[From the Pi'ocecdingB of the California Academy of Sciences, September 15th, 1878.] 



Eemarks on the Upper Tuolumne Canon. 



BY ROBERT E. C. STKARN3. 



Recent numbers of the Overland Monthly/ have contained con- 

 tributions by Mr. John Muir, descriptive of the upper valley of the 

 Tuolumne, and that portion of said valley known as the Hetch- 

 Hetchy. 



It is gratifying to know that Mr. Muir has found the valley not 

 difficult of access, though at one time supposed to be so, after a 

 partial effort made from an inaccessible point, by Mr. Clarence 

 King. 



In the above publication for August last, Mr. Muir says : 



"Sometime in August, in the year 1869, in following the river three or four 

 miles below the Soda Springs, I obtuined a partial view of the Great Tuolumne 

 Canon, before I had heard of its existence. The following winter I read what 

 the State Geologist wrote concerning it." 



He here quotes from Prof. Whitney as follows : 



" The river enters a canon which is about twenty miles long, and probably 

 inaccessible through its entire length. * * * It certainly cannot be entered from 

 its head. Mr. King followed this canon down as far as he could, to where the 

 river precipitated itself down in a grand fall, over a mass of rock so rounded on 

 the edge that it was impossible for him to approach near enough to look over. 

 Where the canon opens out again twenty miles below, so as to be accessible, a 

 remarkable counterpart to Yosemite is found, called the Hetch-Hetchy Valley. 

 * * * * Between this and Soda Springs there is a descent in the river of 

 4,500 feet ; and what grand water-falls and stupendous scenery there may be 

 here it is not easy to say. * * * Adventurous climbers * * « * should try to 

 penetrate into this unknown gorge, which perhaps may admit of being entered 

 through some of the side canons coming in from the north." 



Mr. Muir here resumes : 



" Since that time I have entered the Great Cafion from the north by three dif- 

 ferent side canons, and have passed through from end to end, entering at the 

 Hetcb-Hetdhy Valley and coming out at the Big Msadowa, below the Soda 



