The Hetch-Hetchy Valley. 215 



The correspondence between the Hetch-Hetchy walls 

 in their trends, sculpture, physical structure, and general 

 arrangement of the main rock-masses has excited the 

 wondering admiration of every observer. We have seen 

 that the El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks occupy the 

 same relative positions in both valleys, so also do their 

 Yosemite Points and North Domes. Again that part of 

 Yosemite Fall has two horizontal benches timbered v/ith 

 the Yosemite north wall immediately to the east of the 

 gold-cup oak at about 500 and 1,500 feet above the floor. 

 Two benches similarly situated and timbered occur on 

 the same relative portion of the Hetch-Hetchy north 

 wall, to the east of Wapama Fall, and on no other. The 

 Yosemite is bounded at the head by the great Half 

 Dome. Hetch-Hetchy is bounded in the same way, 

 though its head rock is far less wonderful and sublime 

 in form. 



The floor of the valley is about three and a half miles 

 long and from a fourth to half a mile wide. The lower 

 portion is mostly a level meadow about a mile long with 

 the trees restricted to the sides, and partially separated 

 from the upper forested portion by a low bar of glacier- 

 polished granite, across which the river breaks in 

 rapids. 



The principal trees are the yellow and sugar pines, 

 Sabine pine, incense cedar, Douglas spruce, silver fir, 

 the California and gold-cup oaks. Balm of Gilead poplar, 

 Nuttall's flowering dogwood, alder, maple, laurel, tumion, 

 etc. The most abundant and influential are the great 

 yellow pines, the tallest over 200 feet in height, and the 

 oaks with massive rugged trunks four to six or seven 

 feet in diameter, and broad arching heads, assembled in 

 magnificent groves. The shrubs forming conspicuous 

 flowery clumps and tangles are manzanita, azalea, spiraea, 

 brier-rose, ceanothus, calycanthus, philadelphus, wild 

 cherry, etc.; with abundance of showy and fragrant 

 herbaceous plants growing about them, or out in the 

 open in beds by themselves — lilies, Mariposa tulips, bro- 



