Chapter XV.In the Yosemite Valley.From the Calaveras Big Trees to the Yosemite is one hundred and eight miles, and it took me three days to make the journey. The wheelman, Mr. J. A. Hasley, whom I met the day I reached Denver, who made a good companion on the trip to Pike’s Peak and across the plains to Salt Lake City, and who bore the blazing hot sun of California as far as the Trees, there decided not to continue the trip farther. For several days it was evident he was beginning to lose interest in sight-seeing, after a month’s constant application to it, and when he had the misfortune to lose his purse with something over twenty dollars in it, he decided to get to San Francisco by the quickest and cheapest route, which was by the Stockton boat, an opposition line of steamers taking passengers for ten cents, a distance of one hundred miles. So now I am alone again. The first of the three days’ journey was used up in coasting most of the fifteen miles down to Murphy’s, over the same road we had worked so hard in getting up to the Big Trees, and then getting a few miles in a southerly direction beyond the Stanislaus River.During the afternoon, while riding along on the side of ahigh hill, I passed a sign, which read “500 yards to the Natural Bridge, the world’s greatest wonder, and don’t you forget that.” Believing it to be a fraud of some kind, I left the machine and walked down a steep narrow path to the bottom of a ravine, perhaps 500 feet below the level of the road. Here were two men clearing out the entrance to a cave from which ran a good-sized stream of water. The surroundings looked as if a land-slide had once choked up the ravine, but that the stream of water had finally worked its way through underneath the mass of rocks and earth, and had formed a tunnel perhaps four hundred feet long and twenty or thirty feet high. Water was constantly dripping from the roof of the tunnel, forming stalactites of various sizes and shapes. To more fully impress me with the importance of his discovery, the old bachelor who owned the place, stated that it had taken forty-two millions of years to bring the place into its present form and shape. Whether it had or not, I felt well paid for visiting a place of which I knew nothing until I saw the sign.The Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Rivers flow down from the Sierras in a westerly direction, and in going southerly from the Big Trees to the Yosemite, one must naturally cross them. The crossing is easy enough; there is no trouble about that. It is getting down to them that causes the trouble, and getting up away from them again. The profile of the route I took resembled an immense letter W. It is a thousand feet down to the Stanislaus River, and twelve hundred or more down to the Tuolumne, and the two rivers are but a few miles apart.The zigzag road down to the rivers is too steep and dangerous to coast, and once down, walking is the only way up again. When I came to the Tuolumne River, I believe I could have thrown a stone down to the suspension bridge, athousand feet or more below, and yet it took four miles of walking to get down to it, and after climbing up five miles farther, I could look across the valley about a mile and see where I had been three or four hours before. I would not believe it till I looked, but the thermometer was 105° down at the bridge. Notwithstanding all this there was something about such mountain scenery, combined with the roar of the river so far below, that compensated for the heat and fatigue. Probably half the entire distance between the Trees and the Valley had to be traveled afoot on the hot road, but there is another grand view of the Tuolumne River, and a small grove of big trees to vary the monotony of the last twenty miles of hill climbing.When we left Sacramento, it was with the vague impression that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty miles to the Yosemite, but the first day out the distance was reduced to below two hundred by some one of whom we made inquiries. We were entirely ignorant of the nearest route, but by making frequent inquiries we kept on, generally in the right direction. The second day the entire distance was further reduced to one hundred and twenty-five miles, then the distance from the Trees to the Valley was put at twenty-five miles by some one who knew it all, but such good news was not lasting, for the very next man who had “traveled over that section,” said it was one hundred and seventy-five miles between the two places.And so it was throughout the entire trip: First, we were almost there, then at night, perhaps fifty miles farther away than in the morning. Finally, after six days of hard work, with one object, the Yosemite constantly in view, the answer to an inquiry came back, “eight miles down to the hotel,” and in less than a mile, while rounding a bend in the road, the grandest sight I have lived to see, suddenly burst uponme. It was sudden, because I supposed it would be five miles farther before I should see anything but fine trees and bushes, and grand beyond description. I forgot my aching feet and tired legs, and walked along almost unconscious of them, down the zigzag road into the valley, which runs up in a northeasterly direction, the road entering it at the lower end.The word valley hardly describes it, for the sides are perpendicular and almost a mile high, and this immense chasm is ten miles long and hardly a mile wide. The roar of the Merced River, so many thousand feet almost perpendicularly below, is heard even before one gets a glimpse of the river itself or even the valley, and my first thought was, is there any bottom to this chasm. On the opposite side of the valley I recognized Bridal Veil Fall from the many views I had seen of it, and a little farther down the road, which runs dangerously near the edge of precipices four and five hundred feet high, El Capitan came suddenly into sight, the most prominent object to be seen in the whole valley from that point of view.It was quite dark when I reached the hotel, which is half way up the valley, and the next morning my feet were too tired to think of much hill climbing, so I walked up the valley about a mile where it seems to separate into two branches, and taking the right hand one, climbed up a rocky trail to the Vernal Falls. Here the Merced, a comparatively small stream, falls straight down three hundred and fifty feet, sending mist and spray up the sides of the rocks in all directions, making a roar that can be heard long before one gets in sight of the falls. “You can’t follow that trail up by the falls; we got wet through trying it,” said a couple of tourists whom I met just below the falls, and they started off on another trail two miles farther around. But I took the shorter route,up over slippery shelving rocks that would let one slide quickly down into the pool where the waters came thundering down from a height