*New Release*

BOUNDLESS - Brielle Shape

✔ Shape for Lelutka Raven EvoX 3.1 (Legacy, Ebody Reborn & Kupra Bodies)

✔ Eyebrows Shape

✔ Style Card w/store locations

Marketplace:

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/BOUNDLESS-Brielle-Shape/2438...

Full view of this lovely picture

see all the series:http://www.cristitudose.com/2012/12/boundless-beauty.html

Elements of the 4th Continental Defense division advance across the Alaskan tundra during Operation Boundless Fury, December 26, 2023. The last major action of the year, Boundless Fury was a large US-UFS counterattack to break the Russian momentum, and was part of Operation Sovereignty, the entire operation to repel the Russians from North America. Boundless Fury was in general a success, although during the climactic assault on the Russian HQ, Allied momentum was shattered by unexpected Chinese reinforcements.

A girl determined to learn how to fly.

Rose Garden, Duluth MN

Hit "L" for "Lake".

searching the infinite sunset pleasure

She wears me out just watching her.

'Apeiron: Furthest Boundless', Nicole Collins, mixed-media sculpture installation

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Koffler Gallery, Artscape Youngplace, Trinity-Bellwoods, Toronto

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kofflerarts.org/exhibitions/2017/09/07/nicole-collins-fur...

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In same building as two Toronto Design Offsite Festival 'TO DO' installations

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SLR Magic 8mm 1:4 rectilinear ultra-wide-angle manual-focus lens

P1200151 - Copy Aov3 EV=+2 Anx2 1400h Q90 0.5k-2k

Vesak Day Ceremony is an event organized annually by Dhammakaya Temple and the Dhammakaya Foundation to commemorate the boundless compassion of the Lord Buddha, teacher to humankind and celestial beings, and to celebrate the three significant events in his life. On this day, one will have the opportunity to offer donation, observe the precepts, practice meditation, and take part in the evening’s beautiful lantern circumambulation to commemorate the Lord Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing into nirvana. Everyone is warmly invited to participate in the Vesak Day Ceremony to be held at the Dhammakaya Temple on Monday, June 4, 2012 (B.E. 2555).read more information at www.dhammakaya.net/en/blog/2012/05/14/vesak/

I liked the sky when I took the shot but I'm not so sure about the composition anymore. Maybe I should have gotten more water and less sky in the picture. The blue tones are very nice though.

www.ArsSilentium.com

bunte Frühlingslandschaft zwischen Klein-Winternheim und Nieder-Olm

彼此都有言語難以解釋的奧祕,即使相擁也不著邊際

Mysteries of the part of Spirit has difficult to feelings

with each other ,even we try to hug

"Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?"

~Gustave Flaubert~ (Madame Bovary)

southern coastline of Gran Canaria

© All rights reserved

Images may not be copied or used in any way without my written permission.

Hello there it's nice to see you again, yes.

See, we have won the Egg and Spoon Race at the Lympics, cough cough we will win the Egg and Spoon race, taps nose. I tell Lunk to stand on all the other eggs, you see. It's all very legal and not cheating.

I had better tell you about the Minx, it was a popular mid-size (although they didn't say it like that, then) saloon car, with 4 doors and a whistling speed-o-meter, a unique feature. And it had wheels, one for each door.

Walk Tall !

Pirates. The worst scum of the galaxy. From raiding to smuggling, this vile scum has plagued the outer rim of the Knavelion system for decades.

The most fearsome of the pirates clans is lead by Junk E Rasmoid, a terrible fellow who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the best cargo entering his galaxy.

The ship encountered a field of gamma radiation that went undetected by the ship's Geiger counter. All seemed well within the mighty freighter, untill the animals struck...

According to Soren Roberts, one does not become a man until he's built a SHIP.

Looks like I graduated from the boys club.

This rather large ship clocks in just over the official SHIP mark at 106 Studs long, 34 studs wide, and 32 studs tall.

Building it was quite the experience, I must say.

I'd say I've got about twenty hours into the build over the course of five days.

It's got a fully detailed interior, and lots of cute animals doing devious things.

Now I need to go build a stand for it!

: D

my wish for you

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

new blog post.

Work by students on the MA Jewellery programme at the School of Jewellery.

Taken with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 lens on Panasonic GH2.

For those who like long walks on the beach . . .

This image was taken with a Pentax 6 X 7 medium format film camera with a Super-Multi-Coated Takumar/6X7 1:4.5/75mm lens using Kodak Ektar 100 film, scanned by an Epson Perfection V600 and digitally rendered with Photoshop.

Boundless information sharing

Another abstract painting I really like. As some of you have read at my profile or remember me writing about, I lived in S. TX. 3 miles from the Mexican border for nearly 10 years. The ecosystem is very fragile there and trying to put up walls will have a damaging effect on the natural world left after all the disputes.

Boundless curiosity

the spirit to explore.

Two twinkling eyes, a smiling face

and energy galore!

cHix Boundless Avid Set. Includes Custom Shorts, Matching Top, Collar, Cuffs and Bow. Complimentary Necklace and Earrings also included. Applier Support Includes Maitreya, Belleza, Slink, Omega and TMP (The Shops)

Available Now at the Secondlife Marketplace marketplace.secondlife.com/p/cHix-Boundless-Avid-Set/1124... or Visit Us in world @ maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Helgrind/95/65/22

From: boundless.uoregon.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/arch...(visual%20works)%22

"Portland's Municipal A Self- Guided Tour

The Portland Water Bureau strives to deliver the highest quality drinking water and service to the Portland community while also being conscientious stewards of the city's natural, fiscal and structural resources. For more information about the Portland Water Bureau, visit: www. portlandonline. com/ water • 503- 823- 7770 For information about Portland's public art, please contact the Regional Arts & Culture Council: www. racc. org • 503- 823- 5111 For more information on Portland's municipal fountains, visit: www. portlandonline. com/ water/ fountains Efficiency Most of Portland's decorative fountains recirculate water to minimize water use and run- off. The bureau has installed meters to gauge water use and electrical consumption. Health and Safety The health and safety of Portland's fountains, especially its interactive fountains, is a top priority for the Portland Water Bureau. The bureau cleans fountains regularly, monitors operations and chlorinates the interactive fountains to the level of a swimming pool.

P o r t l and' s M u n i c i pa l F o u n ta i n s

The Portland Water Bureau has proudly maintained Portland's municipal decorative fountains since 1988. The Water Bureau maintains beautiful fountains throughout the Portland area and the largest concentration of them lies within the downtown area. Take this opportunity to discover and explore downtown Portland and her treasure chest of unique artwork — Portland's fountains. Unlock their secrets and ponder their history as you wind your way through this bustling area of the city on a 2.6- mile, self- guided tour. Maintenance Maintaining these fountains is no small feat.

The Portland Water Bureau employs one full- time "Fountain Man" who spends his days ensuring that Portland's fountains are in working order, safe for public enjoyment and running efficiently. The bureau turns the fountains off for the cold weather months to prevent water from blowing or freezing on surfaces. This "down time" also provides an opportunity for maintenance and repair projects.

Portland's Interactive Fountains:

• Salmon Street Springs Fountain

Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park

• McCoy Fountain

N. Trenton Street & Newman Avenue

• Holladay Park Fountain

NE 11th Avenue & Multnomah Street

• Jamison Square Fountain

810 NW 11th Avenue

Fountain enthusiasts should be aware that the water in these fountains is not suitable for drinking. Also, please use caution when walking near pools of water or on slippery surfaces. Aesthetics The Portland Water Bureau works with the Regional Arts & Culture Council to maintain aesthetics at each fountain. Sculptures undergo restoration when needed, in order to present the art as originally intended. For more information on Portland's municipal fountains visit www. portlandonline. com/ water/ fountains

Other fountains maintained by the Portland Water Bureau:

• A Fountain for a Rose (O' Bryant Square Fountain) SW Park Avenue & Washington Street

