
Oh! the joy of the trai! 
imagine the comfort and warmth of the 
sleeping-bag. ‘The first night we spent in a 
house after the trip was over, the friend 
who was with me was unable to stand the 
‘“squashiness’”? and, what seemed to her, 
the tremendous elevation of her bed. So 
she got up, spread her bag on the floor, got 
into it and went right to sleep. 
The only remaining item to complete the 
personal camping outfit is the “‘dunnage- 
bag.” That is a brown canvas bag that 
looks like a laundry-bag with a rope around 
the top to draw it together. Your sleeping- 
bag and clothes are dumped into this, the 
rope drawn up and tied, and you are ready 
to start. 
The way, from a scenic standpoint, to get 
into the big mountains of the Sierra is to 
enter by way of the Yosemite Valley. You 
take a sleeper from San Francisco. Early 
in the morning you tumble out of the train 
to find yourself in a small village, where you 
get breakfast and discard the few remaining 
conventional clothes you are wearing, leav- 
ing them in a suit-case at the station until 
called for. Then, in full camping costume, 
you climb onto one of the big, open stages 
that hold about twenty people each. For a 
day and a-half you ride, putting up at night 
at an inn that is in the heart of the woods 
and very near to one of the groves of famous 
sequoia trees. Each mile you drive you get 
higher up, the air grows bracing and full of 
the wondrous smell of fir and pine. 
The trees have grown to be giants, and 
you must throw your head way back to see 
their tops. There has been and will be no 
rain for some time, so there is plenty of dust. 
This is somewhat allayed, however, by the 
crude oil that has been sprinkled on the 
roads. At last, about three o’clock of the 
second day, you see a big opening in the 
woods, the driver reins in his horses, and 
you gaze, speechless, into the Yosemite 
Valley. Straight up from the floor of the 
valley on either side rise gigantic rock cliffs 
to the height of two or three thousand feet. 
El Capitan, a huge mass of weather-beaten, 
barren rock, guards the entrance. The 
floor of the valley seems a mass of waving 
tree tops, with here and there a glimpse of 
the gleaming Tuolumne River, like a silver 