of perhaps thirty feet, and before I got through the shower of mist and spray, up to the ladders that lead to the top of the falls, I was wet through, too. Lying on the rocks, the warm sun soon dried my clothes, and after a good meal at Snow’s, a small hotel situated midway between the Vernal and Nevada Falls, I climbed up to the top of the Nevada Falls. Here the water comes rushing down over high rocks, goes through a narrow gorge under the bridge with a roar, and plunges over the cliff. Down a short distance, the water strikes a projecting rock, and the whole river is sent out with a twist into the air, one mass of white foam that spreads out into hundreds of little white rockets that never explode, but fade away into thin spray. Down farther, another projecting rock tears the water to pieces again and sends it shooting out into the air, till, when it reaches the bottom and has fallen a distance of fully seven hundred feet, there is scarcely anything left of the water but foam.All the afternoon I lay on the flat rock at the top of the falls, and after sleeping and writing by turns, and resting all the time, I became so accustomed to the roar that I hardly realized that the water was rushing by me and falling almost directly down seven hundred feet to the rocks below. The Cap of Liberty is a very appropriate name for a mass of granite that rises up over half a mile within a few rods of the top of the falls.The next morning, after a good night’s rest at Snow’s, where the roar of the falls makes a soothing sound, I started up the trail for Clouds Rest. “O you can’t miss your way. Just follow the trail,” is what everybody says, landlords, guides, ranchmen, and everybody of whom thequestion is asked: “Is there any trouble in finding the way?” This was the case in Colorado and it is so here, and one starts off on such trips with the impression that he has simply to follow his nose and he will get there. But it is the easiest thing in the world for a tenderfoot, like myself, to miss the way.I had gone nearly three miles up the only fresh trail there was to follow, when coming to a log hut I asked how far it was to Clouds Rest. “This is not the way. You missed the trail back there a mile and a half,” and so I turned back and hunted for an hour, climbed over boulders, small rocky ridges and fallen trees, tore one knee out of my trousers, ripped open my stockings, and was on the point of going back and giving up the whole trip, when I found what was the trail; but a heavy rain had completely obliterated the foot prints three days before and the trail itself was washed out of existence in many places. But up I started and walked in the direction of the peak for an hour or two, when the trail seemed to lead away from the object of my trip, and so I started straight up the side of the mountain, crawling up over rocks on my hands and knees, sometimes slipping back, but always struggling on, till I finally reached the top. Then how thankful I was that I had not turned back. The top of the peak is, perhaps, twenty by thirty feet in area, and is ten thousand feet above the sea. That is not very high compared with some mountain peaks, but it is six thousand feet above the valley, and as I write these words I can look down, almost straight down, eight hundred feet more than a mile. Think of sitting in the front row of the gallery and looking down into the parquet six thousand feet below. I am sitting in such a place now, only there is no railing or protection in front. The sight is enough to make one almost lose his senses. Ihad been on top but a few minutes when there was a rumbling sound like thunder not very far off, and I began to wish myself somewhere else. Whether it was a rock falling or simply the reverberation of a gun I don’t know, but it made me feel very uncomfortable for a while. The peak is the highest of any in sight for many miles, and one can look down into the whole length of the Yosemite Valley as he would into a deep trench. The river, looking white and slender down there so far, is roaring on its downward course, but I can’t hear it. The heavy pine trees from one to two hundred feet high down there in the valley, look like standing evergreens in a meadow. El Capitan, the Half Dome, the Cap of Liberty, the North Dome, and all the other immense peaks that rise up three or four thousand feet above the valley, I can look down on as a tall man upon a crowd of boys.A swallow rushed by me with the whiz of a bullet, making my heart beat with excitement for the moment, and then I began to think how nice it would be to fly down to some of the peaks below; but when a person begins to think of flying in such a place it is dangerous business. He might suddenly take it into his head to try it. The peaks to the east are all covered with snow, and the whole country for miles in every direction has a very light colored appearance, the granite of which it is all composed giving it that look. The mass of rocks that are entirely bare, free from all kinds of vegetation, is fully one-half of the entire area of the country within view.Straight across the valley, and only a little lower down, is a mass of granite, smooth as a floor, containing hundreds of acres, with scarcely a tree or shrub on it. It is less than a mile away, and yet what an awful chasm between us, a chasm deeper than it is wide. The distant views fromPike’s Peak are more extended, but there are no such perpendicular heights as are here seen on all sides.I cannot give any good reason for feeling so, but it takes all the courage I have to stay here and eat my luncheon and write what little I have written. Sitting in the middle of this small area the only objects seen over the edge are from five to six thousand feet below, and it is only by going near the edge, which I don’t like to do, that I can see the immense granite mountain that supports this small, flat surface, and the sight of that reassures me. But I can’t endure it any longer. It is not pleasant up here alone. I feel all the time as if I was just on the point of losing control of myself. I keep thinking what if I should jump off, how would it feel going down a mile or more through the air. People who talk contemptuously of what is called altitude sickness can never have experienced it.After an hour’s unpleasant stay on top I got back to Nevada Falls all right and then took the new trail around to Glacier Point, where, after twenty-five miles of climbing during the day, I was ready to rest for the night. The next morning I went out to the point, or, that is, within ten feet or so of the edge. Glacier Point is nearly opposite Yosemite Falls, and a magnificent view of the valley, including both its branches, is to be had from this place, although it is nearly three thousand feet lower than Clouds Rest. The rock projects out over the edge of the cliff, and an iron railing has been placed there. They say, I don’t know anything