Book Reviezus. 



293 



BOOK REVIEWS. 



Edited by Marion Randall Parsons. 



"The a new book by Mr. Muir brings to his Sierra 



YosEMiTE.""^ Club friends much of that feehng of joyful an- 

 ticipation with which we enter upon an outing 

 into the High Sierra. From its pages we are sure to gain a sense 

 of actual contact with the mountain world. We are sure to find 

 in it passages that with a few simple words will bring some 

 forgotten mountain picture flashing back to memory with all its 

 first glory renewed. This is particularly true of his recent vol- 

 ume, "The Yosemite." It is a treasure-house of wonderful pic- 

 tures of all the changing phases of the Yosemite year — of flood- 

 time, with "rejoicing flood waterfalls chanting together in jubilee 

 dress"; of Indian summer, and the "brooding, changeful days" 

 that come between it and winter, "when the leaf colors have 

 grown dim and the clouds come and go among the cliffs like 

 living creatures looking for work" ; of "the sunbeams streaming 

 through the snowy High Sierra passes" ; of "the sublime darkness 

 of storm nights, when all the lights are out." 



Mr. Muir's ten years' residence in the valley brought him many 

 remarkable experiences. He witnessed the effects of the suc- 

 cessive shocks of the great Inyo earthquake, and confirmed the 

 theory he had formed as to the origin of earthquake taluses by 

 the actual formation of one before his eyes. He saw the valley 

 in flood, when more than a hundred new waterfalls poured over 

 the cliffs. He crept behind Yosemite Fall when its waters were 

 blown out from the cliff by the wind, only to be caught there by 

 a returning gust and pelted with "a dash of spent comets, thin and 

 harm.less-looking in the distance, but feeling desperately solid 

 and stony when they struck my shoulders." 



A chapter of particular interest, and one which abounds in 

 passages of uncommon beauty, is that devoted to "Ancient 

 Yosemite Glaciers" : "Water rivers work openly where people 

 dwell, and so does the rain, and the sea, thundering on all the 

 shores of the world ; and the universal ocean of air, though in- 

 visible, speaks aloud in a thousand voices and explains its modes 

 of working and its power. But glaciers, back in their v/hite 



*The Yosemite. By John Muir. The Century Co. 1912. 284 pages. 

 Price, $2.40 net; postage, 16 cents. 



