TIME AND CHANGE 
are almost identical in their main features, though 
the Merced Yosemite is the widest of the three. 
Each of them is a tremendous chasm in the granite 
rock, with nearly vertical walls, domes, El Capitans, 
and Sentinel and Cathedral Rocks, and waterfalls 
— all modeled on the same general plan. I believe 
there is nothing just like this trio of Yosemites any- 
where else on the globe. 
Guided by one’s ordinary sense or judgment alone, 
one’s judgment as developed and disciplined by the . 
everyday affairs of life and the everyday course 
of nature, one would say on beholding Yosemite 
that here is the work of exceptional and extraor- 
dinary agents or world-building forces. It is as sur- 
prising and exceptional as would be a cathedral in 
a village street, or a gigantic sequoia in a grove of 
our balsam firs. The approach to it up the Merced 
River does not prepare one for any such astonishing 
spectacle as awaits one. The rushing, foaming 
water amid the tumbled confusion of huge granite 
rocks and the open V-shaped valley, are nothing 
very remarkable or unusual. Then suddenly you are 
on the threshold of this hall of the elder gods. De- 
mons and furies might lurk in the valley below, but 
here is the abode of the serene, beneficent Olympian 
deities. All is so calm, so hushed, so friendly, yet so 
towering, so stupendous, so unspeakably beautiful. 
You are in a mansion carved out of the granite 
foundations of the earth, with walls two or three 
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