about it, myself, for I did not go out to this railing, but they say you can look down under yourself thirty-two hundred feet into the valley below. The feeling was sufficiently unpleasant the first time I went up the winding stairs on the inside of the dome of the capitol at Hartford,but here the height is over twelve times as great, and I did not care to try it, but some do go out there and have their pictures taken.Down the trail to Barnard’s again, and up the opposite side of the valley to the foot of the Upper Yosemite Falls. Here a small stream plunges over the edge of the rocks and falls directly down over sixteen hundred feet, ten times as high as Niagara; before the water reaches the bottom the wind has reduced it to little less than spray, and just before I got to the foot of the cliff the wind suddenly changed and I was drenched to my skin before I could get away. These falls produce a peculiar sound down in the valley that is not heard at all near them. It is that of falling rocks or suppressed thunder, caused probably by the water being blown against the face of the precipice. Whether it was the small volume of water compared with the Nevada Falls, or having my ardor so suddenly dampened by the shower bath, but the Yosemite Falls did not impress me as the other falls I had seen did. On the way back, a gentleman just ahead of me suddenly came upon a rattlesnake a yard long, and the man jumped into the air, and ran back like a deer, but his courage returning he struck the snake a well-directed blow with a stone, and now has the four rattles in his pocket as a trophy.On the way out of the valley, in the afternoon, I stopped at the Bridal Veil Falls, which are nine hundred feet high. Here I met a lady painting near the falls. Two days before that I first saw her at the Nevada Falls, where, before night, she had put upon canvas a most striking picture of the falls. Now she was doing the same here, and we sat upon the rocks at the foot of the falls and had a most delightful talk, for nearly an hour, on the advantages we had (she traveledhorseback) over common tourists who depend upon cars and stages.Like the Yosemite, these falls reach the bottom all blown to spray, and I began to perceive that after three days of this tremendous sight-seeing such common heights as one or two thousand feet were passed by unnoticed, and it took some such prominent figure as El Capitan to awaken any special interest. This solid, smooth, perpendicular piece of granite juts out boldly into the valley over three thousand feet high, and it easily holds first place in point of interest at the south end of the valley, as the Half Dome does at the north end.The Half Dome rises above the valley four thousand eight hundred feet, and as its name indicates, one-half of the upper portion is rounded and smooth like any dome, but it is split in half; the other side being vertical from the top down for one thousand five hundred feet, and the lower portion descending nearly perpendicularly. And as I climb up out of the valley, over the Big Oak Flat route, and take a last look at the gigantic object below, I try to form some idea how this valley, different from any other in the world, could have been formed. But all attempted theorizing upon this stupendous subject proves unsatisfactory, and I am more than willing to leave the problem for some other fellow to solve.Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,874 miles.
Chapter XV.In the Yosemite Valley.From the Calaveras Big Trees to the Yosemite is one hundred and eight miles, and it took me three days to make the journey. The wheelman, Mr. J. A. Hasley, whom I met the day I reached Denver, who made a good companion on the trip to Pike’s Peak and across the plains to Salt Lake City, and who bore the blazing hot sun of California as far as the Trees, there decided not to continue the trip farther. For several days it was evident he was beginning to lose interest in sight-seeing, after a month’s constant application to it, and when he had the misfortune to lose his purse with something over twenty dollars in it, he decided to get to San Francisco by the quickest and cheapest route, which was by the Stockton boat, an opposition line of steamers taking passengers for ten cents, a distance of one hundred miles. So now I am alone again. The first of the three days’ journey was used up in coasting most of the fifteen miles down to Murphy’s, over the same road we had worked so hard in getting up to the Big Trees, and then getting a few miles in a southerly direction beyond the Stanislaus River.During the afternoon, while riding along on the side of ahigh hill, I passed a sign, which read “500 yards to the Natural Bridge, the world’s greatest wonder, and don’t you forget that.” Believing it to be a fraud of some kind, I left the machine and walked down a steep narrow path to the bottom of a ravine, perhaps 500 feet below the level of the road. Here were two men clearing out the entrance to a cave from which ran a good-sized stream of water. The surroundings looked as if a land-slide had once choked up the ravine, but that the stream of water had finally worked its way through underneath the mass of rocks and earth, and had formed a tunnel perhaps four hundred feet long and twenty or thirty feet high. Water was constantly dripping from the roof of the tunnel, forming stalactites of various sizes and shapes. To more fully impress me with the importance of his discovery, the old bachelor who owned the place, stated that it had taken forty-two millions of years to bring the place into its present form and shape. Whether it had or not, I felt well paid for visiting a place of which I knew nothing until I saw the sign.The Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Rivers flow down from the Sierras in a westerly direction, and in going southerly from the Big Trees to the Yosemite, one must naturally cross them. The crossing is easy enough; there is no trouble about that. It is getting down to them that causes the trouble, and getting up away from them again. The profile of the route I took resembled an immense letter W. It is a thousand feet down to the Stanislaus River, and twelve hundred or more down to the Tuolumne, and the two rivers are but a few miles apart.The zigzag road down to the rivers is too steep and dangerous to coast, and once down, walking is the only way up again. When I came to the Tuolumne River, I believe I could have thrown a stone down to the suspension bridge, athousand feet or more below, and yet it took four miles of walking to get down to it, and after climbing up five miles farther, I could look across the valley about a mile and see where I had been three or four hours before. I would not believe it till I looked, but the thermometer was 105° down at the bridge. Notwithstanding all this there was something about such mountain scenery, combined with the roar of the river so far