162 MY LIFE [Chap. 



spent roaming about the valley itself and some of its lower 

 precipices, looking after its flowers, and pondering over its 

 strange, wild, majestic beauty and the mode of its formation. 

 On the latter point I have given my views in an article on 

 "Inaccessible Valleys," reprinted in my "Studies." The 

 hotel dining-room looks out upon the Yosemite Falls, which, 

 seen one behind the other, have the appearance of a single 

 broken cascade of more than two thousand five hundred feet. 

 I walked up about a thousand feet to get a nearer view of the 

 upper fall, which, in its ever-changing vapour-streams and 

 water-rockets, is wonderfully beautiful. To enjoy this valley 

 and its surroundings in perfection, a small party should come 

 with baggage-mules and tents, as early in the season as pos- 

 sible when the falls are at their grandest and the flowers in 

 their spring beauty, and where, by camping at different stations 

 in the valley and in the mountains and valleys around it, all 

 its wonderful scenes of grandeur and beauty could be explored 

 and enjoyed. It is one of the regrets of my American tour 

 that I was unable to do this. 



Returning from the Nevada Falls on foot, I had the 

 advantage of passing close to the lower Vernal Fall, where a 

 natural parapet of rock enables one to look over and almost 

 touch the water at the brink of the fall, which shoots clear of 

 the rock and falls four hundred feet. Here, with great skill 

 and daring, a series of ladders has been constructed from 

 ledge to ledge to near the foot of the fall, whence a tho- 

 roughly alpine path leads down to the main valley. Growing 

 in clefts of the rock, and wetted by the spray of the fall, was 

 the beautiful Pentstemon Nezvberryi — a dwarf shrub with 

 deep-red flowers, more like those of some ericaceous plant 

 than a pentstemon. On the return journey I noted several 

 interesting plants. At Crockett's (where we dined), a little 

 beyond the summit, there was a vase full of the beautiful 

 orchis Cypripedium montanum, which they told me grew in 

 the bogs near ; and I also found the brilliant scarlet Silene 

 Calif ornica. Lower down, the Calochortus ventistus was abun- 

 dant and in richly varied colour, the curious BrodicBa volubilis, 

 and the handsome blue B. grandiflora. 