• Holladay Park Fountain NE 11th Avenue & Multnomah Street

• The Rose Petal SE 106th Avenue & Stark Street

• McCoy Fountain N. Trenton Street & Newman Avenue

The City of Portland will make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. Please notify us no less than five ( 5) business days prior to the event by phone at 503- 823- 7404, by the city's TTY at 503- 823- 6868, or by the Oregon Relay Service at 1- 800- 735- 2900. Printed on recycled paper 03/ 2009 Portland Water Bureau 1120 SW 5th Avenue, Room 600 Portland, OR 97204- 1926 Phone: 503- 823- 7404 Customer Service: 503- 823- 7770 Web site: portlandonline. com/ water Randy Leonard, Commissioner David G. Shaff, Administrator Fountains Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain Dreamer Fountain Salmon Street Springs Fountain Shemanski Fountain or " Rebecca at the Well" Lovejoy Fountain Animals in Pools Fountains Jamison Square Fountain The Jamison Square Fountain is the centerpiece of Northwest Portland's Jamison Square. Named in honor of William Jamison, an early advocate and catalyst for the development of the Pearl District, the fountain's wading pool offers cooling relief on hot summer days. Water cascades from stone joints into shallow pools where it ebbs and flows like the tide. Washington Stark Oak Pine Alder Morrison Yamhill Taylor Salmon Main Madison Jefferson Columbia Mill Harrison College Hall 9th Park Broadway 6th 5th 4th 3rd 2nd 1st SW Naito Parkway Ash Clay 10th 11th Montgomery Market Jackson Ankeny Lincoln 12th Burnside Walk up the stairs to reach Burnside Burnside Bridge Morrison Bridge Hawthorne Bridge Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park Willamette River 8 7 6 5 4 Streetcar or MAX stop Walking Tour Streetcar or MAX Line 12 10 1 2 2 3 11 9 LOOK BUT DON'T DRINK The water in the decorative fountains is not for drinking. Please use designated crosswalks when possible. Total Tour Length: 2.6 miles Total Tour Time: 2 hours Por t l and Fou n ta i n s Wa l k i n g To u r 1. Pioneer Courthouse Square Fountain SW Broadway Avenue & Yamhill Street 1983 • Will Martin In 1849, Elijah Hill bought this block of downtown Portland for $ 24 and a pair of boots. The site of Portland's first schoolhouse, Pioneer Courthouse Square is now the most visited attraction in Portland. The fountain, which features imported tile, is a major part of Portland's " living room." Look for designer Will Martin's bronze hat at the top of the fountain. 2. Animals in Pools Fountains SW Yamhill & Morrison streets between 5th & 6th avenues 1986 • Georgia Gerber • bronze, concrete Eleven " pools" feature sculptures of animals native to Oregon. Sea lions, beavers, bears, river otters, ducks and deer line Morrison and Yamhill streets. Sculptor Georgia Gerber wanted to offer " a sense of the wild in the midst of a busy city." In 1991, one of the beloved bear cubs was stolen, but public outcry led to an anonymous tip that the cub was hiding in the bushes in neighboring Washington County. 3. Shemanski Fountain ( Rebecca at the Well) Park Blocks between SW Salmon & Main streets 1926 • Oliver Barrett ( stone) and Carl Linde ( bronze) Joseph Shemanski, the fountain's namesake, was a Polish immigrant who began his career selling clocks on an installment plan; he eventually owned 34 Pacific Coast stores of the Eastern Outfitting Company. Shemanski commissioned this fountain as a gesture of appreciation for the people of Portland who had so warmly welcomed him. His compassion for animals inspired the three pet- level drinking fountains. There are also three human- level fountains. Two years after the initial fountain was erected, Shemanski commissioned the sculpture of Rebecca at the Well, which reflects the biblical tale of Abraham's discovery of a bride for Isaac when he saw Rebecca drawing water for camels. Abraham chose Rebecca for Issac because of her kindness and service. 4. Chimney Fountain North of SW Lincoln Street between 3rd & 4th avenues 1968 • brick The southernmost of downtown fountains, this small structure was erected as part of the South Auditorium Project, the Portland Development Commission's first urban renewal project. The Chimney Fountain gives the illusion that water is flowing between the bricks, as smoke might seep through a chimney. 5. Lovejoy Fountain SW 3rd Avenue, between Lincoln & Harrison streets 1968 • Lawrence Halprin • concrete, brick In an 1843 contest with Francis Pettygrove, Asa Lovejoy, this fountain's namesake, lost two out of three coin tosses and thus the right to name our city after his hometown of Boston. Lovejoy and Pettygrove flipped the coin a second time to determine which of two neighboring parks would be named Lovejoy and which would be named Pettygrove. This beautiful fountain was built in Lovejoy's park and took on his name. With conservation in mind, the Portland Water Bureau fitted the Lovejoy Fountain with a more efficient water pump in 2008. Before installation of the new pump, the fountain took 12 hours to fill. 6. Dreamer Fountain SW 3rd Avenue between Market & Harrison streets 1979 Manuel Izquierdo • Muntz bronze Located in Pettygrove Park, Manuel Izquierdo's design of a reclining woman is made from surplus navy bronze that he bought and cleaned. Izquierdo said, " The Dreamer speaks of hope, of beauty and serenity, of love, and for a better life in our midst." Izquierdo filled the sculpture with foam so that falling rain would make a gentle sound like a kettledrum instead of ringing hollow. Izquierdo is professor emeritus at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. 7. Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain SW 3rd & 4th avenues between Market & Clay streets 1971 • Angela Danadjieva Designed to mimic the majestic waterfalls of Oregon's Cascade Mountains, the Ira Keller Fountain is truly one of Portland's best known landmarks. Formerly named, simply, Forecourt Fountain, it was renamed in 1978 in honor of the first chairman of the Portland Development Commission, Ira Keller, who had a major influence on the rehabilitation of the area. Residents and visitors alike flock to this series of waterfalls and pools which occupy nearly a full acre in downtown Portland's busiest business district. New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable declared this " one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance." 8. Elk Fountain SW Main between 3rd & 4th avenues 1900 • Roland Perry ( bronze) and H. G. Wright ( stone) Inspired by the Skidmore Fountain, former mayor David Thompson, president of the Oregon Humane Society, donated the money for this fountain as a trough for horses and dogs, and as a reminder of the elk that once lived in the West Hills and used the neighborhood as a feeding ground. Shortly after the statue was erected, a local artist offered to wire the antlers with electric light bulbs for $ 30. The offer was declined. 9. Salmon Street Springs Fountain SW Salmon Street at Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park 1978 • Robert Perron • concrete The Salmon Street Springs Fountain is one of Portland's most iconic fountains, majestically spouting water in an array of designs and speeds. A computer changes the pattern of the water display every 20 minutes. At full capacity the fountain recycles 4,924 gallons of water per minute through as many as 137 jets at one time. Taking its name from the winner of a city- wide naming contest, the fountain has become one of Portland's most popular summer hangouts. A large gathering at this fountain's 20- Year Anniversary Celebration in spring 2008, proved that Salmon Street Springs is more popular than ever. Citizens turned out en masse to celebrate its presence, despite rainy conditions and cool temperatures. 10. Skidmore Fountain SW 1st Avenue between W. Burnside & Ankeny streets 1888 • Olin Warner • bronze, granite This fountain, Portland's oldest commissioned public art, stands at what was once the city center. Druggist Stephen Skidmore left $ 5,000 in his will so that " horses, men, and dogs" could have a cold drink. The fountain was sculpted by Olin Warner who modeled the face of his wife on one of the two caryatids. New York critics lamented that the sculpture was in Portland and that it looked down " upon buggies and buck- boards, and shirt- sleeves and slouch hats in Oregon instead of decorating the Central Park." Skidmore Fountain is inscribed with the quote, " Good citizens are the riches of a city" a line from the dedicatory speech by C. E. S. Wood, an attorney and member of the Fountain Committee. For the dedication, brewer Henry Weinhard offered to pipe beer through the fountain, but the chairman of the Fountain Committee declined. For nearly two decades, people drank water from tin cups that hung from the lion's heads on the fountain. 12. Lee Kelly's Fountain SW 6th Avenue & Pine Street 1977 • Lee Kelly • stainless steel Oregon artist Lee Kelly won an international competition to design this sculpture. Kelly has designed several other sculptures in Portland and throughout the Pacific Northwest. In this work, water flows over several 20- foot- tall steel structures. In conjunction with the Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Water Bureau helped to restore Kelly's fountain in 2004. The fountain had become run- down over the years. Opt i o n a l Tour E x t e n s i o n : 13. Jamison Square Fountain 810 NW 11th Avenue ( Jamison Square) • 2002 If you're feeling extra energetic, head over to Jamison Square Fountain. Just across West Burnside and into the Pearl District, Jamison has quickly become one of the city's most popular hot- weather hot spots. Poised as the centerpiece of Jamison Square, the fountain's wading pool offers cool relief to kids, dogs and adults all summer long. It was named in honor of William Jamison, an early advocate of Pearl District development. Somewhat like Oregon's coast, water cascades into shallow pools where it ebbs and flows like the tide. 11. Car Wash Fountain SW 5th Avenue & Ankeny Street 1977 • Carter, Hull, Nishita, McCulley & Baxter • steel This uniquely shaped fountain never washed cars, but the name seems appropriate given its similarity to a car wash. As a precaution for passing pedestrians, a wind gauge shuts off the pumps if the wind speed exceeds 2 miles per hour. For more information on Portland's municipal fountains visit: www. portlandonline. com/ water/ fountains"

Gear-Nikon D5100 18-55mm Vr

At the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California.

P8310028

CHAPTER V of My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir (1911, public domain text)

[Pg 115]

THE YOSEMITE

July 15. Followed the Mono Trail up the eastern rim of the basin nearly to its summit, then turned off southward to a small shallow valley that extends to the edge of the Yosemite, which we reached about noon, and encamped. After luncheon I made haste to high ground, and from the top of the ridge on the west side of Indian Cañon gained the noblest view of the summit peaks I have ever yet enjoyed. Nearly all the upper basin of the Merced was displayed, with its sublime domes and cañons, dark upsweeping forests, and glorious array of white peaks deep in the sky, every feature glowing, radiating beauty that pours into our flesh and bones like heat rays from fire. Sunshine over all; no breath of wind to stir the brooding calm. Never before had I seen so glorious a landscape, so boundless an affluence of sublime mountain beauty. The most extravagant description I might give of this view to any one who has not seen similar landscapes with his own eyes would not so much as hint its grandeur and the spiritual glow that covered it. I shouted and gestic[Pg 116]ulated in a wild burst of ecstasy, much to the astonishment of St. Bernard Carlo, who came running up to me, manifesting in his intelligent eyes a puzzled concern that was very ludicrous, which had the effect of bringing me to my senses. A brown bear, too, it would seem, had been a spectator of the show I had made of myself, for I had gone but a few yards when I started one from a thicket of brush. He evidently considered me dangerous, for he ran away very fast, tumbling over the tops of the tangled manzanita bushes in his haste. Carlo drew back, with his ears depressed as if afraid, and kept looking me in the face, as if expecting me to pursue and shoot, for he had seen many a bear battle in his day.

Following the ridge, which made a gradual descent to the south, I came at length to the brow of that massive cliff that stands between Indian Cañon and Yosemite Falls, and here the far-famed valley came suddenly into view throughout almost its whole extent. The noble walls—sculptured into endless variety of domes and gables, spires and battlements and plain mural precipices—all a-tremble with the thunder tones of the falling water. The level bottom seemed to be dressed like a garden—sunny meadows here and there, and groves of pine and oak; the river of Mercy sweeping in[Pg 117] majesty through the midst of them and flashing back the sunbeams. The great Tissiack, or Half-Dome, rising at the upper end of the valley to a height of nearly a mile, is nobly proportioned and life-like, the most impressive of all the rocks, holding the eye in devout admiration, calling it back again and again from falls or meadows, or even the mountains beyond,—marvelous cliffs, marvelous in sheer dizzy depth and sculpture, types of endurance. Thousands of years have they stood in the sky exposed to rain, snow, frost, earthquake and avalanche, yet they still wear the bloom of youth.

