TIME AND CHANGE 



are almost identical in their main features, though 

 the Merced Yosemite is the widest of the three. 

 Each of them is a tremendous chasm in the granite 

 rock, with nearly vertical walls, domes, El Capitans, 

 and Sentinel and Cathedral Rocks, and waterfalls 

 — all modeled on the same general plan. I believe 

 there is nothing just like this trio of Yosemites any- 

 where else on the globe. 



Guided by one's ordinary sense or judgment alone, 

 one's judgment as developed and disciplined by the 

 everyday affairs of life and the everyday course 

 of nature, one would say on beholding Yosemite 

 that here is the work of exceptional and extraor- 

 dinary agents or world-building forces. It is as sur- 

 prising and exceptional as would be a cathedral in 

 a village street, or a gigantic sequoia in a grove of 

 our balsam firs. The approach to it up the Merced 

 River does not prepare one for any such astonishing 

 spectacle as awaits one. The rushing, foaming 

 water amid the tumbled confusion of huge granite 

 rocks and the open V-shaped valley, are nothing 

 very remarkable or unusual. Then suddenly you are 

 on the threshold of this hall of the elder gods. De- 

 mons and furies might lurk in the valley below, but 

 here is the abode of the serene, beneficent Olympian 

 deities. All is so calm, so hushed, so friendly, yet so 

 towering, so stupendous, so unspeakably beautiful. 

 You are in a mansion carved out of the granite 

 foundations of the earth, with walls two or three 



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