That nest of ovals upon the weather-map looked dull and uninspiring enough. He himself, not primarily a meteorologist, had no clear idea of what the High meant in the whole cosmic scheme. But he had a vivid sense of how those ovals affected his own air-route. They shunted off the storms toward British Columbia, and so gave generally fair weather for the Honolulu run; and also they formed a great benign swirl of air which with ingenuity might be made, paradoxically, to serve both going and coming. When the High broke up, there was a different story.

Looking ahead, the Navigator now saw a ship. By the rate at which it seemed to come dashing toward him, he again became conscious of the plane’s own rapid motion.

5

Since the glacier-ice began to melt from the mountains and the crags to show their shapes, the quiet lake has lain at the foot of the gorge. No one knows who first crossed the Pass.

While the ice still lingered, mountain-sheep must have worn the first trails—faint dull traces across the granite. After some centuries the black-tailed deer followed; by then the ice would have been gone. Next come Pai-ute or Washoe, gathering seeds and pine-nuts. So recently as if it might have been yesterday, some trapper may have watered his horses at the lake, and leaning on his long rifle squinted into the westering sun as he worked out in his mind a route upward from ledge to ledge.

For certain, we know, the covered wagons came in ’44. Old Caleb Greenwood and hawk-nosed Elisha Stevens guided those emigrants down the Humboldt River. At the sink they found a Pai-ute chief whom they called Truckee. Squatting, he drew them a map in the sand. So they crossed the desert, and went up along the swift river which they called Truckee for the map-drawer. They met the snow at the lake, and with the snow they fought panic. Some went to the south, but others forced their way onward through the snow and over the Pass above the lake.

Next year, following the wheel marks, came William Ide, and rigged a windlass at the granite crest to pull up his wagons. In ’46 came a great wave of emigrants—five hundred wagons. Last of all that autumn came the Donners; the snow caught them; they starved through the winter; the horror of their story imprinted their name upon both lake and pass, and broods still over peak and canyon like a legend of Greek tragedy.