I rambled along the valley rim to the westward; most of it is rounded off on the very brink, so that it is not easy to find places where one may look clear down the face of the wall to the bottom. When such places were found, and I had cautiously set my feet and drawn my body erect, I could not help fearing a little that the rock might split off and let me down, and what a down!—more than three thousand feet. Still my limbs did not tremble, nor did I feel the least uncertainty as to the reliance to be placed on them. My only fear was that a flake of the granite, which in some places showed joints more or less open and running parallel with the face of the cliff, might give way. After[Pg 118] withdrawing from such places, excited with the view I had got, I would say to myself, "Now don't go out on the verge again." But in the face of Yosemite scenery cautious remonstrance is vain; under its spell one's body seems to go where it likes with a will over which we seem to have scarce any control.

After a mile or so of this memorable cliff work I approached Yosemite Creek, admiring its easy, graceful, confident gestures as it comes bravely forward in its narrow channel, singing the last of its mountain songs on its way to its fate—a few rods more over the shining granite, then down half a mile in showy foam to another world, to be lost in the Merced, where climate, vegetation, inhabitants, all are different. Emerging from its last gorge, it glides in wide lace-like rapids down a smooth incline into a pool where it seems to rest and compose its gray, agitated waters before taking the grand plunge, then slowly slipping over the lip of the pool basin, it descends another glossy slope with rapidly accelerated speed to the brink of the tremendous cliff, and with sublime, fateful confidence springs out free in the air.

I took off my shoes and stockings and worked my way cautiously down alongside the rushing flood, keeping my feet and hands pressed firmly on the polished rock. The booming, roaring[Pg 119] water, rushing past close to my head, was very exciting. I had expected that the sloping apron would terminate with the perpendicular wall of the valley, and that from the foot of it, where it is less steeply inclined, I should be able to lean far enough out to see the forms and behavior of the fall all the way down to the bottom. But I found that there was yet another small brow over which I could not see, and which appeared to be too steep for mortal feet. Scanning it keenly, I discovered a narrow shelf about three inches wide on the very brink, just wide enough for a rest for one's heels. But there seemed to be no way of reaching it over so steep a brow. At length, after careful scrutiny of the surface, I found an irregular edge of a flake of the rock some distance back from the margin of the torrent. If I was to get down to the brink at all that rough edge, which might offer slight finger-holds, was the only way. But the slope beside it looked dangerously smooth and steep, and the swift roaring flood beneath, overhead, and beside me was very nerve-trying. I therefore concluded not to venture farther, but did nevertheless. Tufts of artemisia were growing in clefts of the rock near by, and I filled my mouth with the bitter leaves, hoping they might help to prevent giddiness. Then, with a caution not known in ordinary cir[Pg 120]cumstances, I crept down safely to the little ledge, got my heels well planted on it, then shuffled in a horizontal direction twenty or thirty feet until close to the outplunging current, which, by the time it had descended thus far, was already white. Here I obtained a perfectly free view down into the heart of the snowy, chanting throng of comet-like streamers, into which the body of the fall soon separates.

While perched on that narrow niche I was not distinctly conscious of danger. The tremendous grandeur of the fall in form and sound and motion, acting at close range, smothered the sense of fear, and in such places one's body takes keen care for safety on its own account. How long I remained down there, or how I returned, I can hardly tell. Anyhow I had a glorious time, and got back to camp about dark, enjoying triumphant exhilaration soon followed by dull weariness. Hereafter I'll try to keep from such extravagant, nerve-straining places. Yet such a day is well worth venturing for. My first view of the High Sierra, first view looking down into Yosemite, the death song of Yosemite Creek, and its flight over the vast cliff, each one of these is of itself enough for a great life-long landscape fortune—a most memorable day of days—enjoyment enough to kill if that were possible.[Pg 121]

July 16. My enjoyments yesterday afternoon, especially at the head of the fall, were too great for good sleep. Kept starting up last night in a nervous tremor, half awake, fancying that the foundation of the mountain we were camped on had given way and was falling into Yosemite Valley. In vain I roused myself to make a new beginning for sound sleep. The nerve strain had been too great, and again and again I dreamed I was rushing through the air above a glorious avalanche of water and rocks. One time, springing to my feet, I said, "This time it is real—all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!"

Left camp soon after sunrise for an all-day ramble eastward. Crossed the head of Indian Basin, forested with Abies magnifica, underbrush mostly Ceanothus cordulatus and manzanita, a mixture not easily trampled over or penetrated, for the ceanothus is thorny and grows in dense snow-pressed masses, and the manzanita has exceedingly crooked, stubborn branches. From the head of the cañon continued on past North Dome into the basin of Dome or Porcupine Creek. Here are many fine meadows imbedded in the woods, gay with Lilium parvum and its companions; the elevation, about eight thousand feet, seems to be best suited for it—saw specimens that[Pg 122] were a foot or two higher than my head. Had more magnificent views of the upper mountains, and of the great South Dome, said to be the grandest rock in the world. Well it may be, since it is of such noble dimensions and sculpture. A wonderfully impressive monument, its lines exquisite in fineness, and though sublime in size, is finished like the finest work of art, and seems to be alive.

July 17. A new camp was made to-day in a magnificent silver fir grove at the head of a small stream that flows into Yosemite by way of Indian Cañon. Here we intend to stay several weeks,—a fine location from which to make excursions about the great valley and its fountains. Glorious days I'll have sketching, pressing plants, studying the wonderful topography and the wild animals, our happy fellow mortals and neighbors. But the vast mountains in the distance, shall I ever know them, shall I be allowed to enter into their midst and dwell with them?

The North and South Domes

The North and South Domes

We were pelted about noon by a short, heavy rainstorm, sublime thunder reverberating among the mountains and cañons,—some strokes near, crashing, ringing in the tense crisp air with startling keenness, while the distant peaks loomed gloriously through the cloud fringes and sheets of rain. Now the[Pg 123] storm is past, and the fresh washed air is full of the essences of the flower gardens and groves. Winter storms in Yosemite must be glorious. May I see them!

Have got my bed made in our new camp,—plushy, sumptuous, and deliciously fragrant, most of it magnifica fir plumes, of course, with a variety of sweet flowers in the pillow. Hope to sleep to-night without tottering nerve-dreams. Watched a deer eating ceanothus leaves and twigs.

July 18. Slept pretty well; the valley walls did not seem to fall, though I still fancied myself at the brink, alongside the white, plunging flood, especially when half asleep. Strange the danger of that adventure should be more troublesome now that I am in the bosom of the peaceful woods, a mile or more from the fall, than it was while I was on the brink of it.

Bears seem to be common here, judging by their tracks. About noon we had another rainstorm with keen startling thunder, the metallic, ringing, clashing, clanging notes gradually fading into low bass rolling and muttering in the distance. For a few minutes the rain came in a grand torrent like a waterfall, then hail; some of the hailstones an inch in diameter, hard, icy, and irregular in form, like those oftentimes seen in Wisconsin. Carlo[Pg 124] watched them with intelligent astonishment as they came pelting and thrashing through the quivering branches of the trees. The cloud scenery sublime. Afternoon calm, sunful, and clear, with delicious freshness and fragrance from the firs and flowers and steaming ground.

July 19. Watching the daybreak and sunrise. The pale rose and purple sky changing softly to daffodil yellow and white, sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks and over the Yosemite domes, making their edges burn; the silver firs in the middle ground catching the glow on their spiry tops, and our camp grove fills and thrills with the glorious light. Everything awakening alert and joyful; the birds begin to stir and innumerable insect people. Deer quietly withdraw into leafy hiding-places in the chaparral; the dew vanishes, flowers spread their petals, every pulse beats high, every life cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to thrill with life. The whole landscape glows like a human face in a glory of enthusiasm, and the blue sky, pale around the horizon, bends peacefully down over all like one vast flower.

About noon, as usual, big bossy cumuli began to grow above the forest, and the rainstorm pouring from them is the most imposing I have yet seen. The silvery zigzag lightning[Pg 125] lances are longer than usual, and the thunder gloriously impressive, keen, crashing, intensely concentrated, speaking with such tremendous energy it would seem that an entire mountain is being shattered at every stroke, but probably only a few trees are being shattered, many of which I have seen on my walks hereabouts strewing the ground. At last the clear ringing strokes are succeeded by deep low tones that grow gradually fainter as they roll afar into the recesses of the echoing mountains, where they seem to be welcomed home. Then another and another peal, or rather crashing, splintering stroke, follows in quick succession, perchance splitting some giant pine or fir from top to bottom into long rails and slivers, and scattering them to all points of the compass. Now comes the rain, with corresponding extravagant grandeur, covering the ground high and low with a sheet of flowing water, a transparent film fitted like a skin upon the rugged anatomy of the landscape, making the rocks glitter and glow, gathering in the ravines, flooding the streams, and making them shout and boom in reply to the thunder.

How interesting to trace the history of a single raindrop! It is not long, geologically speaking, as we have seen, since the first raindrops fell on the newborn leafless Sierra land[Pg 126]scapes. How different the lot of these falling now! Happy the showers that fall on so fair a wilderness,—scarce a single drop can fail to find a beautiful spot,—on the tops of the peaks, on the shining glacier pavements, on the great smooth domes, on forests and gardens and brushy moraines, plashing, glinting, pattering, laving. Some go to the high snowy fountains to swell their well-saved stores; some into the lakes, washing the mountain windows, patting their smooth glassy levels, making dimples and bubbles and spray; some into the waterfalls and cascades, as if eager to join in their dance and song and beat their foam yet finer; good luck and good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers. Some, falling on meadows and bogs, creep silently out of sight to the grass roots, hiding softly as in a nest, slipping, oozing hither, thither, seeking and finding their appointed work. Some, descending through the spires of the woods, sift spray through the shining needles, whispering peace and good cheer to each one of them. Some drops with happy aim glint on the sides of crystals,—quartz, hornblende, garnet, zir[Pg 127]con, tourmaline, feldspar,—patter on grains of gold and heavy way-worn nuggets; some, with blunt plap-plap and low bass drumming, fall on the broad leaves of veratrum, saxifrage, cypripedium. Some happy drops fall straight into the cups of flowers, kissing the lips of lilies. How far they have to go, how many cups to fill, great and small, cells too small to be seen, cups holding half a drop as well as lake basins between the hills, each replenished with equal care, every drop in all the blessed throng a silvery newborn star with lake and river, garden and grove, valley and mountain, all that the landscape holds reflected in its crystal depths, God's messenger, angel of love sent on its way with majesty and pomp and display of power that make man's greatest shows ridiculous.

