88 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



Sierra Club camp, and saw roughly dressed figures flitting 

 under the trees, or eating supper from gray plates as 

 they sat on the ground. And we washed oif some of 

 the dust at the river, found friends and food and a place 

 to camp, rolled out our sleeping-bags on the grass under 

 an oak-tree, and said good-night to the peering stars. 



The week in the Valley that followed brought a sense 

 of close intimacy with the grand old earth; we seemed 

 to share in her highest lyric moods. For however nature 

 may brood or smile or grieve, or be angry or serene, in 

 the rest of the world, here in this sunken magic Valley 

 she chooses to exult, to build a bower for her majesty 

 and sing and shout and be glad. We grew aware as 

 never before of her splendor and joy; we saw it in the 

 green of the meadows and woods, in the sparkling white 

 of the granite domes; and we heard it in the race of 

 cascades, in the tumult of an hundred waterfalls. 



The most potent revelation she granted me was this 

 of the beauty of falling waters. Their unimaginable 

 variety seemed beyond the power of even divine invention. 

 Out of a crevice in the rocks a thin little film of lace 

 would flutter and lose itself in the sun ; or a heavier mass 

 of gleaming foam would drape the mountain with clouds 

 in its leap of a thousand feet to the river. Along a mad 

 path of precipices whimsical Illilouette dashes like some 

 gay Ariel, singing as it flies. And down to the high 

 crest of Nevada Fall come the melted snows of a whole 

 mountain range — a mighty mass of raging waters that 

 shake the earth with their plunge. Seven hundred feet 

 Nevada leaps in a curve that breaks a little near the top 

 and plumes outward; and then the great wild torrent 

 gathers itself together in the clear green depths of 

 Emerald Pool, skims madly along the Silver Apron, and 

 at last, over the solid granite shelf of Vernal, plunges 

 another three hundred feet with a mass and weight and 

 thunderous roar that only Niagara can surpass. 



But the beauty of the Yosemite Valley has been sound- 

 ed and painted often enough ; it is not the purpose of this 



