CHAPTER III 



THE YOSEMITB NATIONAL PARK 



Of all the mountain ranges I have climbed, I 

 like the Sierra Nevada the best. Though ex- 

 tremely rugged, with its main features on the 

 grandest scale in height and depth, it is never- 

 theless easy of access and hospitable; and its 

 marvelous beauty, displayed in striking and al- 

 luring forms, wooes the admiring wanderer on 

 and on, higher and higher, charmed and en- 

 chanted. Benevolent, solemn, fateful, pervaded 

 with divine light, every landscape glows like a 

 countenance hallowed in eternal repose ; and 

 every one of its living creatures, clad in flesh 

 and leaves, and every crystal of its rocks, whether 

 on the surface shining in the sun or buried miles 

 deep in what we call darkness, is throbbing and 

 pulsing with the heartbeats of God. All the 

 world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra 

 seems to get more light than other mountains. 

 The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with 

 magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines 

 from base to summit, — the rocks, streams, lakes, 

 glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir 



