Ill 



THE SPELL OF THE YOSEMITE 



YOSEMITE won my heart at once, as it seems 

 to win the hearts of all who visit it. In my 

 case many things helped to do it, but I am sure a 

 robin, the first I had seen since leaving home, did 

 his part. He struck the right note, he brought the 

 scene home to me, he supplied the link of association. 

 There he was, running over the grass or perching 

 on the fence, or singing from a tree-top in the old 

 familiar way. Where the robin is at home, there at 

 home am I. But many other things helped to win 

 my heart to the Yosemite — the whole character of 

 the scene, not only its beauty and sublimity, but the 

 air of peace and protection, and of homelike seclu- 

 sion that pervades it; the charm of a nook, a retreat, 

 combined with the power and grandeur of nature 

 in her sternest moods. 



After passing from the hotel at El Portal along 

 the foaming and roaring Merced River, and amid 

 the tumbled confusion of enormous granite bould- 

 ers shaken down from the cliffs above, you cross the 

 threshold of the great valley as into some vast house 

 or hall carved out of the mountains, and at once feel 



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