below, that compensated for the heat and fatigue. Probably half the entire distance between the Trees and the Valley had to be traveled afoot on the hot road, but there is another grand view of the Tuolumne River, and a small grove of big trees to vary the monotony of the last twenty miles of hill climbing.When we left Sacramento, it was with the vague impression that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty miles to the Yosemite, but the first day out the distance was reduced to below two hundred by some one of whom we made inquiries. We were entirely ignorant of the nearest route, but by making frequent inquiries we kept on, generally in the right direction. The second day the entire distance was further reduced to one hundred and twenty-five miles, then the distance from the Trees to the Valley was put at twenty-five miles by some one who knew it all, but such good news was not lasting, for the very next man who had “traveled over that section,” said it was one hundred and seventy-five miles between the two places.And so it was throughout the entire trip: First, we were almost there, then at night, perhaps fifty miles farther away than in the morning. Finally, after six days of hard work, with one object, the Yosemite constantly in view, the answer to an inquiry came back, “eight miles down to the hotel,” and in less than a mile, while rounding a bend in the road, the grandest sight I have lived to see, suddenly burst uponme. It was sudden, because I supposed it would be five miles farther before I should see anything but fine trees and bushes, and grand beyond description. I forgot my aching feet and tired legs, and walked along almost unconscious of them, down the zigzag road into the valley, which runs up in a northeasterly direction, the road entering it at the lower end.The word valley hardly describes it, for the sides are perpendicular and almost a mile high, and this immense chasm is ten miles long and hardly a mile wide. The roar of the Merced River, so many thousand feet almost perpendicularly below, is heard even before one gets a glimpse of the river itself or even the valley, and my first thought was, is there any bottom to this chasm. On the opposite side of the valley I recognized Bridal Veil Fall from the many views I had seen of it, and a little farther down the road, which runs dangerously near the edge of precipices four and five hundred feet high, El Capitan came suddenly into sight, the most prominent object to be seen in the whole valley from that point of view.It was quite dark when I reached the hotel, which is half way up the valley, and the next morning my feet were too tired to think of much hill climbing, so I walked up the valley about a mile where it seems to separate into two branches, and taking the right hand one, climbed up a rocky trail to the Vernal Falls. Here the Merced, a comparatively small stream, falls straight down three hundred and fifty feet, sending mist and spray up the sides of the rocks in all directions, making a roar that can be heard long before one gets in sight of the falls. “You can’t follow that trail up by the falls; we got wet through trying it,” said a couple of tourists whom I met just below the falls, and they started off on another trail two miles farther around. But I took the shorter route,up over slippery shelving rocks that would let one slide quickly down into the pool where the waters came thundering down from a height of perhaps thirty feet, and before I got through the shower of mist and spray, up to the ladders that lead to the top of the falls, I was wet through, too. Lying on the rocks, the warm sun soon dried my clothes, and after a good meal at Snow’s, a small hotel situated midway between the Vernal and Nevada Falls, I climbed up to the top of the Nevada Falls. Here the water comes rushing down over high rocks, goes through a narrow gorge under the bridge with a roar, and plunges over the cliff. Down a short distance, the water strikes a projecting rock, and the whole river is sent out with a twist into the air, one mass of white foam that spreads out into hundreds of little white rockets that never explode, but fade away into thin spray. Down farther, another projecting rock tears the water to pieces again and sends it shooting out into the air, till, when it reaches the bottom and has fallen a distance of fully seven hundred feet, there is scarcely anything left of the water but foam.All the afternoon I lay on the flat rock at the top of the falls, and after sleeping and writing by turns, and resting all the time, I became so accustomed to the roar that I hardly realized that the water was rushing by me and falling almost directly down seven hundred feet to the rocks below. The Cap of Liberty is a very appropriate name for a mass of granite that rises up over half a mile within a few rods of the top of the falls.The next morning, after a good night’s rest at Snow’s, where the roar of the falls makes a soothing sound, I started up the trail for Clouds Rest. “O you can’t miss your way. Just follow the trail,” is what everybody says, landlords, guides, ranchmen, and everybody of whom thequestion is asked: “Is there any trouble in finding the way?” This was the case in Colorado and it is so here, and one starts off on such trips with the impression that he has simply to follow his nose and he will get there. But it is the easiest thing in the world for a tenderfoot, like myself, to miss the way.I had gone nearly three miles up the only fresh trail there was to follow, when coming to a log hut I asked how far it was to Clouds Rest. “This is not the way. You missed the trail back there a mile and a half,” and so I turned back and hunted for an hour, climbed over boulders, small rocky ridges and fallen trees, tore one knee out of my trousers, ripped open my stockings, and was on the point of going back and giving up the whole trip, when I found what was the trail; but a heavy rain had completely obliterated the foot prints three days before and the trail itself was washed out of existence in many places. But up I started and walked in the direction of the peak for an hour or two, when the trail seemed to lead away from the object of my trip, and so I started straight up the side of the mountain, crawling up over rocks on my hands and knees, sometimes slipping back, but always struggling on, till I finally reached the top. Then how thankful I was that I had not turned back. The top of the peak is, perhaps, twenty by thirty feet in area, and is ten thousand feet above the sea. That is not very high compared with some mountain peaks, but it is six thousand feet above the valley, and as I write these words I can look down, almost straight down, eight hundred feet more than a mile. Think of sitting in the front row of the gallery and looking down into the parquet six thousand feet below. I am sitting in such a place now, only there is no railing or