THE YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 83 



all the Sierra scenery, — the deepest sections of 

 the famous canons, of which the Yosemite Val- 

 ley, Hetch-Hetchy Valley, and many smaller 

 ones are wider portions, with level parklike floors 

 and walls of immense height and grandeur of 

 sculpture. This middle region holds also the 

 greater number of the beautiful glacier lakes 

 and glacier meadows, the great granite domes, 

 and the most brilliant and most extensive of the 

 glacier pavements. And though in large part it 

 is severely rocky and bare, it is still rich in trees. 

 The magnificent silver fir (Abies magnified), 

 which ranks with the giants, forms a continuous 

 belt across the park above the pines at an eleva- 

 tion of from seven to nine thousand feet, and 

 north and south of the park boundaries to the 

 extremities of the range, only slightly interrupted 

 by the main canons. The two-leaved or tama- 

 rack pine makes another less regular belt along 

 the upper margin of the region, while between 

 these two belts, and mingling with them, in 

 groves or scattered, are the mountain hemlock, 

 the most graceful of evergreens ; the noble 

 mountain pine ; the Jeffrey form of the yellow 

 pine, with big cones and long needles ; and the 

 brown, burly, sturdy Western juniper. All these, 

 except the juniper, which grows on bald rocks, 

 have plenty of flowery brush about them, and 

 gardens in open spaces. 



Here, too, lies the broad, shining, heavily 



