YOSEMITE.

of later times sharply reins in his steed-if so be that the jaded cayuse requires it-dismounts, and stands on Inspiration point, a rocky eminence commanding a partial view of the valley. Here every one who writes a book stands spell-bound as if in the presence of the almighty, beholds a new heaven and a new earth, feels the omnipotence and majesty of the infinite, attempts in vain to give his vision utterance, indulges in a sublime fit of rhapsody, and then drops into mesmeric silence. Old life and ordinary emotions are suspended, and a new tide of feeling rushes in upon the soul. The mortal part of man shrinks back, and the immortal prostrates the beholder before this apparition of majesty and desolation.

Entering at the lower end by the Mariposa trail, a general view of the valley is obtained, which displays first, on the left, the granite-block El Capitan, a smooth seamless battlement, rising clearly cut 3,300 feet in height; and on the right the Bridal Veil fall, a white cascade of fluttering gossamer, leaping from the western edge of Cathedral rock 630 feet, when striking the heaped-up débris at the base of the cliff, it continues in a series of cascades 300 feet perpendicular to the bottom, where it flows off in ten or twelve streamlets. Summer dries the Virgin's Tears that fall opposite the Bridal Veil, for their source is not the eternal snow of the high sierra. When the stream that feeds the fall runs low, nearly all the water is dissipated by the wind, which first sways, then scatters it, and finally breaks it into quivering spray, which the tardy sun, when it appears, gilds with rainbows.

Over the floor of the enclosure is spread a variegated carpet fit for a palace of the gods. Meadows of thick grass are interspersed with flowers and flowering shrubs, and fringed with thickets of manzanita, alder, maple, and laurel, and groves of oak, cedar, and fir, with occasional moss-covered rocks, marshes, and patches of sand; while high up on the battlement,

clinging to crevice and shelving rock, are tall graceful ferns, with branches of the most delicate tracery, which from their dizzy height look like tiny shrubs. United with grandeur are sweet freshness and melody; mingling with iris-hued mists is the fragrance of flowers, and with the music of the waters the songs of birds. Receiving and giving rest to the troubled waters after their fearful leap is still the Merced river, which winds through the valley in sharp angular bends, striking first one side and then the other. It is some seventy feet in width, and as transparent almost as air; indeed, so deceivingly limpid is it, that the unwary tourist who steps into it is soon beyond his depth. So too in regard to everything in and around this region of vastness; dimensions are so stupendous that judgment is confounded; the inexperienced eye cannot measure them. Distance is cheated of its effect; until perhaps, one toils in vain all day to accomplish what appears to be no difficult task, when the mistake is discovered and the eye is strained no longer.

Now and then a huge boulder, breaking from its long resting-place, comes crashing down the precipice, thundering in loud reverberations throughout the chasm. Sometimes in spring a flood bursts on Yosemite, when there is a tumult of waters, and high carnival is held in the valley. Scores of newlyborn streams and streamlets fall from the upper end, and along the side roar a hundred cataracts whose united voices might waken Endymion. Pyramids of mist stand on the chasm floor, and ribbons of white waters twenty or thirty feet apart hang against black walls, or fall like comet's tails side by side, with jets shooting out from either side like arrows, weaving gauzy lace-work and forging fairy chains.

In May and June the streams are flush, and the monotone of falling waters is broken by crash and boom like angry surf striking the shore; but as autumn approaches, the roaring cataracts dwindle to

mere threads, which are shattered to mist in their descent, or disappear entirely. Frost dispels a portion of the summer haze, and the air of winter is clear and cold. The granite walls glisten in a net-work of ice, and the frozen vapor whirls through the cañon, smiting the cliffs, and overspreading the domes in layers of white, which, as they thicken, loosen their hold, slide off in huge masses, and striking upon the débris piles, break into powder, and fill the gorge to the brim with fine particles of frozen mist, which sparkle like diamond dust.