protection in front. The sight is enough to make one almost lose his senses. Ihad been on top but a few minutes when there was a rumbling sound like thunder not very far off, and I began to wish myself somewhere else. Whether it was a rock falling or simply the reverberation of a gun I don’t know, but it made me feel very uncomfortable for a while. The peak is the highest of any in sight for many miles, and one can look down into the whole length of the Yosemite Valley as he would into a deep trench. The river, looking white and slender down there so far, is roaring on its downward course, but I can’t hear it. The heavy pine trees from one to two hundred feet high down there in the valley, look like standing evergreens in a meadow. El Capitan, the Half Dome, the Cap of Liberty, the North Dome, and all the other immense peaks that rise up three or four thousand feet above the valley, I can look down on as a tall man upon a crowd of boys.A swallow rushed by me with the whiz of a bullet, making my heart beat with excitement for the moment, and then I began to think how nice it would be to fly down to some of the peaks below; but when a person begins to think of flying in such a place it is dangerous business. He might suddenly take it into his head to try it. The peaks to the east are all covered with snow, and the whole country for miles in every direction has a very light colored appearance, the granite of which it is all composed giving it that look. The mass of rocks that are entirely bare, free from all kinds of vegetation, is fully one-half of the entire area of the country within view.Straight across the valley, and only a little lower down, is a mass of granite, smooth as a floor, containing hundreds of acres, with scarcely a tree or shrub on it. It is less than a mile away, and yet what an awful chasm between us, a chasm deeper than it is wide. The distant views fromPike’s Peak are more extended, but there are no such perpendicular heights as are here seen on all sides.I cannot give any good reason for feeling so, but it takes all the courage I have to stay here and eat my luncheon and write what little I have written. Sitting in the middle of this small area the only objects seen over the edge are from five to six thousand feet below, and it is only by going near the edge, which I don’t like to do, that I can see the immense granite mountain that supports this small, flat surface, and the sight of that reassures me. But I can’t endure it any longer. It is not pleasant up here alone. I feel all the time as if I was just on the point of losing control of myself. I keep thinking what if I should jump off, how would it feel going down a mile or more through the air. People who talk contemptuously of what is called altitude sickness can never have experienced it.After an hour’s unpleasant stay on top I got back to Nevada Falls all right and then took the new trail around to Glacier Point, where, after twenty-five miles of climbing during the day, I was ready to rest for the night. The next morning I went out to the point, or, that is, within ten feet or so of the edge. Glacier Point is nearly opposite Yosemite Falls, and a magnificent view of the valley, including both its branches, is to be had from this place, although it is nearly three thousand feet lower than Clouds Rest. The rock projects out over the edge of the cliff, and an iron railing has been placed there. They say, I don’t know anything about it, myself, for I did not go out to this railing, but they say you can look down under yourself thirty-two hundred feet into the valley below. The feeling was sufficiently unpleasant the first time I went up the winding stairs on the inside of the dome of the capitol at Hartford,but here the height is over twelve times as great, and I did not care to try it, but some do go out there and have their pictures taken.Down the trail to Barnard’s again, and up the opposite side of the valley to the foot of the Upper Yosemite Falls. Here a small stream plunges over the edge of the rocks and falls directly down over sixteen hundred feet, ten times as high as Niagara; before the water reaches the bottom the wind has reduced it to little less than spray, and just before I got to the foot of the cliff the wind suddenly changed and I was drenched to my skin before I could get away. These falls produce a peculiar sound down in the valley that is not heard at all near them. It is that of falling rocks or suppressed thunder, caused probably by the water being blown against the face of the precipice. Whether it was the small volume of water compared with the Nevada Falls, or having my ardor so suddenly dampened by the shower bath, but the Yosemite Falls did not impress me as the other falls I had seen did. On the way back, a gentleman just ahead of me suddenly came upon a rattlesnake a yard long, and the man jumped into the air, and ran back like a deer, but his courage returning he struck the snake a well-directed blow with a stone, and now has the four rattles in his pocket as a trophy.On the way out of the valley, in the afternoon, I stopped at the Bridal Veil Falls, which are nine hundred feet high. Here I met a lady painting near the falls. Two days before that I first saw her at the Nevada Falls, where, before night, she had put upon canvas a most striking picture of the falls. Now she was doing the same here, and we sat upon the rocks at the foot of the falls and had a most delightful talk, for nearly an hour, on the advantages we had (she traveledhorseback) over common tourists who depend upon cars and stages.Like the Yosemite, these falls reach the bottom all blown to spray, and I began to perceive that after three days of this tremendous sight-seeing such common heights as one or two thousand feet were passed by unnoticed, and it took some such prominent figure as El Capitan to awaken any special interest. This solid, smooth, perpendicular piece of granite juts out boldly into the valley over three thousand feet high, and it easily holds first place in point of interest at the south end of the valley, as the Half Dome does at the north end.The Half Dome rises above the valley four thousand eight hundred feet, and as its name indicates, one-half of the upper portion is rounded and smooth like any dome, but it is split in half; the other side being vertical from the top down for one thousand five hundred feet, and the lower portion descending nearly perpendicularly. And as I climb up out of the valley, over the Big Oak Flat route, and take a last look at the gigantic object below, I try to form some idea how this valley, different from any other in the world, could have been formed. But all attempted theorizing upon this stupendous subject proves unsatisfactory, and I am more than willing to leave the problem for some other fellow to solve.Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,874 miles.
Chapter XV.In the Yosemite Valley.
