ters seventy degrees, doors and windows are wide open, and there is no 

 fire in the house. Every window reached by the sunshine becomes a 

 radiator of the most agreeable kind of warmth. But as old Sol bids an 

 early, glowing goodnight we will close doors and windows and enjoy the 

 fire-light the more for its added charm of novelty, an answer, as it were, to 

 the ever-present human demand for change. 



Christmas day was very much like to-day, a trifle warmer if at all 

 different. During Thanksgiving week the thermometer on the porch regis- 

 tered from seventy— five to eighty degrees every afternoon. By the middle 

 of February the spring plowing will be well under way, and the winter, 

 which never really came, will be gone. And then a little later come troops 

 of summer visitors, most of whom are wholly unaware of the fact that the 

 climatic and other charms to which in summer Santa Cruz bids them 

 succumb are offering all year round, varied only sufficiently to keep interest 

 and enjoyment keen. 



YOSEMITE IN WINTER 



li. E. DANLEY 



THE completion of a rail route from Merced to the Yosemite National 

 Park line within the past yoar brings Yosemite into close communi- 

 cation by the best of transportation facilities. The new route to 

 Yosemite traverses the entire course of the picturesque Merced 

 River Canon from the foothills to the very portal of Yosemite. The river 

 has its source in the perpetual snows of the high Sierras, and by two great 

 leaps, one over the Nevada, and the other over Vernal, forms two of the 

 celebrated waterfalls of Yosemite and makes its descent to the floor of 

 the valley. Thence it passes between the rocky, mountainous walls of 

 the canon, taking on new life and vigor as it rushes onward over rocks 

 and rapids, enlarged from time to time by tributary streams. It is along 

 this wild, enchanting course that the tourist glides so smoothly and com- 

 fortably, the ever-present river always within a stone's throw of the car 

 window. It is an ideal trip, eighty miles of mountain scenery, a most 

 fascinating journey. Its beauties and delights are eclipsed only by the_ _ 

 more sublime grandeurs of Yosemite itself. filBciufl LSbnuqr 



The valley is thus made accessible the year round, winter and summer, ' 



and a new era of progress and popularity opens for Yosemite with its 

 delights and pleasures for the tourist doubled by extending his opportunity 

 to see it from one season to the next without interruption. The thousands 

 who view Yosemite in summer time with its verdure of tree and mountain 

 attest its grandeur. Writers have sought to describe it, poets endeavor 

 to reduce its sentiments to verse, artists study it in their ardent desire 

 to represent on canvas, but the half of its beauties have never been told. 

 It is indescribable. In its assemblage of sheer walls of great height, impos- 

 ing peaks, and the number of its stupendous waterfalls Yosemite is unique. 

 Each eminence and each waterfall the mind instinctively endows with 

 attributes of life and power. El Capitan, rising abruptly at the entrance 

 3,300 feet high, stands as the mighty guardian of the valley, while on the 

 opposite side the beautiful Bridal Veil is the first waterfall to entrance the 

 holder, 940 feet of water and mist with its rainbow effects, and thus is 

 formed the gates of Yosemite, and then the view unfolds itself in grand 

 succession, perfect in all parts. Cathedral Rock and Spires on the right 

 inspire awe and reverence. Eaejie Peak on the left looms up and spans 

 from the sordid earth to the vaulted sky. Sentinel Rock to the right forms 

 the watch-tower from which the alarm may be spread from peak to peak. 

 Again, to the left the world-famed Yosemite Falls attract the attention 

 by the roar and thunder of the river as it strikes the base sixteen hundred 

 feet below, and the report echoes back and forth like the boom, of distant 



