From end to end of Yosemite, there was silence. The tourists were gone. For several weeks preceding our visit the out-going coaches had been loaded down with passengers, whilst those going towards the valley were either empty or had, perchance, a stray, belated sight-seer or two like ourselves. It was a matter of congratulation with us that, with the exception of one other and ourselves, our host had but an empty house. From end to end of the matchless and deserted valley there was silence and-poetry.

What are one's sensations on first beholding the Yosemite Valley? No, I am not going to declaim. Much of the scenery of the Yosemite impressed me with its sublimity, I do not wish to rhapsodize over it. There is that which is so simple, almost forbidding, in its stupenduous architecture, as brings to silence all crude bursts of enthusiasm.

who would rightly describe the place, should speak in words strong and simple, should be able to put into his lines something of "solemn tenor and deep organ-tones," and, as befits the theme, mold into them something of "that large utterance of the early gods." Here it is ungarnished; the valley is from six to seven miles in length, and from onehalf to one mile in width. On its level floor are clusters of pine and balsam and oak and thickets of

azalea and laurel. Through it winds a clear, sparkling stream-the Merced on either side of the valley are piled-up walls of granite to an aver age height of between three and four thousand feet; in some places they are smooth, perpendicular, unbroken; at others, splintered into crags or rounded into massive domes, and over the edges of the walls torrents come pouring down, and the smoke from Indian wigwams rises up through the trees. On our left, looking up the valley, stands El Capitan; on the right, The Graces, with the falling water of The Bridal Veil. In the middle distance are the Glacier Point, the Royal Arches, the North and South Domes, with Cloud's Rest beyond them, dim and gray. We had asked the driver, "Shall we see the valley by sunset?" and he had answered in the affirmative. Experience enabled him to time the horses to the minute, in reaching any given point on the road. So closely are the possi bilities of the horses and the road's gauge that a delay of ten to fifteen minutes, in starting, is difficult to make up in a distance of thirty miles or more. This is a digression, however; we were speaking of the first view. All crimson atop was the last rays of sunlight, and mantled in shadow below, the vast walls made a sight of the utmost beauty.

Crack went the whip; down the grade we sped. The valley seemed

to be rising to meet us, and the mountain tops going upward. Rattle-te-bang, across torrent beds, spinning under archways of trees, and out again with a gusto. So we descended into the narrow valley, while its granite walls shot up to an unearthly stature.

Would the traveler carry away with him a true conception of the Valley of the Grizzly Bear? Then let him climb the Glacier Point. From that height the valley appears level as a floor; the winding Mercea like a line that is drawn with the finger, the oaks and pines like round, small dots-but what is the use? That whole scene is too stupendous to be recalled by such hackneyed similies. It was several hours before I could realize what a space it meant. There it all lay: Yosemite Valley, Tenaya Canyon, Indian Pass, Little Yosemite, that wilderness of granite, Cloud's Rest. There, all dream-like through autumn haze, stood the mass of El Capitan, out of whose ribs material enough for the building of all the cities of the world could be taken, the massy North Dome, that awful pile, the South or Half Dome, the Three Brothers, Cathedral Rock, The Sentinel, The Graces, and the wondrous Cathedral Spires. There lay Mirror Lake, there hung the waterfalls. Beyond Cloud's Rest were dense pine woods, blue with distance, and Mounts Hoffman, Lyell, and Star King, and showing fainter and fainter, as they receded from sight, peak after peak of the high Sierras.

Standing in the valley we favor the thought that Yosemite owes its origin to some sudden earthquake shock, but as seen from above, we acknowledge the claim of the ancient glaciers. Po-ho-no, Spirit of the Evil Wind; Pi-na-ack, Cataract of Diamonds; Yo-in-ye, the Mean

dering; such are the suggestive titles given by the native Indians to these falls now known as the Bridal Veil, the Vernal, and the Nevada Falls, Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah, Great Chief of the Valley; Tis-sa-ack, the Goddess; Ah-wi-yah, the Sleeping Water, these titles apply to El Capitan, the Half Dome, and Mirror Lake. And the many other Indian names are equally felicitious. When we had seen Po-ho-no, Spirit of the Evil Wind, dissipated into mist dust, ere half way down, and made a cloud whereon the rainbows gleamed and quivered; when we had lain by the pools of the Merced and watched the speckled trout lazily waving his delicate fins; when we had listened to the chant of the squaws and watched the Indian boys bathing, amid stream, and had seen Loya, the Sentinel, with his head. amid the stars-then we were in fit mood to believe that even the poor Digger Indian was able to feel the mystery of the unseen forces of na

ture.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, for once laying aside his stateliness, bears witness to the grandeur of the Yosemite Valley in a genuinely Yankee remark, "This is the only place I have ever seen in my life that quite comes up to the brag." Lying in the shadow of a broad-armed oak, near the base of the Washington Column, our fellow-lodger repeated for me, in a rich and deeply sonorous voice, Burns "A Man's a Man for a' that.” I am afraid that later on, I offended my friend who recited those lines so feelingly, by a somewhat flippant answer concerning the Digger Indians. "Nae, nae, if ye canna feel it noo, mon, ye are nae poet." However that may be, I feel somewhat different from him who, viewing the Yosemite from the brow of the hill, turned away in contempt, pronounc