From the Calaveras Big Trees to the Yosemite is one hundred and eight miles, and it took me three days to make the journey. The wheelman, Mr. J. A. Hasley, whom I met the day I reached Denver, who made a good companion on the trip to Pike’s Peak and across the plains to Salt Lake City, and who bore the blazing hot sun of California as far as the Trees, there decided not to continue the trip farther. For several days it was evident he was beginning to lose interest in sight-seeing, after a month’s constant application to it, and when he had the misfortune to lose his purse with something over twenty dollars in it, he decided to get to San Francisco by the quickest and cheapest route, which was by the Stockton boat, an opposition line of steamers taking passengers for ten cents, a distance of one hundred miles. So now I am alone again. The first of the three days’ journey was used up in coasting most of the fifteen miles down to Murphy’s, over the same road we had worked so hard in getting up to the Big Trees, and then getting a few miles in a southerly direction beyond the Stanislaus River.During the afternoon, while riding along on the side of ahigh hill, I passed a sign, which read “500 yards to the Natural Bridge, the world’s greatest wonder, and don’t you forget that.” Believing it to be a fraud of some kind, I left the machine and walked down a steep narrow path to the bottom of a ravine, perhaps 500 feet below the level of the road. Here were two men clearing out the entrance to a cave from which ran a good-sized stream of water. The surroundings looked as if a land-slide had once choked up the ravine, but that the stream of water had finally worked its way through underneath the mass of rocks and earth, and had formed a tunnel perhaps four hundred feet long and twenty or thirty feet high. Water was constantly dripping from the roof of the tunnel, forming stalactites of various sizes and shapes. To more fully impress me with the importance of his discovery, the old bachelor who owned the place, stated that it had taken forty-two millions of years to bring the place into its present form and shape. Whether it had or not, I felt well paid for visiting a place of which I knew nothing until I saw the sign.The Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Rivers flow down from the Sierras in a westerly direction, and in going southerly from the Big Trees to the Yosemite, one must naturally cross them. The crossing is easy enough; there is no trouble about that. It is getting down to them that causes the trouble, and getting up away from them again. The profile of the route I took resembled an immense letter W. It is a thousand feet down to the Stanislaus River, and twelve hundred or more down to the Tuolumne, and the two rivers are but a few miles apart.The zigzag road down to the rivers is too steep and dangerous to coast, and once down, walking is the only way up again. When I came to the Tuolumne River, I believe I could have thrown a stone down to the suspension bridge, athousand feet or more below, and yet it took four miles of walking to get down to it, and after climbing up five miles farther, I could look across the valley about a mile and see where I had been three or four hours before. I would not believe it till I looked, but the thermometer was 105° down at the bridge. Notwithstanding all this there was something about such mountain scenery, combined with the roar of the river so far below, that compensated for the heat and fatigue. Probably half the entire distance between the Trees and the Valley had to be traveled afoot on the hot road, but there is another grand view of the Tuolumne River, and a small grove of big trees to vary the monotony of the last twenty miles of hill climbing.When we left Sacramento, it was with the vague impression that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty miles to the Yosemite, but the first day out the distance was reduced to below two hundred by some one of whom we made inquiries. We were entirely ignorant of the nearest route, but by making frequent inquiries we kept on, generally in the right direction. The second day the entire distance was further reduced to one hundred and twenty-five miles, then the distance from the Trees to the Valley was put at twenty-five miles by some one who knew it all, but such good news was not lasting, for the very next man who had “traveled over that section,” said it was one hundred and seventy-five miles between the two places.And so it was throughout the entire trip: First, we were almost there, then at night, perhaps fifty miles farther away than in the morning. Finally, after six days of hard work, with one object, the Yosemite constantly in view, the answer to an inquiry came back, “eight miles down to the hotel,” and in less than a mile, while rounding a bend in the road, the grandest sight I have lived to see, suddenly burst uponme. It was sudden, because I supposed it would be five miles farther before I should see anything but fine trees and bushes, and grand beyond description. I forgot my aching feet and tired legs, and walked along almost unconscious of them, down the zigzag road into the valley, which runs up in a northeasterly direction, the road entering it at the lower end.The word valley hardly describes it, for the sides are perpendicular and almost a mile high, and this immense chasm is ten miles long and hardly a mile wide. The roar of the Merced River, so many thousand feet almost perpendicularly below, is heard even before one gets a glimpse of the river itself or even the valley, and my first thought was, is there any bottom to this chasm. On the opposite side of the valley I recognized Bridal Veil Fall from the many views I had seen of it, and a little farther down the road, which runs dangerously near the edge of precipices four and five hundred feet high, El Capitan came suddenly into sight, the most prominent object to be seen in the whole valley from that point of view.It was quite dark when I reached the hotel, which is half way up the valley, and the next morning my feet were too tired to think of much hill climbing, so I walked up the valley about a mile where it seems to separate into two branches, and taking the right hand one, climbed up a rocky trail to the Vernal Falls. Here the Merced, a comparatively small stream, falls straight down three hundred and fifty feet, sending mist and spray up the sides of the rocks in all directions, making a roar that can be heard long before one gets in sight of the falls. “You can’t follow that trail up by the falls; we got wet through trying it,” said a couple of tourists whom I met just below the falls, and they started off on another trail two miles farther around. But I took the shorter route,up over slippery shelving rocks that would let one slide quickly down into the pool where the waters came thundering down from a height of perhaps thirty feet, and before I got through the shower of mist and spray, up to the ladders that lead to the top of the falls, I was wet through, too. Lying on the rocks, the warm sun soon dried my clothes, and after a good meal at Snow’s, a small hotel situated midway between the Vernal and Nevada Falls, I climbed up to the top of the Nevada Falls. Here the water comes rushing down over high rocks, goes through a narrow gorge under the bridge with a roar, and plunges over the cliff. Down a short