interior of some stupendous roofless cathedral from the top of one of its towering walls.

2. In the distance, across the gorge, were snow-streaked mountains. Right under us was the narrow, winding basin of meadow, grove, and shining river, shut in by granite walls, from two thousand to five thousand feet high ; — walls with immense turrets of bare rock, — walls so upright and perfect that an expert cragman can climb out of the valley only at three or four points.

3. Flinging a pebble from the rock upon which we stood, and looking over the brink, I saw it fall more than half a mile, before striking. Glancing across the narrow, profound chasm, I surveyed an unbroken, seamless wall of granite, two thirds of a mile high, and more than perpendicular, -the top projecting one hundred and fifty feet over the base.

4. Turning toward the upper end of the valley, I beheld a half-dome of rock, one mile high; and, on its summit, a solitary, gigantic cedar, appearing like the merest twig. Originally a vast granite mountain, it was riven from top to bottom by some ancient convulsion, which cleft asunder the everlasting hills and rent the great globe itself.

5. The measureless inclosing walls, with these leading towers and many other turrets, gray, brown, and white rock, darkly veined from summit to base with streaks and ribbons of falling water, hills almost upright, yet studded with tenacious firs and cedars, and the deep-down, level floor of grass, with its thread of river, and pigmy trees, all burst upon me at once.

6. Nature had lifted her curtain to reveal the vast and the infinite. It elicited no adjectives, no exclamations. With bewildering sense of Divine Power and human littleness, I could only gaze in silence, till the view strained my brain, and pained my eyes, compelling me to turn away and rest from its oppressive magnitude.

7. Riding for two hours, down, down, among sharp rocks and dizzy zigzags, where the five ladies of our party found it difficult to keep in their saddles, and narrowly escaped pitching over their horses' heads, we were in the valley, entering by the Mariposa trail.

8. The length of the valley or cleft is nine miles; its average width, three fourths of a mile. Riding up the valley for five miles, past Bridal Veil Fall, which is nine hundred and forty feet high, Cathedral Rocks, and the Sentinel, we dis

Bridal Veil Fall.

9. Delightful and exhilarating, though a little chilly for the swimmer, it is so perfectly transparent as to cheat the eye, and beguile, beyond his depth, any one attempting to wade it. Crossing it by a rustic log bridge, we are in a smooth, level meadow of tall grass, variegated with myriads of wild flowers. The meadow is fringed with groves of pine and spreading oak, and on one side is bounded by the everlasting walls.

10. The pines, like those of Washington Territory, are simply height, slenderness, symmetry. The delicate tracery of the branch is beautiful beyond description, but the trunk is comparatively small. In the evening, illuminated and softened by the full moon, the beauty of the valley was marvelous. The bright lights from our quarters shone through the deep pines, and the river's low gurgling faintly disturbed the air.

11. At times, immense bowlders, breaking from the summits, rolled down, thundering, and filling the whole valley with their loud reverberations. The rock mountains are the great feature,— indeed, they are Yosemite. • The nine granite walls, which range in altitude from three to six thousand feet, are the most striking examples on the globe, of the masonry of Nature. Their dimensions are so vast that they utterly outrun our ordinary standards of comparison.

12. When we speak of a wall twenty-five feet high, we convey some definite impression; but to speak of one three thousand feet high, only bewilders. So, at first, these stupendous walls painfully confuse the mind. By degrees, day after day, the sight of them clears it, until, at last, one receives a just impression of their solemn immensity.

13. Cathedral Rocks have two turrets, and look like some Titanic religious pile. Sentinel Rock towers

1 The Titans were fabled giants of ancient mythology, and hence Titanic is often used to represent anything of vast proportions.

alone, grand and hoary. The South Dome, a mile high, is really a semi-dome. Cleft from top to bottom, one half

of it went on the other side of the chasm and disap peared, when the great mountains were rent in twain. The gigantic North Dome is as round and perfect as the cupola of the National Capitol.

14. Three Brothers is a triple-pointed mass of solid granite. All these rocks, and scores of lesser ones which would be noticeable anywhere else in the world, exhibit vegetation; hardy cedars, thrusting roots into the imperceptible crevices of their upright sides-apparently growing out of unbroken stone—have braved, a thousand years, the battle and the breeze.

15. El Capitan is grandest of all. No tuft or beard shades or fringes its closely shaven face. No tenacious vine, even, can fasten its tendrils, to climb that smooth, seamless, stupendous wall. There it will stand, — grandeur, massiveness, indestructibility, till "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat."

16. Climbing out of the valley, from Inspiration Point, we cast one longing, lingering look behind. Here is the best comprehensive view, not of separate features, but of the whole. This vast, open cathedral, which would hold fifty millions of worshipers, is true to the ancient imperious maxim of architecture, its mean width about equals the average height of its walls.

17. Our eyes, now adjusted to its distances and dimensions, were no longer pained by the amazing spectacle. At last, we turned away from this sublimest page in all the book of nature. I think few can come from its study without hearts more humble and reverent, lives more worthy and loyal.

18. Yosemite Valley is four thousand feet above sea level. After climbing out, and repassing Inspiration Point, we still ascend; and then ride for several miles at an altitude of about eight thousand feet. Here, where snow is sometimes twenty feet deep, are meadows of richest grass and brightest flowers. The pyramidal, slender pine abounds, frequently two hundred feet high, its trunk and branches gorgeous with yellow moss.