Now the storm is over, the sky is clear, the last rolling thunder-wave is spent on the peaks, and where are the raindrops now—what has become of all the shining throng? In winged vapor rising some are already hastening back to the sky, some have gone into the plants, creeping through invisible doors into the round rooms of cells, some are locked in crystals of ice, some in rock crystals, some in porous moraines to keep their small springs flowing, some have gone journeying on in the rivers to join the larger raindrop of the ocean.[Pg 128] From form to form, beauty to beauty, ever changing, never resting, all are speeding on with love's enthusiasm, singing with the stars the eternal song of creation.

July 20. Fine calm morning; air tense and clear; not the slightest breeze astir; everything shining, the rocks with wet crystals, the plants with dew, each receiving its portion of irised dewdrops and sunshine like living creatures getting their breakfast, their dew manna coming down from the starry sky like swarms of smaller stars. How wondrous fine are the particles in showers of dew, thousands required for a single drop, growing in the dark as silently as the grass! What pains are taken to keep this wilderness in health,—showers of snow, showers of rain, showers of dew, floods of light, floods of invisible vapor, clouds, winds, all sorts of weather, interaction of plant on plant, animal on animal, etc., beyond thought! How fine Nature's methods! How deeply with beauty is beauty overlaid! the ground covered with crystals, the crystals with mosses and lichens and low-spreading grasses and flowers, these with larger plants leaf over leaf with ever-changing color and form, the broad palms of the firs outspread over these, the azure dome over all like a bell-flower, and star above star.[Pg 129]

Yonder stands the South Dome, its crown high above our camp, though its base is four thousand feet below us; a most noble rock, it seems full of thought, clothed with living light, no sense of dead stone about it, all spiritualized, neither heavy looking nor light, steadfast in serene strength like a god.

Our shepherd is a queer character and hard to place in this wilderness. His bed is a hollow made in red dry-rot punky dust beside a log which forms a portion of the south wall of the corral. Here he lies with his wonderful everlasting clothing on, wrapped in a red blanket, breathing not only the dust of the decayed wood but also that of the corral, as if determined to take ammoniacal snuff all night after chewing tobacco all day. Following the sheep he carries a heavy six-shooter swung from his belt on one side and his luncheon on the other. The ancient cloth in which the meat, fresh from the frying-pan, is tied serves as a filter through which the clear fat and gravy juices drip down on his right hip and leg in clustering stalactites. This oleaginous formation is soon broken up, however, and diffused and rubbed evenly into his scanty apparel, by sitting down, rolling over, crossing his legs while resting on logs, etc., making shirt and trousers water-tight and shiny. His trousers, in parti[Pg 130]cular, have become so adhesive with the mixed fat and resin that pine needles, thin flakes and fibres of bark, hair, mica scales and minute grains of quartz, hornblende, etc., feathers, seed wings, moth and butterfly wings, legs and antennæ of innumerable insects, or even whole insects such as the small beetles, moths and mosquitoes, with flower petals, pollen dust and indeed bits of all plants, animals, and minerals of the region adhere to them and are safely imbedded, so that though far from being a naturalist he collects fragmentary specimens of everything and becomes richer than he knows. His specimens are kept passably fresh, too, by the purity of the air and the resiny bituminous beds into which they are pressed. Man is a microcosm, at least our shepherd is, or rather his trousers. These precious overalls are never taken off, and nobody knows how old they are, though one may guess by their thickness and concentric structure. Instead of wearing thin they wear thick, and in their stratification have no small geological significance.

Besides herding the sheep, Billy is the butcher, while I have agreed to wash the few iron and tin utensils and make the bread. Then, these small duties done, by the time the sun is fairly above the mountain-tops I am[Pg 131] beyond the flock, free to rove and revel in the wilderness all the big immortal days.

Sketching on the North Dome. It commands views of nearly all the valley besides a few of the high mountains. I would fain draw everything in sight—rock, tree, and leaf. But little can I do beyond mere outlines,—marks with meanings like words, readable only to myself,—yet I sharpen my pencils and work on as if others might possibly be benefited. Whether these picture-sheets are to vanish like fallen leaves or go to friends like letters, matters not much; for little can they tell to those who have not themselves seen similar wildness, and like a language have learned it. No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the future. These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God's beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be. Drinking this champagne water is pure pleasure, so is breathing the living air, and every movement of limbs is pleasure, while the whole body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the camp-fire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure-glow not explainable. One's body then seems homogeneous throughout, sound as a crystal.[Pg 132] Perched like a fly on this Yosemite dome, I gaze and sketch and bask, oftentimes settling down into dumb admiration without definite hope of ever learning much, yet with the longing, unresting effort that lies at the door of hope, humbly prostrate before the vast display of God's power, and eager to offer self-denial and renunciation with eternal toil to learn any lesson in the divine manuscript.

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized they are mostly hidden. Sheer precipices three thousand feet high are fringed with tall trees growing close like grass on the brow of a lowland hill, and extending along the feet of these precipices a ribbon of meadow a mile wide and seven or eight long, that seems like a strip a farmer might mow in less than a day. Waterfalls, five hundred to one or two thousand feet high, are so subordinated to the mighty cliffs over which they pour that they seem like wisps of smoke, gentle as floating clouds, though their voices fill the valley and make the rocks tremble. The mountains, too, along the eastern sky, and the domes in front of them, and the succession of smooth rounded waves between, swelling higher, higher, with dark woods in[Pg 133] their hollows, serene in massive exuberant bulk and beauty, tend yet more to hide the grandeur of the Yosemite temple and make it appear as a subdued subordinate feature of the vast harmonious landscape. Thus every attempt to appreciate any one feature is beaten down by the overwhelming influence of all the others. And, as if this were not enough, lo! in the sky arises another mountain range with topography as rugged and substantial-looking as the one beneath it—snowy peaks and domes and shadowy Yosemite valleys—another version of the snowy Sierra, a new creation heralded by a thunder-storm. How fiercely, devoutly wild is Nature in the midst of her beauty-loving tenderness!—painting lilies, watering them, caressing them with gentle hand, going from flower to flower like a gardener while building rock mountains and cloud mountains full of lightning and rain. Gladly we run for shelter beneath an overhanging cliff and examine the reassuring ferns and mosses, gentle love tokens growing in cracks and chinks. Daisies, too, and ivesias, confiding wild children of light, too small to fear. To these one's heart goes home, and the voices of the storm become gentle. Now the sun breaks forth and fragrant steam arises. The birds are out singing on the edges of the[Pg 134] groves. The west is flaming in gold and purple, ready for the ceremony of the sunset, and back I go to camp with my notes and pictures, the best of them printed in my mind as dreams. A fruitful day, without measured beginning or ending. A terrestrial eternity. A gift of good God.

Wrote to my mother and a few friends, mountain hints to each. They seem as near as if within voice-reach or touch. The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends. Now bread and tea, fir bed and good-night to Carlo, a look at the sky lilies, and death sleep until the dawn of another Sierra to-morrow.

July 21. Sketching on the Dome—no rain; clouds at noon about quarter filled the sky, casting shadows with fine effect on the white mountains at the heads of the streams, and a soothing cover over the gardens during the warm hours.

Saw a common house-fly and a grasshopper and a brown bear. The fly and grasshopper paid me a merry visit on the top of the Dome, and I paid a visit to the bear in the middle of a small garden meadow between the Dome and the camp where he was standing alert among the flowers as if willing to be seen to advantage. I had not gone more than half a[Pg 135] mile from camp this morning, when Carlo, who was trotting on a few yards ahead of me, came to a sudden, cautious standstill. Down went tail and ears, and forward went his knowing nose, while he seemed to be saying, "Ha, what's this? A bear, I guess." Then a cautious advance of a few steps, setting his feet down softly like a hunting cat, and questioning the air as to the scent he had caught until all doubt vanished. Then he came back to me, looked me in the face, and with his speaking eyes reported a bear near by; then led on softly, careful, like an experienced hunter, not to make the slightest noise; and frequently looking back as if whispering, "Yes, it's a bear; come and I'll show you." Presently we came to where the sunbeams were streaming through between the purple shafts of the firs, which showed that we were nearing an open spot, and here Carlo came behind me, evidently sure that the bear was very near. So I crept to a low ridge of moraine boulders on the edge of a narrow garden meadow, and in this meadow I felt pretty sure the bear must be. I was anxious to get a good look at the sturdy mountaineer without alarming him; so drawing myself up noiselessly back of one of the largest of the trees I peered past its bulging buttresses, exposing only a part of my head,[Pg 136] and there stood neighbor Bruin within a stone's throw, his hips covered by tall grass and flowers, and his front feet on the trunk of a fir that had fallen out into the meadow, which raised his head so high that he seemed to be standing erect. He had not yet seen me, but was looking and listening attentively, showing that in some way he was aware of our approach. I watched his gestures and tried to make the most of my opportunity to learn what I could about him, fearing he would catch sight of me and run away. For I had been told that this sort of bear, the cinnamon, always ran from his bad brother man, never showing fight unless wounded or in defense of young. He made a telling picture standing alert in the sunny forest garden. How well he played his part, harmonizing in bulk and color and shaggy hair with the trunks of the trees and lush vegetation, as natural a feature as any other in the landscape. After examining at leisure, noting the sharp muzzle thrust inquiringly forward, the long shaggy hair on his broad chest, the stiff, erect ears nearly buried in hair, and the slow, heavy way he moved his head, I thought I should like to see his gait in running, so I made a sudden rush at him, shouting and swinging my hat to frighten him, expecting to see him make[Pg 137] haste to get away. But to my dismay he did not run or show any sign of running. On the contrary, he stood his ground ready to fight and defend himself, lowered his head, thrust it forward, and looked sharply and fiercely at me. Then I suddenly began to fear that upon me would fall the work of running; but I was afraid to run, and therefore, like the bear, held my ground. We stood staring at each other in solemn silence within a dozen yards or thereabouts, while I fervently hoped that the power of the human eye over wild beasts would prove as great as it is said to be. How long our awfully strenuous interview lasted, I don't know; but at length in the slow fullness of time he pulled his huge paws down off the log, and with magnificent deliberation turned and walked leisurely up the meadow, stopping frequently to look back over his shoulder to see whether I was pursuing him, then moving on again, evidently neither fearing me very much nor trusting me. He was probably about five hundred pounds in weight, a broad, rusty bundle of ungovernable wildness, a happy fellow whose lines have fallen in pleasant places. The flowery glade in which I saw him so well, framed like a picture, is one of the best of all I have yet discovered, a conservatory of Nature's precious plant people.[Pg 138] Tall lilies were swinging their bells over that bear's back, with geraniums, larkspurs, columbines, and daisies brushing against his sides. A place for angels, one would say, instead of bears.