distance, the water strikes a projecting rock, and the whole river is sent out with a twist into the air, one mass of white foam that spreads out into hundreds of little white rockets that never explode, but fade away into thin spray. Down farther, another projecting rock tears the water to pieces again and sends it shooting out into the air, till, when it reaches the bottom and has fallen a distance of fully seven hundred feet, there is scarcely anything left of the water but foam.All the afternoon I lay on the flat rock at the top of the falls, and after sleeping and writing by turns, and resting all the time, I became so accustomed to the roar that I hardly realized that the water was rushing by me and falling almost directly down seven hundred feet to the rocks below. The Cap of Liberty is a very appropriate name for a mass of granite that rises up over half a mile within a few rods of the top of the falls.The next morning, after a good night’s rest at Snow’s, where the roar of the falls makes a soothing sound, I started up the trail for Clouds Rest. “O you can’t miss your way. Just follow the trail,” is what everybody says, landlords, guides, ranchmen, and everybody of whom thequestion is asked: “Is there any trouble in finding the way?” This was the case in Colorado and it is so here, and one starts off on such trips with the impression that he has simply to follow his nose and he will get there. But it is the easiest thing in the world for a tenderfoot, like myself, to miss the way.I had gone nearly three miles up the only fresh trail there was to follow, when coming to a log hut I asked how far it was to Clouds Rest. “This is not the way. You missed the trail back there a mile and a half,” and so I turned back and hunted for an hour, climbed over boulders, small rocky ridges and fallen trees, tore one knee out of my trousers, ripped open my stockings, and was on the point of going back and giving up the whole trip, when I found what was the trail; but a heavy rain had completely obliterated the foot prints three days before and the trail itself was washed out of existence in many places. But up I started and walked in the direction of the peak for an hour or two, when the trail seemed to lead away from the object of my trip, and so I started straight up the side of the mountain, crawling up over rocks on my hands and knees, sometimes slipping back, but always struggling on, till I finally reached the top. Then how thankful I was that I had not turned back. The top of the peak is, perhaps, twenty by thirty feet in area, and is ten thousand feet above the sea. That is not very high compared with some mountain peaks, but it is six thousand feet above the valley, and as I write these words I can look down, almost straight down, eight hundred feet more than a mile. Think of sitting in the front row of the gallery and looking down into the parquet six thousand feet below. I am sitting in such a place now, only there is no railing or protection in front. The sight is enough to make one almost lose his senses. Ihad been on top but a few minutes when there was a rumbling sound like thunder not very far off, and I began to wish myself somewhere else. Whether it was a rock falling or simply the reverberation of a gun I don’t know, but it made me feel very uncomfortable for a while. The peak is the highest of any in sight for many miles, and one can look down into the whole length of the Yosemite Valley as he would into a deep trench. The river, looking white and slender down there so far, is roaring on its downward course, but I can’t hear it. The heavy pine trees from one to two hundred feet high down there in the valley, look like standing evergreens in a meadow. El Capitan, the Half Dome, the Cap of Liberty, the North Dome, and all the other immense peaks that rise up three or four thousand feet above the valley, I can look down on as a tall man upon a crowd of boys.A swallow rushed by me with the whiz of a bullet, making my heart beat with excitement for the moment, and then I began to think how nice it would be to fly down to some of the peaks below; but when a person begins to think of flying in such a place it is dangerous business. He might suddenly take it into his head to try it. The peaks to the east are all covered with snow, and the whole country for miles in every direction has a very light colored appearance, the granite of which it is all composed giving it that look. The mass of rocks that are entirely bare, free from all kinds of vegetation, is fully one-half of the entire area of the country within view.Straight across the valley, and only a little lower down, is a mass of granite, smooth as a floor, containing hundreds of acres, with scarcely a tree or shrub on it. It is less than a mile away, and yet what an awful chasm between us, a chasm deeper than it is wide. The distant views fromPike’s Peak are more extended, but there are no such perpendicular heights as are here seen on all sides.I cannot give any good reason for feeling so, but it takes all the courage I have to stay here and eat my luncheon and write what little I have written. Sitting in the middle of this small area the only objects seen over the edge are from five to six thousand feet below, and it is only by going near the edge, which I don’t like to do, that I can see the immense granite mountain that supports this small, flat surface, and the sight of that reassures me. But I can’t endure it any longer. It is not pleasant up here alone. I feel all the time as if I was just on the point of losing control of myself. I keep thinking what if I should jump off, how would it feel going down a mile or more through the air. People who talk contemptuously of what is called altitude sickness can never have experienced it.After an hour’s unpleasant stay on top I got back to Nevada Falls all right and then took the new trail around to Glacier Point, where, after twenty-five miles of climbing during the day, I was ready to rest for the night. The next morning I went out to the point, or, that is, within ten feet or so of the edge. Glacier Point is nearly opposite Yosemite Falls, and a magnificent view of the valley, including both its branches, is to be had from this place, although it is nearly three thousand feet lower than Clouds Rest. The rock projects out over the edge of the cliff, and an iron railing has been placed there. They say, I don’t know anything about it, myself, for I did not go out to this railing, but they say you can look down under yourself thirty-two hundred feet into the valley below. The feeling was sufficiently unpleasant the first time I went up the winding stairs on the inside of the dome of the capitol at Hartford,but here the height is over twelve times as great, and I did not care to try it, but some do go out there and have their pictures taken.Down the trail to Barnard’s again, and up the opposite side of the valley to the foot of the Upper Yosemite Falls. Here a small stream plunges over the edge of the rocks and falls directly down over sixteen hundred feet, ten times as high as Niagara; before the water reaches the bottom the wind has reduced it to little less than spray, and just before I got to the foot of the cliff the wind suddenly changed and I was drenched to my skin before I could get away. These falls produce a peculiar sound down in the valley that is not heard at all near them. It is