My First Summer 



From garden to garden, ridge to ridge, I 

 drifted enchanted, now on my knees gazing 

 into the face of a daisy, now climbing again 

 and again among the purple and azure flow- 

 ers of the hemlocks, now down into the 

 treasuries of the snow, or gazing afar over 

 domes and peaks, lakes and woods, and the 

 billowy glaciated fields of the upper Tuo- 

 lumne, and trying to sketch them. In the 

 midst of such beauty, pierced with its rays, 

 one's body is all one tingling palate. Who 

 would n't be a mountaineer ! Up here all 

 the world's prizes seem nothing. 



The largest of the many glacier lakes in 

 sight, and the one with the finest shore 

 scenery, is Tenaya, about a mile long, with 

 an imposing mountain dipping its feet into 

 it on the south side, Cathedral Peak a few 

 miles above its head, many smooth swell- 

 ing rock-waves and domes on the north, 

 and in the distance southward a multitude 

 of snowy peaks, the fountain-heads of riv- 

 ers. Lake Hoffman lies shimmering be- 



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