In the great cañons Bruin reigns supreme. Happy fellow, whom no famine can reach while one of his thousand kinds of food is spared him. His bread is sure at all seasons, ranged on the mountain shelves like stores in a pantry. From one to the other, up or down he climbs, tasting and enjoying each in turn in different climates, as if he had journeyed thousands of miles to other countries north or south to enjoy their varied productions. I should like to know my hairy brothers better—though after this particular Yosemite bear, my very neighbor, had sauntered out of sight this morning, I reluctantly went back to camp for the Don's rifle to shoot him, if necessary, in defense of the flock. Fortunately I couldn't find him, and after tracking him a mile or two towards Mount Hoffman I bade him Godspeed and gladly returned to my work on the Yosemite Dome.

The house-fly also seemed at home and buzzed about me as I sat sketching, and enjoying my bear interview now it was over. I wonder what draws house-flies so far up the[Pg 139] mountains, heavy gross feeders as they are, sensitive to cold, and fond of domestic ease. How have they been distributed from continent to continent, across seas and deserts and mountain chains, usually so influential in determining boundaries of species both of plants and animals. Beetles and butterflies are sometimes restricted to small areas. Each mountain in a range, and even the different zones of a mountain, may have its own peculiar species. But the house-fly seems to be everywhere. I wonder if any island in mid-ocean is flyless. The bluebottle is abundant in these Yosemite woods, ever ready with his marvelous store of eggs to make all dead flesh fly. Bumblebees are here, and are well fed on boundless stores of nectar and pollen. The honeybee, though abundant in the foothills, has not yet got so high. It is only a few years since the first swarm was brought to California.

TRACK OF SINGING DANCING GRASSHOPPER

TRACK OF SINGING DANCING GRASSHOPPER IN THE AIR OVER NORTH DOME

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don't know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists. I was much interested with the hearty enjoyment of the one that danced and sang for me on the Dome this afternoon. He seemed brimful of glad, hilarious energy, manifested by springing[Pg 140] into the air to a height of twenty or thirty feet, then diving and springing up again and making a sharp musical rattle just as the lowest point in the descent was reached. Up and down a dozen times or so he danced and sang, then alighted to rest, then up and at it again. The curves he described in the air in diving and rattling resembled those made by cords hanging loosely and attached at the same height at the ends, the loops nearly covering each other. Braver, heartier, keener, care-free enjoyment of life I have never seen or heard in any creature, great or small. The life of this comic redlegs, the mountain's merriest child, seems to be made up of pure, condensed gayety. The Douglas squirrel is the only living creature that I can compare him with in exuberant, rollicking, irrepressible jollity. Wonderful that these sublime mountains are so loudly cheered and brightened by a creature so queer. Nature in him seems to be snapping her fingers in the face of all earthly dejection and melancholy with a boyish hip-hip-hurrah. How the sound is made I do not understand. When he was on the ground he made not the slightest noise, nor when he was simply flying from place to place, but only when diving in curves, the motion seeming to be required for the sound; for the more vigorous the diving the more ener[Pg 141]getic the corresponding outbursts of jolly rattling. I tried to observe him closely while he was resting in the intervals of his performances; but he would not allow a near approach, always getting his jumping legs ready to spring for immediate flight, and keeping his eyes on me. A fine sermon the little fellow danced for me on the Dome, a likely place to look for sermons in stones, but not for grasshopper sermons. A large and imposing pulpit for so small a preacher. No danger of weakness in the knees of the world while Nature can spring such a rattle as this. Even the bear did not express for me the mountain's wild health and strength and happiness so tellingly as did this comical little hopper. No cloud of care in his day, no winter of discontent in sight. To him every day is a holiday; and when at length his sun sets, I fancy he will cuddle down on the forest floor and die like the leaves and flowers, and like them leave no unsightly remains calling for burial.

Sundown, and I must to camp. Good-night, friends three,—brown bear, rugged boulder of energy in groves and gardens fair as Eden; restless, fussy fly with gauzy wings stirring the air around all the world; and grasshopper, crisp, electric spark of joy enlivening the massy sublimity of the mountains like the laugh of a[Pg 142] child. Thank you, thank you all three for your quickening company. Heaven guide every wing and leg. Good-night friends three, good-night.

MT. CLARK TOP OF S. DOME MT. STARR KING ABIES MAGNIFICA

MT. CLARK TOP OF S. DOME MT. STARR

KING ABIES MAGNIFICA

July 22. A fine specimen of the black-tailed deer went bounding past camp this morning. A buck with wide spread of antlers, showing admirable vigor and grace. Wonderful the beauty, strength, and graceful movements of animals in wildernesses, cared for by Nature only, when our experience with domestic animals would lead us to fear that all the so-called neglected wild beasts would degenerate. Yet the upshot of Nature's method of breeding and teaching seems to lead to excellence of every sort. Deer, like all wild animals, are as clean as plants. The beauties of their gestures and attitudes, alert or in repose, surprise yet more than their bounding exuberant strength. Every movement and posture is graceful, the very poetry of manners and motion. Mother Nature is too often spoken of as in reality no mother at all. Yet how wisely, sternly, tenderly she loves and looks after her children in all sorts of weather and wildernesses. The more I see of deer the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and for[Pg 143]est encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across cañons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage. Over nearly all the continent the deer find homes. In the Florida savannas and hummocks, in the Canada woods, in the far north, roaming over mossy tundras, swimming lakes and rivers and arms of the sea from island to island washed with waves, or climbing rocky mountains, everywhere healthy and able, adding beauty to every landscape,—a truly admirable creature and great credit to Nature.

Have been sketching a silver fir that stands on a granite ridge a few hundred yards to the eastward of camp—a fine tree with a particular snow-storm story to tell. It is about one hundred feet high, growing on bare rock, thrusting its roots into a weathered joint less than an inch wide, and bulging out to form a base to bear its weight. The storm came from the north while it was young and broke it down nearly to the ground, as is shown by the old, dead, weather-beaten top leaning out from the living trunk built up from a new shoot below the break. The annual rings of the trunk that have overgrown the dead sapling tell the year of the storm. Wonderful that a side branch forming a portion of one of the level collars that encircle the trunk of this species (Abies[Pg 144] magnifica) should bend upward, grow erect, and take the place of the lost axis to form a new tree.

Many others, pines as well as firs, bear testimony to the crushing severity of this particular storm. Trees, some of them fifty to seventy-five feet high, were bent to the ground and buried like grass, whole groves vanishing as if the forest had been cleared away, leaving not a branch or needle visible until the spring thaw. Then the more elastic undamaged saplings rose again, aided by the wind, some reaching a nearly erect attitude, others remaining more or less bent, while those with broken backs endeavored to specialize a side branch below the break and make a leader of it to form a new axis of development. It is as if a man, whose back was broken or nearly so and who was compelled to go bent, should find a branch backbone sprouting straight up from below the break and should gradually develop new arms and shoulders and head, while the old damaged portion of his body died.

Grand white cloud mountains and domes created about noon as usual, ridges and ranges of endless variety, as if Nature dearly loved this sort of work, doing it again and again nearly every day with infinite industry, and producing beauty that never palls. A few zig[Pg 145]zags of lightning, five minutes' shower, then a gradual wilting and clearing.

ILLUSTRATING GROWTH OF NEW PINE

ILLUSTRATING GROWTH OF NEW PINE FROM BRANCH BELOW THE BREAK OF AXIS OF SNOW-CRUSHED TREE

July 23. Another midday cloudland, displaying power and beauty that one never wearies in beholding, but hopelessly unsketchable and untellable. What can poor mortals say about clouds? While a description of their huge glowing domes and ridges, shadowy gulfs and cañons, and feather-edged ravines is being tried, they vanish, leaving no visible ruins. Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains are as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both alike are built up and die, and in God's calendar difference of duration is nothing. We can only dream about them in wondering, worshiping admiration, happier than we dare tell even to friends who see farthest in sympathy, glad to know that not a crystal or vapor particle of them, hard or soft, is lost; that they sink and vanish only to rise again and again in higher and higher beauty. As to our own work, duty, influence, etc., concerning which so much fussy pother is made, it will not fail of its due effect, though, like a lichen on a stone, we keep silent.

July 24. Clouds at noon occupying about half the sky gave half an hour of heavy rain to wash one of the cleanest landscapes in the[Pg 146] world. How well it is washed! The sea is hardly less dusty than the ice-burnished pavements and ridges, domes and cañons, and summit peaks plashed with snow like waves with foam. How fresh the woods are and calm after the last films of clouds have been wiped from the sky! A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. The same may be said of stone temples. Yonder, to the eastward of our camp grove, stands one of Nature's cathedrals, hewn from the living rock, almost conventional in form, about two thousand feet high, nobly adorned with spires and pinnacles, thrilling under floods of sunshine as if alive like a grove-temple, and well named "Cathedral Peak." Even Shepherd Billy turns at times to this wonderful mountain building, though apparently deaf to all stone sermons. Snow that re[Pg 147]fused to melt in fire would hardly be more wonderful than unchanging dullness in the rays of God's beauty. I have been trying to get him to walk to the brink of Yosemite for a view, offering to watch the sheep for a day, while he should enjoy what tourists come from all over the world to see. But though within a mile of the famous valley, he will not go to it even out of mere curiosity. "What," says he, "is Yosemite but a cañon—a lot of rocks—a hole in the ground—a place dangerous about falling into—a d——d good place to keep away from." "But think of the waterfalls, Billy—just think of that big stream we crossed the other day, falling half a mile through the air—think of that, and the sound it makes. You can hear it now like the roar of the sea." Thus I pressed Yosemite upon him like a missionary offering the gospel, but he would have none of it. "I should be afraid to look over so high a wall," he said. "It would make my head swim. There is nothing worth seeing anywhere, only rocks, and I see plenty of them here. Tourists that spend their money to see rocks and falls are fools, that's all. You can't humbug me. I've been in this country too long for that." Such souls, I suppose, are asleep, or smothered and befogged beneath mean pleasures and cares.

