1892] The Yosemite 



and in "a free fight'* a friend of his showed himself cheerful 

 so competent that "for three weeks afterward men f f 



j . i j A f " e 



were seen getting up around in the woods. An- 

 other yarn figured the mountain sheep or Big Horn, 

 the rams of which are currently reputed to be able 

 to plunge down a precipice, strike on their enormous 

 prongs, and turn a somersault in safety. According 

 to my informant a Big Horn once leaped off the 

 edge of a chasm in the usual fashion of his kind. 

 But halfway down, spying below a camp of hunters 

 by a spring, he immediately turned over in midair, 

 and was carried back to the top by momentum! 



In this connection I am reminded of a fact I have 

 frequently observed, which is that some Easterners 

 readily believe anything of California except what 

 is true. 



The road out of Wawona winds for miles down 

 through superb forests which at Inspiration Point 

 give way to reveal the stupendous panorama of the 

 Yosemite, the delight of every geologist since John 

 Muir first made known its grandeur. In general it 

 has been compared, not inappropriately, to the 

 valley of Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland. 

 But its greatest cliffs El Capitan and the Half 

 Dome are higher than Miirren; its falls Yo- 

 semite, Nevada, Vernal, Bridal Veil, and Illilouette 

 mostly far exceed in volume, and some of them 

 in height, the misty Staubbach and the turbid 

 Schmadribach charged with glacial mud. More- 

 over, the view from Glacier Point far excels that 

 from Miirren or from any other spot in Switzerland 

 in its long-range disclosure of 200 square miles of 

 ice-worn granite, extending from Cathedral Peak 



3 



