Down Tenaya Canon. 



i6i 



thirty-five hundred, increasing to five thousand feet at 

 the Yosemite Valley end, while the width at top and 

 bottom of the gorge decreases from what it was in Glacial 

 Valley — at the bottom especially. 



This valley is about half a mile long. At its head is 

 the 600-foot fall spoken of. Then comes a thirty-foot 

 fall in two steps, though probably appearing as a single 

 leap in the spring — then a Silver Apron in August or a 

 waterfall in June about two hundred feet long, with 

 boiling rapids and cascades intervening. In a small grove 

 of pines I started a flock of noble grouse as I waded 

 along in the narrow river channel, and saw great vermil- 

 ion clusters of ripening chokecherries. I felt like one 

 walking behind the targets at rifle practice and was in 

 somewhat of a hurry that morning to get out of range 

 of a possible resumption of that reckless boulder practice. 



The creek bed soon changed to a barren V-flume-like 

 condition. On one side was the glassy granite ascending 

 uninterruptedly at an uncKmbable angle for two thousand 

 feet or more to Clouds Rest. On the other side were 

 loose boulders and granite gravel in a state of very un- 

 stable equilibrium and starting dangerous avalanches of 

 rocks and dust at slight disturbances. Progress was hard 

 here, as wading in the stream was out of the question on 

 account of its swiftness. It had its compensations, how- 

 ever, for I found a mass of last winter's ice in a fissure 

 on the way, and, sitting down in the shade of an immense 

 monolith bridging the stream, crunched contentedly away 

 at it for half an hour with the temperature about no 

 degrees all around me and no wind. My happy day- 

 dreams were rudely disturbed by a huge slab of granite 

 starting grinding down the incline beside my resting place 

 and causing me to seize my belongings and flee. Soon 

 after leaving this treat of snow I came to a point in the 

 journey of which Mr. Gibbs said: "The stream suddenly 

 plunged into an extremely narrow gorge. We seemed to 

 have reached the final jumping-off place. It was as im- 

 possible to climb out of the canon as to go back, and to 



