366 IITVKR " MERCED." 



turesque ; but as there are no roses without thorns, so 

 here swarms of large black mostjuitoes marred the 

 pleasure ot* perfect i-epose which the surroundings 

 otherwise favoured. Some of the other eminences gird- 

 ing the valley are the El Capitano, 3,300 feet, Cathedral 

 Rocks, 2,600 feet. The Brothers, 3,800 feet, and many 

 of less altitute, thickly covered below with species of 

 pine, oak, and birch. 



At Mr. Black's Hotel, situated within a hundred 

 yards of the Merced, whose waters of melted snow 

 furnished me with a delicious bath, the accommodation 

 was of primitive simplicity, and tbe visitors now daily 

 increasing in numbers, all sorts of shifts had to be 

 devised to house them. On the day I left there were 

 no less than sixty-four strangers, and amongst them 

 several ladies, in true bloomer costume, sitting their 

 horses astride, in imitation of the stronger sex. During 

 my rambles I met with a great many quails hugging 

 the ground, like their Egyptian cousins, and as easily 

 caught, to furnish the breakfast-table. 



It seems strange that this valley should have been 

 a sealed book to the Americans until about thirty years 

 ago, when, — so the story goes, — an Indian chief be- 

 trayed his tribe, whose home and place of concealment 

 it had hitherto been, on being threatened with caj^ital 

 punishment for depredations they had committed upon 



