CHAPTER XVI 

 YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 



Incomparable Yosemite! No words are adequate. To 

 attempt to write a description of the Yosemite Valley is to 

 attempt to talk about the untalkaboutable! There is no such 

 thing as exaggerating in trying to express the grandeur and 

 magnificence of this vast chasm carved in the hard granite 

 rocks. Superlative adjectives become empty and fall flat in 

 attempted description. 



Grandeur and Sublimity are Measured by 

 the Vision of the Beholder 



True it is that the stupendousness, the sublime grandeur, 

 the vastness of what the beholder looks upon, is circumscribed 

 by the mental horizon of the observer. Someone has wisely 

 said that he who does not see beyond the rocks does not see the 

 rocks. He who sees only granite walls and a deep gash cut in 

 the rocks by erosion of streams of water and the plucking of 

 glacier ice, with water descending the walls in cascades in 

 response to the law of falling bodies, does not see Yosemite. 

 He sees only granite and the work of erosion. A man said to 

 have been an Irishman (I cannot vouch for his nationality) 

 was standing in view of the great brink of Niagara Falls when 

 a stranger who stood viewing in awe the great cataract re- 

 marked upon the overwhelming grandeur of the scene. The 

 man said, as he stood looking at the tremendous cataract, 

 "Well, I do not see what is to prevent the water from going 



over! 



The gorge or valley that is called Yosemite is indeed a gash 

 cut in the rocks by running water and moving glacier ice, and 

 there is nothing to prevent the water of tributary streams that 

 come to the edge of the chasm from falling down to the floor 