July 25. Another cloudland. Some clouds[Pg 148] have an over-ripe decaying look, watery and bedraggled and drawn out into wind-torn shreds and patches, giving the sky a littered appearance; not so these Sierra summer midday clouds. All are beautiful with smooth definite outlines and curves like those of glacier-polished domes. They begin to grow about eleven o'clock, and seem so wonderfully near and clear from this high camp one is tempted to try to climb them and trace the streams that pour like cataracts from their shadowy fountains. The rain to which they give birth is often very heavy, a sort of waterfall as imposing as if pouring from rock mountains. Never in all my travels have I found anything more truly novel and interesting than these midday mountains of the sky, their fine tones of color, majestic visible growth, and ever-changing scenery and general effects, though mostly as well let alone as far as description goes. I oftentimes think of Shelley's cloud poem, "I sift the snow on the mountains below."

Challenge-Skies the Limit

boundless

Miel Luna came for a visit.

Designer: Blockprint Department of the Zhejiang Worker-Peasant-Soldier Art Academy, Li Yang collective work (浙江工农兵美术大学版画系供稿，李阳)

1966, October

Boundlessly loyal to the great leader Chairman Mao, boundlessly loyal to the great Mao Zedong Thought, boundlessly loyal to Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line

Wuxian zhong yu weidade lingxiu Mao zhuxi, wuxian zhong yu weidade Mao Zedong sixiang, wuxian zhong yu Mao zhuxide geming luxian (无限忠于伟大的领袖毛主席，无限忠于伟大的毛泽东思想，无限忠于毛主席的革命路线)

Call nr.: BG E15/506 (Landsberger collection)

More? See: chineseposters.net/themes/mao-slogans

His Excellency Professor Alpha Oumar Konaré

Africa Center for Strategic Studies Visionary Award

African Ambassadors’ Dinner

April 13th, 2006

President Konaré:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This evening will undeniably be for me a tremendous event. This award, all the nice things that have been said about me this evening, and the attendance of so many friends, some from very far away, and some that I have not seen in years, all of this deeply touches me. But this award is not mine alone. I share it with many people whom I have been lucky enough to rub shoulders with. Humble team workers from the political community, as well as civil society. In accepting this award, I would like to thank all the young men and women who never gave up on Africa, all these women who are supporting Africa.

On this evening, my thoughts are with all of the people that many of us, including myself, have decided to help so that they could find their place in the sun. On this evening, as on any other evening, I cannot help but think of the many children who, on our continent, go to sleep on an empty stomach only to wake up crying the next morning. On this evening, I think, as all of you do, of all the people who are dying on another continent when there are drugs to cure them. To die of malaria today, or to die from drinking unsuitable water, so will be the fate of many of them. On this evening, my thoughts turn to all these children who, unlike ours, have not had and will not have the opportunity to go to school to learn to read and count, children who will not experience a fulfilling life simply because they can neither read nor write. On this evening, I think of all the children that have been denied youth. Instead of allowing them to play, we gave them arms and made them into soldiers. Needless to say, on this evening I think of all the women who have become heads of families, as indeed did some of their children, and whose dignity has forever been tainted by violence, especially in areas of conflict.

Hard as I try, never will I be able to forget all the handicapped persons that I saw in Sierra Leone, their hands cut off, their arms cut off, their nose cut off, and their ears cut off, even at two years of age. As a matter of fact, I saw children that were not even two who will be forever handicapped, thanks only to human stupidity. This award also brings to mind some great men who have showed us the way and whose footsteps we will always thread on. His Excellency, Ambassador Perkins referred to some of them. From this great land of yours, there is Martin Luther King, an accomplished man who gained immortality at the age of 35. I also think of a man who we all knew and who, having left us way too soon, is dearly missed by his country. I am thinking of John Garang who clearly understood that nothing could justify the sorrow.

On this evening, I am reminded very strongly of a man who is amongst us and who, even though he is only human, has gained immortality through his boundless love, dignity and humanity, values that he truly personifies. I am speaking of Nelson Mandela who, more than anybody else, knows that he is only human but that the values he embodies are timeless. There is another great African [unintelligible] whom I would like to single out if only because he dreamed of a special Africa, an Africa that may be the answer to the thousands of issues that now plague our continent. A united Africa. That is what our Heads of State had in mind when they established the African Union.

Back in 1999, when African Heads of state met in Sirte, they quickly grasped that the OAU, created in 1963, had run its course. The OAU helped free the continent. The OAU helped bring about the end of apartheid. But the OAU was unable to remedy problems of governance, peace and economic development, as these issues were not part of its mandate. The OAU was a solidarity-based intergovernmental cooperation organization, which many tried to repeatedly revamp and update over the years, as its followers well know. But we realized, back in 1999, that reorganizing or restructuring the OAU was pointless. What we needed was a new organization that would not be limited to intergovernmental cooperation but one of an integrative nature.

Thus was established the African Union. The African Union acts as a forward thrust that will one day enable all 53 African States to merge into one single great country, that of Africa, inhabited by men and women of African citizenship. It is the African Union that is now leading the way and whose Commission I now preside. Unlike the OAU, which only had a Secretariat, the Commission is intended as a kind of governing body of the African Union. Other than the Commission, the African Union now boasts a Pan-African Parliament, a first in the history of our continent. The African Union can also rely on a Court of justice that should be fully operational within two months. The Africa Union also has access to an Economic, Social, and Cultural Council. The African Union is considering the establishment of financial institutions, a central bank, a monetary fund, and an investment bank, institutions that, Ladies and Gentlemen, do make up a country. The African Union has also adopted new values: freedom of initiative and gender equality [unintelligible]. As a matter of fact, the African Union Commission comprises 10 members, 5 men and 5 women, to illustrate this newfound will to make room for women. The African Union has acknowledged that civil society had a critical role to play. The African Union has come to realize that Africa is not limited to Africans living in Africa but extends also to the diaspora, which must have its say. The African Union has also opted to highlight yet another basic principle, that of non-indifference.

We must obviously respect national sovereignty but must we keep on witnessing human rights violations? Shall we go on tolerating humanitarian crises? Shall we watch our countries disintegrate without intervening ? Our answer is no. Shall we accept living with the conflicts that have superseded the mechanism set forth in Cairo in 1993? The Peace and Security Council of the African Union comprises 15 members who meet at least twice a month at the ambassador level, and at least once a month at the ministerial and Head of State level. Since its actual implementation in 2004, the Peace and Security Council has met at least on fifty occasions to deal with various issues. As a matter of fact, the Council met this very afternoon to discuss issues pertaining to Chad and Sudan. This Peace and Security Council is a critical component, I did say critical, of our conflict solving mechanism but it is not the only one. There is also a Committee of 5 Wise Men. This Committee will be fully functional before the end of the year. The purpose of this Committee of Wise Men is to support implementation and prevention. Made up of independent public figures who, among other things, will be involved in conflict resolution, that Committee will in some ways offset the strictly governmental Peace and Security Council.

Our system will rely on standby forces and an additional 5 brigades, already planned for, which will constitute the first step towards the establishment, one day, of a great African Army. After 53 years, we are still having difficulty in mobilizing 10,000 men, which is why we must review our approach. The establishment of regional brigades will help us set up the African Contingency Force. Other than the Contingency Force, we have implemented an early warning system, which includes observation centers in each of the 5 regions. This is where prevention comes into play since any African conflict can be foreseen. We usually watch them spreading and getting worse, without taking action. The less expensive early warning system will be a great asset in this regard. We are currently proceeding with the implementation of this system, which will be complemented by 3 new elements. Firstly, the African Counter-Terrorism Center, which was recently established in Algiers.

Then there is the Information Secretariat, set up recently in Addis-Ababa and finally, the Peer Review mechanism, intended to promote good governance. These, ladies and Gentlemen, are the tools that we are implementing to address peace and security issues on the continent. We are strongly committed to so-called “structural” prevention, through the development of a suitable policy to help promote good governance, fight corruption, consolidate the democratic process, and fight impunity, as all of these are closely related to so-called structural prevention. But we are also committed to, shall I say, “operational” prevention that is well suited to our policy of non-indifference. After we introduced the concept of a non-indifference policy, many asked us what it meant. Well to us, it means, let’s not be afraid of saying it, a policy of interference, but one of courtesy and solidarity. The idea is not to tell people what to do but to support them. That is why our operational prevention relies on discrete missions and discrete actions. As everybody knows, the way things are said and the context of intervention are of paramount importance in Africa.

For some people, anything can be said in private but the minute that you go public, your words become totally unacceptable. We must therefore fully integrate African culture into our process. We are well aware that the foremost challenge facing our country today is resolving peace and security issues. The roots of conflicts are also well known. Let’s not fool ourselves, they are usually related to power struggles. They usually are the results of state structure and poor governance, for which we are responsible. But the continent has made tremendous progress. Many long-lasting conflicts are now behind us. Mozambique, what a puzzle! But what an amazing progress in Angora! And the 20-yeard old conflict in Southern Sudan now behind us. Liberia has made astonishing progress! True, hands and arms have been lopped off in Sierra Leone, but progress has been made there too! Progress has even been made in Rwanda, following the genocide! Burundi has also come a long way! And what progress in the Comoros after some 20 coups d’etat. Progress was even made in Chad, prior to current events.

So there has been progress, but not nearly enough for us to ignore the fact that my country is still suffering. Darfur is reeling from a humanitarian crisis and from human rights violations. And what about the risk of seeing the situation in Darfur and Sudan spread to other vulnerable countries in the region? Sudan represents 2 million square feet of land and shares borders with 9 different countries. The Middle East is just around the corner. Should we fail to instill peace in this vast country, should we fail to maintain its unity, and let me stress while still respecting its diversity and plurality, the very survival of Africa might be at stake. Anarchy and civil war in Sudan, which are given little notice, are not limited to a domestic issue, or to Central Africa. They have implications for North Africa and West Africa. The situation may very well lead Africa to the brink of conflicts between Blacks and Whites, with consequences that no one can predict. You may talk about modern day Africa, but it remains the native land of Black people. And even though Black people are the majority on the continent, Africa is now an Arabic land. Let’s not forget that two-thirds of the global Arabic population now live in Africa. This is the African reality that we must learn to deal with in order to make progress. We are concerned with events in Darfur and we thank all of our friends for their support. If the African Union is committed to resolving that situation through a political solution, hoping to quickly reach an agreement in Abuja, we are also relying on a military force that has that has proven effective.

