4 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



and there they still make delightful pathways for the 

 mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands 

 to the highest icy fountains, as a kind of mountain 

 streets full of charming life and light, graded and 

 sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting, 

 throughout all their courses, a rich variety of novel 

 and attractive scenery, the most attractive that has 

 yet been discovered in the mountain-ranges of the 

 world. 



In many places, especially in the middle region 

 of the western flank of the range, the main canons 

 widen into spacious valleys or parks, diversified 

 like artificial landscape-gardens, with charming 

 groves and meadows, and thickets of blooming 

 bushes, while the lofty, retiring walls, infinitely 

 varied in form and sculpture, are fringed with ferns, 

 flowering-plants of many species, oaks, and ever 

 greens, which find anchorage on a thousand narrow 

 steps and benches; while the whole is enlivened 

 and made glorious with rejoicing streams that 

 come dancing and foaming over the sunny brows 

 of the cliffs to join the shining river that flows in 

 tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of 

 them. 



The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite 

 kind are made up of rocks mountains in size, partly 

 separated from each other by narrow gorges and 

 side-canons; and they are so sheer in front, and so 

 compactly built together on a level floor, that, com 

 prehensively seen, the parks they inclose look like 

 immense halls or temples lighted from above. 

 Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean 

 back in majestic repose; others, absolutely sheer, 