Further upward in the valley, just beyond the Bridal Veil, is Cathedral rock, and still a little further, shooting up in graceful pinnacles, The Spires. Then on the left come the Three Brothers, called by the natives Pompompasus, or Leaping Frogs; and projecting from the opposite side the obelisk-formed Šentinel rock, which rises from the river, like a watch-tower, over three thousand feet. Across the valley from Sentinel rock, and fed exclusively by melting snows, is the great Yosemite fall, the largest in the world, if height and volume both be considered, being fifteen times as high as Niagara, and most indescribably grand. Springing from the verge of the chasm, over a smoothly polished, perpendicular wall of fifteen hundred feet, and swaying in the wind like a scarf of lace, the water strikes upon a rough, inclined shelf, over which, ragged with foam, or spread out in transparent aprons, it rushes in a series of cascades equal to 625 feet perpendicular to the verge, when, with a final plunge of 400 feet, this most magnificent of half-mile leaps is consummated. No small portion of the water which drops from the top, and which widens and scatters in its descent, is dashed into spray before reaching the bottom; yet enough is left, even in the dryest part of the season, to send a deep, hoarse roar reverberating through the cañon.

Two miles above the Yosemite fall, the valley splits into three cañons, at the head of the middle one of

which tumbles the Merced, here a fleecy mass of foam. Down the cañon to the left flows the Yenaga, and down the one to the right the Illilouette. Here, at the upper end of the valley proper, where the river branches with the branching chasm, in the outer angle of Yenaga cañon, we find the Washington Column, and the Royal Arches, and back of these the North Dome, a rounded mass of overlapping, concentric, granite plates. On the opposite side of Yenaga cañon are the Half Dome and Cloud's Rest, and in the cañon, Mirror lake.

Ascending the Merced through the middle cañon, besides two miles of cascades in which the river descends over two thousand feet, we find two magnificent falls, surrounded by the grandest scenery,-Vernal fall, which makes up in volume and impressive beauty what it lacks in height, and the Nevada fall, with the Cap of Liberty near it. The Illilouette branch of the Merced also has a beautiful fall.

Thus, amid sentinels of granite, and mighty battlements, and musical cascades, and roaring cataracts, with its verdure-clad floor, and its time-worn walls curtained in glistening gossamer, cold in its colors though they be of dazzling brightness, wrapped in veils of silvery mist round which in drapery of prismatic hues Iris dances, or illuminated with airy clouds of frozen spray, Yosemite sits enthroned. Above and beyond, cold, silent, and white, stretches the great range on whose summit lies the snow that, melting, tunes the viols of a hundred cataracts. A fitting play-ground for the state, truly! A wonder worthy of California! Travel the world over and you will find no counterpart; there is no wonder like our wonder. Even a Yosemite rivulet may boast its sheer half-mile of precipice. All here is grand and unique; all of characteristic bigness except water, but Californians were never specially partial to water!

I say Yosemite has no counterpart-I should rather

say outside of California. Here we have others, so that if the great chasm of chasms should ever be lost to us, we still should not be without our wonder. There is the Little Yosemite valley above the Nevada fall, with its concentric granite structures, and the same river flowing through it in beautiful cascades; and there is the Hetch-hetchy valley, which, if a little less grand than the Yosemite, would answer well enough in place of it.. The Hetch-hetchy chasm walls the Tuolumne river about sixteen miles north-west from Yosemite. It is three miles in length, from an eighth to half a mile in width, with walls not quite so high as those of the Yosemite, though the volume of water flowing into it is much greater. It extends in the same direction as Yosemite, has a perpendicular bluff the counterpart of El Capitan, a large stream fed by the melting snows which fall over a cliff 1,000 feet in height; has in the Hetch-hetchy fall, 1700 feet in height, the counterpart of the Yosemite fall, with its Cathedral rock, 2,270 feet in height; finally, at its upper end, it splits into two cañons instead of three as at Yosemite. All along the base of the Sierra, and mounting upward to its summit, are innumerable valleys, meadows and springs, lakes, waterfalls, and cascades, eroded cañons, polished domes, and volcanic spindles, finger posts of the early gold-seekers, obelisk groups, table mountains, kettles, chests, forts, caves, bridges, sugar-loaves, cathedral-peaks, and unicorn peaks; the which, if they should be described every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Many mighty chasms we have on this Pacific slope beside the Yosemite cañon of the Merced, and the Hetchhetchy cañon of the Tuolumne. There is the American river with its north and south forks down two or three thousand feet in hard slate. The Columbia and the Fraser rivers have their fifty miles and more of gorges several thousand feet deep; and grander yet, the King river cañon, with its hard granite walls