themselves clean
enough to say their prayers, I suppose, or to die. I asked Dick, one of
the Indians with whom I was acquainted, "What made the ground shake and
jump so much?" He only shook his head and said, "No good. No good," and
looked appealingly to me to give him hope that his life was to be
spared.
In the morning I found the few white settlers assembled in front of
the old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and meditating flight to the
lowlands, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. Shortly after
sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was
followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe
as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big
pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling
effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on
their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a
somewhat speculative thinker with whom I had often conversed, was a firm
believer in the cataclysmic origin of the Valley; and I now jokingly
remarked that his wild tumble-down-and-engulfment hypothesis might soon
be proved, since these underground rumblings and shakings might be the
forerunners of another Yosemite-making cataclysm, which would perhaps
double the depth of the Valley by swallowing the floor, leaving the ends
of the roads and trails dangling three or four thousand feet in the air.
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