204 Sequoia Forests. : [ ZOE 
Concerning the utility of the region embraced in these limits as 
the best natural reservoir for the storage of waters needed for irriga- 
tion, we need not dwell. But for a moment let me touch on the 
suitability of the country for a park because of its charming natural 
attractions. You need hardly be reminded of this. The heart of 
the Sierra culminating in Mount Whitney affords grand scenery of 
peculiar charm and great variety. Here are three Yosemites rival- 
ing their noted prototype in many features, with a little world of 
_ wonders clustering around the headwaters of Kern, Kaweah and 
King’s rivers. We will simply mention the Grand Cafion of the 
Kern, where, for twenty miles, the mad waters of the river are 
walled in with the continuous battlements of the California Alps, 
crowned with nameless and unnumbered domes and_ towers. 
Then, only a few miles across the divide, extends the cafion of 
King’s River with its wealth of impressive scenery, and some 
eight miles farther to the north lies the valley of Tehipitee—the gem 
of the Sierra—with its wonderous dome of rock rising in rounded 
majesty some 6,000 feet from the level of the river-cleft meadow at 
its feet. Yet a view of the most impressive and characteristic 
scenery of the region is to be earned by scaling one of the lofty 
peaks of the Kaweah Range. At least a hundred peaks here rise 
to altitudes exceeding 10,000 feet. One never can forget the im- 
pression, who has once looked out over the California Alps from the 
pinnacle of Miners’ Peak. As I once before said, in describing this 
scene: ‘Here amid the companionship of peaks one beholds 
with speechless wonder the spectacle beyond. No satisfactory view 
of the Whitney Range can be found from the San Joaquin plains. 
The intervening Kaweah Range veils the view of the higher peaks 
beyond. But here, standing on the crest of the Kaweah Sierra 
one looks across the Grand Cafion of the Kern and the encircling 
wilderness of crags and peaks is beyond the power of pen to de- 
scribe. Mounts Monache, Whitney, Williamson, Tyndall, Kaweah 
and a hundred nameless peaks—the crown of our country—have 
pierced the mantle of green that clothes the cafions below and are 
piled into the very sky, jagged and bald, and bleak and hoary—a 
wilderness of eternal desolation.’’ 
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