But it must be said that, in undertaking all of these peace initiatives, we have benefited from productive partnerships with the United States, which have supported and are still supporting us, and with the European Union, which has provided financial support through its global funding agency. But on this evening, I would like to pay tribute to the United Nations, our Nation, our United Nations, an organization that has always supported us. I would like to pay special tribute to the world’s UN Peacekeepers, two-thirds of which are now deployed on our continent. Seventy percent (70 %) of issues considered by the Security Council relate to Africa. Not a fact that I am proud of but which clearly demonstrates the UN interest in our continent. We collaborate with the UN on all major issues.

In the coming weeks, we will intensify our collaboration with the United Nations while still ensuring the leadership of the African Union and Sudanese authorities. We are of course concerned with other current events in Africa. Major progress has been made in Ivory Coast. Having full confidence in our Ivorian brothers, we support them in their ongoing efforts to one day establish the fraternal Ivory Coast that we have all dreamed about. The Democratic Republic of Congo is now forging ahead. We support its electoral process that should come to a close probably in June. Let me assure you that the path chosen by the RDC will signal a new march for Africa. We are also concerned with Ethiopia and Eritrea. We are equally concerned with Western Sahara. We know that we have the support of the international community, including the United States, on all these issues of uncertainty.

Dear friends, should Africa succeed in resolving these conflicts and restoring peace, anything will be possible. Anything. Africa is in need of solidarity but we must acknowledge that many of our numerous promises have not been kept. As a matter of fact, we were promised far too much and too few of these promises were kept. Europe managed to recover thanks to American assistance. Eastern European countries and the new European Union are now standing up thanks to exceptional support. But Africa also deserves such outstanding assistance. Africa wishes for more than band-aid solutions. Modern African development involves infrastructures and requires considerable investments to help us process our raw materials. Let me tell you that Africa, now more than ever, needs assistance.

I have heard a great President say that friends of Africa had a duty of humanity. Our answer to him was that that duty of humanity had now become a duty of Africanism. A duty towards today’s Africa. Indeed, a non-functional Africa would be a risky situation for the entire world. Many of the world’s conflicts and disorders are the result of poverty. And poverty fuels mercenary activities. Poverty triggers competition for raw materials. Poverty feeds instability. No one would gain from an undeveloped Africa. My country, Africa, has everything it needs to evolve, and you know it.

Africa has all the natural, mineral and agricultural resources needed to ensure its development. Some of the world’s rarest minerals can be found in Africa. Africa has tremendous potential and my country is a great country, one to be proud of. Truly a great country. Please consider for a moment that size-wise, Africa is equal to the United States, China, India, Mexico, and Argentina, all put together. Its size is such that I can call it a vast country. A country whose land area would cover the United States of America, the European Union, India, China, Mexico, and Argentina. It is a huge country. There are today 800,000 million Africans. In 30 years from now, there will be 1,5 billion Africans. Our country will be as large as China or India. In 30 years from now, those 1,5 billion Africans will amount to the European population, plus that of all North America, United States and Canada included, plus that of all South America. That’s how many of us Africans there will be in 2030.

But we will have an advantage over China, and over India. Our population will be the youngest in the world. And 30 years from now, so help us God, if conflicts have become fewer, if our health programs are better established, if education programs are more refined, Africa, a land where everything needs to be done, will have become the world’s largest manufacture, as well as the worlds biggest and youngest market. In this context, there cannot be any future without Africa, there is no future without our country. And, as I said earlier, by Africa I do not mean Black Africa nor White Africa, but an Africa that extends from the Mediterranean to Southern Africa, in fact all the way to South Africa. Such will be our continent, neither black nor white, but of all colors. And nowadays, the term African Union refers to an organization based on Africanism, which for us equals to negritude, the Arab world, and the involvement of the diaspora. Therein lies our future.

General, I have come here to accept this award granted by your Center for Africa-related endeavors. I am also here because of all that your great country, the United States, does for us. I am honored to be here. May I take this opportunity to wish your Center the very best. May it continue to strengthen the relationships between the United States and Africa. And may your Center help the United States to increase its commitment to Africa. As we mentioned earlier, it is true that solutions to security issues are related to security mechanisms. But these solutions also call for political and economic initiatives. This great country of yours, America, has a lot to contribute to Africa. And here we are, waiting with great expectations, for Africa, the very first continent upon which mankind walked, spoke, and traded. This very first of continents, is undeniably THE continent of the future, as men can still today gather there, surrounded by great and important values. They do not do so solely for themselves, or for their peers, but also for everybody else, as this first of continents is that of mankind, and the only worthwhile struggle nowadays is to serve mankind. I thank you for your attention and for the opportunity to be here this evening. Thank you.

At 06h15 on Sunday the 4th of August NSRI East London volunteers were activated following reports of the 36 foot yacht BOUNDLESS reporting to have run aground at Cebe, approximately 450 km by road from East London, on the Transkei Coast. Picture NSRI

Impossible picture of the night sky

160х160 см

Fine art portrait of Eddie taken by me. No AI was used in the making of this image

Here's a poem I also wrote for it as well.

Beneath the mountain’s jagged crest

where stone is thick and roots find rest

a giant lies, its breath subdued

a power bound in quiet mood

Its scales hold time, like tempered stone

its heart a furnace, heat unknown

the air is thick where it has slept

the ground remembers where it stepped

Above, the world forgets the force

that shapes the rivers’ ancient course

What’s still can seem to fade away

yet strength remains where giants lay

No flame is lost, no embers fade

they rest until the winds invade

The ground may shift, may twist and break

when dormant strength begins to wake

For in the stillness, futures burn

a moment waits for its return

The dragon sleeps, its fire concealed

its boundless might yet revealed.

新年快樂

Work by students on the MA Jewellery programme at the School of Jewellery.

Taken with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 lens on Panasonic GH2.

I haven't gotten a good pic of the boundless beauty sign in the past, but it was definitely here last week. I don't think it's been around for much longer than that however, possibly added sometime around Valentine's Day 2014.

____________________________________

Kroger, (1997-1998) built (as Seessel's), Goodman Rd. at Horn Lake Rd., Horn Lake MS

DENISON, GEORGE TAYLOR, lawyer, militia officer, author, politician, police magistrate, and imperialist; b. 31 Aug. 1839 in Toronto, eldest child of George Taylor Denison* and Mary Anne Dewson; m. first 20 Jan. 1863 Caroline Macklem (d. 1885) in Chippawa, Upper Canada, and they had three sons and three daughters; m. secondly 1 Dec. 1887 Helen Amanda Mair in Perth, Ont., and they had two daughters; d. 6 June 1925 in Toronto.

Known by contemporaries as the “watchdog” of the British empire, George Taylor Denison inherited a family legacy of antipathy to the United States, loyalty to the crown, conservative political values, and military service. His great-grandfather, a brewer and farmer from Yorkshire, was induced to immigrate to Upper Canada in 1792 by the province’s receiver and auditor general, Peter Russell*. For managing Russell’s estate at York (Toronto), he received a 1,000-acre grant. His grandfather George Taylor Denison I, who married the daughter of a prominent landowner and United Empire Loyalist, added to the family tradition of imperial service by enlisting with the 3rd York Militia during the War of 1812. The tradition continued with his father, George Taylor Denison II, who served during the rebellion of 1837–38, played an important role in the reorganization of the Canadian militia in 1855, and commanded the 1st Volunteer Militia Troop of Cavalry of York County (designated the Governor General’s Body Guard in 1866). As well, he was an alderman for St Patrick’s Ward in Toronto. The burden of tradition and expectation thus weighed heavily upon George Taylor Denison III.

As befitted his family’s social status, Denison was educated at Upper Canada College, where his performance was unspectacular. Expelled from Trinity College by provost George Whitaker* for insubordinate behaviour, he transferred to the University of Toronto and earned a degree in law. Called to the bar in 1861, he would later go into practice with his brother Frederick Charles*. The law, however, held no interest for him. His heart was with the militia. Gazetted cornet in his father’s troop in the fall of 1854, he rapidly rose through the ranks, from captain in 1857 to lieutenant-colonel and commander in 1866.

Denison’s passion for military matters and gift for polemics first became evident in 1861 when, in the wake of the Trent affair [see Sir Charles Hastings Doyle*], he anonymously published Canada, is she prepared for war? (Toronto). This pamphlet, which urged British North Americans to uphold their forefathers’ martial valour and to ready themselves against a possible attack from the United States, ignited a lively newspaper debate and soon resulted in another tract, The national defences . . . (Toronto, 1861), in which Denison argued for a properly trained and equipped mounted infantry. In A review of the militia policy of the present administration (Hamilton, 1863) he responded (under the pseudonym Junius) to the defeat of John A. Macdonald*’s Militia Bill of 1862 with a scathing attack on the government’s neglect and ignorance of military matters.

Denison aspired to a career as a professional soldier, but his sympathy for the South during the American Civil War ultimately cost him his ambition. His identification with the South came naturally: it represented an idyllic society that embodied the social order, conservative values, and chivalric traditions he wished to see maintained in British North America. He drew parallels between his loyalist ancestors, who had fought to uphold their principles against the demagoguery of American patriots, and the southerners, who were struggling to preserve their identity and way of life. Fearing the consequences of a northern victory for the future of British North America, Denison actively backed the Confederate cause despite Britain’s official neutrality. In September 1864 he received a visit from his uncle George Dewson of Florida, who had been commissioned to assess support for the Confederacy in British North America. Denison’s farm home, Heydon Villa, on his father’s estate in west Toronto, became a haven for Confederate agents, exiles, and sympathizers and a clearing house for smuggled documents. He also became involved in efforts to purchase the steamer Georgian, which was to be used as a raider on the Great Lakes. The diplomatic crisis and lawsuits that followed the discovery of this plan effectively ended his prospects for a full-time military career, a disappointment that repeated promises from politicians and his own tireless efforts could not reverse. A frustrated Denison entered local politics and served as a councilman for St Patrick’s Ward from 1865 to 1867. He commanded the Governor General’s Body Guard during the Fenian raids of 1866 and wrote Modern cavalry: its organisation, armament, and employment in war . . . (London, 1868), an impassioned case for mounted infantry based on his own experience and close study of the Civil War. He suffered another blow to his ego when British critics dismissed the book as the work of a mere colonial.

