Analyze the contrasting perspectives presented in the text—the biographer's view of Reuben's escape versus the author's, and John Murphy's pragmatic approach to trail-building versus the narrator's desire for a challenging route. What do these differences reveal about conflicting values regarding nature and human intervention in 19th-century America?

From the book

e must go. If it had been my birthday of my eightieth year in Ahwahne, I could not have clung to the valley more fondly. As I looked up to the dark line of firs on either side of the Great Fall, I pictured to myself the form of that six-year-old boy of the Ahwahnechee, who, when the white men entered the valley, was seen climbing, naked, like a wild chamois, on the glistening granite face of the rock-wall, midway between heaven and earth, to escape the enemy. A cruel man of his tribe lured him down and gave him captive to the white men, who christened him Reuben, put trowsers on him, and sent…

t short time the usual amount of conflicting testimony had been gathered as to the trail and the condition of the river. "The trail was finished;" "the trail was only half done;" "the river was much too high to be forded;" "a man had come across yesterday, without trouble." "I expect ye'd kind o' hate to give up, an' come down into the valley agin?" said Murphy, inquiringly, as we rode out into the meadows. "Mr. Murphy," I replied, "I shall not give up, and come down into the valley again. There must be some other way of getting across, higher up. Is there not?" If Mr. Murphy perceived the…

ealed the speakers. I hurried around it, and found myself facing four men working with pickaxes and spades on the trail. A small fire was burning on the rocks, and a big iron pot of coffee boiled and bubbled above it, exhaling delicious fragrance. The men leaned on their tools and looked at me. I looked at Murphy. Nobody spoke. This was the end of the new trail! "I s'pose ye can get through well enough: the bushes are cut down," said one. Murphy said something in a tone so low I could not hear; I fear it was not complimentary to my riding. "Mr. Murphy," said I, "I would rather ride all day…

s had to stop for breath every two or three minutes. But to all my propositions to walk Murphy replied with firm denial. "You'll be tired enough, come night, anyhow," he said, with a droll mixture of compassion and approbation in his voice: "you stay while ye be; that horse can do it well enough." But he led his own more than half the way. New flowers, and new ferns, that I had not found before in all Ahwahne, hung thick on the rocky wall, which, facing south, has sun all day, and can make the most of Ahwahne's short summers. Every cleft was full of color or of nodding green. High in the very…

wam to-day. "John Murphy, guide," as with quaint dignity he writes his name, stood near me, also looking up at the Fall. "When you come back next year, 's ye say you're comin', but then folks never does come back when they sav they will," said Murphy, "I'll hev a trail built right to the base o' thet upper fall." "Why, Mr. Murphy, where will you put it?" I said, looking along the sheer gray wall three thousand feet high. "There's plenty of places. I'll make it as broad 'n' easy a trail 's there is in this valley," said Murphy quietly; "'tain't half so steep as 'tis up Indian Canyon, where…