Appalled by the lack of national spirit following confederation, disillusioned by the state of Canadian politics, and fearful of the United States, Denison joined with Charles Mair, William Alexander Foster*, and others to found the Canada First movement in 1868. Inspired by Thomas D’Arcy McGee*’s vision of a northern nation, Canada First celebrated the new dominion’s rugged landscape and climate and its Anglo-Saxon/Protestant heritage. This small social group was hurled into national prominence by the Red River uprising of 1869–70. Seeing the actions of Louis Riel* and his followers as an affront to Canada’s territorial ambition, the group launched a vigorous assault upon the “traitors.” Denison led the charge, writing bellicose letters to the newspapers, organizing demonstrations, and appealing to all loyal English-speaking Canadians to defend their birthright. Special venom was reserved for Sir George-Étienne Cartier*, the militia minister who had blocked Denison’s advancement to the post of adjutant general of cavalry and who, in Denison’s eyes, represented French Canadian opposition to the force sent to Red River.

The success of these tactics had a lasting effect on Denison. The same belligerent rhetoric and fearmongering would characterize his later campaigns against closer economic relations with the United States and on behalf of imperial unity. His immediate priority, however, was ensuring the Anglo-Saxon character of the northwest. He and his Canada First associates created the North West Emigration Aid Society in 1870 to assist in the recruitment of desirable settlers. Denison outlined his national vision in an address he first delivered in Weston (Toronto) in early 1871, “The duty of Canadians to Canada,” in which he attacked British indifference and warned of the dominion’s vulnerability. Canada’s destiny, he insisted, depended on the cultivation of pride and patriotism, the development of its resources, and the creation of politics freed of faction and dedicated to the national good. Such a course would allow Canada to assume its rightful place as a full partner in the empire. Disillusioned with the governing Conservative party, he sought election to the House of Commons for Algoma as a Liberal in 1872. Defeated by John Beverley Robinson*, he was rewarded for his efforts by friends in the provincial Liberal government of Oliver Mowat* and made Ontario’s emigration commissioner in London. His exposure there to reviving imperialist feeling reinforced his Canada First sentiments. The position was temporary, however, and he returned to Canada in early 1874, with no immediate prospects before him.

As Denison approached middle age, he was haunted by his lack of personal accomplishment. “If a man does not make his mark in the world or be in a fair way of doing it before he is forty he will never do anything afterwards,” his father had once warned him. When he learned of the substantial cash prizes offered by the Russian government for the best history of cavalry, he decided to return to his first love, the military, and resolved to make his reputation as a military historian. He threw himself into the work, rising early to read and write, acquiring a large library on military history at great expense, and travelling to London and St Petersburg to do research. Denison completed his magnum opus in December 1876 and presented the manuscript to the prize committee in person, but it refused to consider his work on the grounds that the translation, done by a Russian woman in New York, was sub-standard. Only after the book appeared in English was he awarded the 5,000-rouble first prize. Although A history of cavalry from the earliest times, with lessons for the future (London, 1877) received mixed reviews at the time, it has since been hailed as the definitive work in the field.

On his return to Canada in 1877, Denison assumed the post of police magistrate for the City of Toronto, a position he would retain until the summer of 1921. He owed the appointment to Oliver Mowat. Denison’s contemporary seat on the Board of Police Commissioners was not seen as a conflict of interest. He ran his court like a well-oiled machine. Much to the annoyance of the city officials who paid his salary, he routinely cleared his docket in a couple of hours before lunch. Usually faced with an enormous caseload, and with little interest in the causes or prevention of crime, he had no use for legal technicalities or procedural niceties. His was “a court of justice, not a court of law,” he proudly asserted. By his own admission, he relied more on intuition than on evidence. Although he liked to boast that he judged impartially, some groups fared better than others: retired soldiers and members of Toronto’s respectable classes could expect leniency but striking workers, parvenus, Irishmen, and blacks invariably received harsh treatment. Denison nonetheless took a paternal interest in the unfortunate members of the lower classes who filed through his court. He championed legal aid, chastised the legal profession for profiting from people’s misfortunes and prolonging cases, and denounced moral reform groups that tried to impose their standards upon criminal elements “who offended their tender susceptibilities.” His unorthodox methods were notorious – his court even became something of a tourist attraction. By the time of his retirement, there were calls for a full overhaul of the then outmoded Police Court, which consisted of four magistrates, including Rupert Etherege Kingsford*, women’s and children’s divisions, and seven clerks.

Denison’s swift administration of justice freed him to pursue other interests. An Anglican of evangelical inclination, he helped found and served on the first board of management of the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School [see James Paterson Sheraton*]. He became one of the principal forces behind the revival of the loyalist tradition, as an organizer of the loyalist centennial celebrations in 1884 and a founding member in 1896 of the United Empire Loyalist Association of Ontario. He broadcast the tradition long and often. In his presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada in 1904, for instance, he spoke on the loyalist influence in Canadian history. He found in the tradition not only the reflected glory of his ancestors’ accomplishments but also a usable past, which could be called upon to justify closer ties to Britain and the empire and to attack opponents who advocated greater independence or closer economic and political relations with the United States. As constructed by Denison and others, the tradition served too to defend a social order threatened by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Denison’s rabid anti-Americanism, in fact, owed much to his fear that the social ailments afflicting the United States would soon infect Canada.

Denison’s patriotism had been tested in the spring of 1885, when he and the Governor General’s Body Guard saw service during the North-West rebellion. Because of his lingering hostility to the federal government, he had little enthusiasm for the conflict and had initially refused to volunteer his troop. He objected, he told Charles Mair in March, to the use of the militia “to defend a Government of land sharks who have villainously wronged the poor native and the actual settler.” Moreover, he had been deeply shaken by the death of his wife on 26 February. His fighting spirit returned with the formation in May of the Canadian branch of the Imperial Federation League; he was named chair of the branch’s organizing committee, and would later be vice-president and president. Although Denison and the league succeeded in whipping up nationalistic fervour, especially after the appearance in 1887 of the movement for commercial union with the United States [see Erastus Wiman*], they failed to convince the league’s British members of the virtue of imperial trade preferences. When internal divisions caused the league to collapse, Denison played an important role in 1895 in creating a new organization, the British Empire League, and he would serve as president of its Canadian branch for many years. Although military considerations dominated Denison’s imperial outlook, he frequently used the rhetoric of religious crusade in his speeches and writings, and his evangelical Anglicanism certainly helped shape his view of events. In this religious sense, his imperialism was comparable to that of George Monro Grant* and George Robert Parkin.

Colonel Denison remained in the vanguard of the imperialist cause throughout the remainder of his life. He championed Canadian participation in the South African War and contributions to the Royal Navy, he surpassed most imperialists by campaigning in 1902 for an imperial defence fund derived from duties on foreign imports into Britain and the colonies, and he vigorously opposed the efforts of Sir Wilfrid Laurier*’s government to negotiate reciprocity with the United States in 1911. A frequent speaker and newspaper commentator, he brought to the cause an unrelenting drive and a steely resistance to criticism. Passed over several times for imperial honours, he eventually claimed he had not wanted any. “His self-laudation has long been a standing joke in Canada,” Governor General Lord Minto [Elliot*] confided to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain in 1900. As well, some British career soldiers regarded his Body Guard as a showy, lightweight outfit, top-heavy with officers and ncos. Unswayed, he chronicled his efforts on behalf of the empire, and his arguments for federation and against free trade, in The struggle for imperial unity . . . (Toronto, 1909). With the approach of war in Europe, he found a new demon, Germany. Although his combination of anti-Americanism, imperialism, and nationalism lost much of its force in the years following World War I, Denison remained unmoved in his convictions.

Despite his celebrity, relatively little is known about his private and family life. He kept a daily diary from 1864 until his death, but rarely recorded his deepest personal thoughts. In 1863 he had married the niece of the Reverend Thomas Brock Fuller*; in 1887 he married Charles Mair’s 22-year-old niece. He appears to have been a demanding but loving father who impressed on his sons the same spirit of loyalty, duty, and family pride that had been implanted in him during his own childhood. Extremely class-conscious, he raised his daughters to assume their rightful place at the top of respectable society.

His stern and headstrong manner notwithstanding, Denison had a great sense of humour and relished the caricatures drawn of him in the press. He was almost always portrayed in military uniform striking the pose of the stereotypical British officer and gentleman. He loved to entertain and Heydon Villa, which he rebuilt in 1880, became a regular stop for notables visiting Toronto. A man of boundless energy and ambition, he kept up an exhaustive correspondence with the public men of his day. He thoroughly enjoyed the cut and thrust of vigorous debate but his absolute faith in the correctness of his beliefs cost him several friendships, including that of Goldwin Smith*, whom he almost single-handedly had ostracized from polite Toronto society. By 1922 Denison’s health was failing and he died at Heydon Villa in 1925 at the age of 85.

George Taylor Denison had been raised to be a public man. Although few could match his contribution to the discussions of the great political issues of the day, his life was full of disappointments. Unable to achieve a military career or high elected office, he settled into a series of patronage appointments and crusades. His impact on Canadian opinion lay as much in the opposition he provoked as in the causes he advocated. In many respects, his life reflects the ideas and standards, the frustrations and anxieties, of a class and a generation whose values were fading before the forces that were transforming Canada into a North American nation.

Work by students on the MA Jewellery programme at the School of Jewellery.

Taken with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 lens on Panasonic GH2.

"An aching sense of familiarity pervades Thompson's work, encouraging us to pause, ponder and lose ourselves for a moment… however long that may be."

Read more on our blog: matthewsgalleryblog.com/2014/08/08/eric-g-thompson-seekin...