that of falling rocks or suppressed thunder, caused probably by the water being blown against the face of the precipice. Whether it was the small volume of water compared with the Nevada Falls, or having my ardor so suddenly dampened by the shower bath, but the Yosemite Falls did not impress me as the other falls I had seen did. On the way back, a gentleman just ahead of me suddenly came upon a rattlesnake a yard long, and the man jumped into the air, and ran back like a deer, but his courage returning he struck the snake a well-directed blow with a stone, and now has the four rattles in his pocket as a trophy.On the way out of the valley, in the afternoon, I stopped at the Bridal Veil Falls, which are nine hundred feet high. Here I met a lady painting near the falls. Two days before that I first saw her at the Nevada Falls, where, before night, she had put upon canvas a most striking picture of the falls. Now she was doing the same here, and we sat upon the rocks at the foot of the falls and had a most delightful talk, for nearly an hour, on the advantages we had (she traveledhorseback) over common tourists who depend upon cars and stages.Like the Yosemite, these falls reach the bottom all blown to spray, and I began to perceive that after three days of this tremendous sight-seeing such common heights as one or two thousand feet were passed by unnoticed, and it took some such prominent figure as El Capitan to awaken any special interest. This solid, smooth, perpendicular piece of granite juts out boldly into the valley over three thousand feet high, and it easily holds first place in point of interest at the south end of the valley, as the Half Dome does at the north end.The Half Dome rises above the valley four thousand eight hundred feet, and as its name indicates, one-half of the upper portion is rounded and smooth like any dome, but it is split in half; the other side being vertical from the top down for one thousand five hundred feet, and the lower portion descending nearly perpendicularly. And as I climb up out of the valley, over the Big Oak Flat route, and take a last look at the gigantic object below, I try to form some idea how this valley, different from any other in the world, could have been formed. But all attempted theorizing upon this stupendous subject proves unsatisfactory, and I am more than willing to leave the problem for some other fellow to solve.Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,874 miles.
From the Calaveras Big Trees to the Yosemite is one hundred and eight miles, and it took me three days to make the journey. The wheelman, Mr. J. A. Hasley, whom I met the day I reached Denver, who made a good companion on the trip to Pike’s Peak and across the plains to Salt Lake City, and who bore the blazing hot sun of California as far as the Trees, there decided not to continue the trip farther. For several days it was evident he was beginning to lose interest in sight-seeing, after a month’s constant application to it, and when he had the misfortune to lose his purse with something over twenty dollars in it, he decided to get to San Francisco by the quickest and cheapest route, which was by the Stockton boat, an opposition line of steamers taking passengers for ten cents, a distance of one hundred miles. So now I am alone again. The first of the three days’ journey was used up in coasting most of the fifteen miles down to Murphy’s, over the same road we had worked so hard in getting up to the Big Trees, and then getting a few miles in a southerly direction beyond the Stanislaus River.
During the afternoon, while riding along on the side of ahigh hill, I passed a sign, which read “500 yards to the Natural Bridge, the world’s greatest wonder, and don’t you forget that.” Believing it to be a fraud of some kind, I left the machine and walked down a steep narrow path to the bottom of a ravine, perhaps 500 feet below the level of the road. Here were two men clearing out the entrance to a cave from which ran a good-sized stream of water. The surroundings looked as if a land-slide had once choked up the ravine, but that the stream of water had finally worked its way through underneath the mass of rocks and earth, and had formed a tunnel perhaps four hundred feet long and twenty or thirty feet high. Water was constantly dripping from the roof of the tunnel, forming stalactites of various sizes and shapes. To more fully impress me with the importance of his discovery, the old bachelor who owned the place, stated that it had taken forty-two millions of years to bring the place into its present form and shape. Whether it had or not, I felt well paid for visiting a place of which I knew nothing until I saw the sign.
The Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Rivers flow down from the Sierras in a westerly direction, and in going southerly from the Big Trees to the Yosemite, one must naturally cross them. The crossing is easy enough; there is no trouble about that. It is getting down to them that causes the trouble, and getting up away from them again. The profile of the route I took resembled an immense letter W. It is a thousand feet down to the Stanislaus River, and twelve hundred or more down to the Tuolumne, and the two rivers are but a few miles apart.
The zigzag road down to the rivers is too steep and dangerous to coast, and once down, walking is the only way up again. When I came to the Tuolumne River, I believe I could have thrown a stone down to the suspension bridge, athousand feet or more below, and yet it took four miles of walking to get down to it, and after climbing up five miles farther, I could look across the valley about a mile and see where I had been three or four hours before. I would not believe it till I looked, but the thermometer was 105° down at the bridge. Notwithstanding all this there was something about such mountain scenery, combined with the roar of the river so far below, that compensated for the heat and fatigue. Probably half the entire distance between the Trees and the Valley had to be traveled afoot on the hot road, but there is another grand view of the Tuolumne River, and a small grove of big trees to vary the monotony of the last twenty miles of hill climbing.
When we left Sacramento, it was with the vague impression that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty miles to the Yosemite, but the first day out the distance was reduced to below two hundred by some one of whom we made inquiries. We were entirely ignorant of the nearest route, but by making frequent inquiries we kept on, generally in the right direction. The second day the entire distance was further reduced to one hundred and twenty-five miles, then the distance from the Trees to the Valley was put at twenty-five miles by some one who knew it all, but such good news was not lasting, for the very next man who had “traveled over that section,” said it was one hundred and seventy-five miles between the two places.
And so it was throughout the entire trip: First, we were almost there, then at night, perhaps fifty miles farther away than in the morning. Finally, after six days of hard work, with one object, the Yosemite constantly in view, the answer to an inquiry came back, “eight miles down to the hotel,” and in less than a mile, while rounding a bend in the road, the grandest sight I have lived to see, suddenly burst uponme. It was sudden, because I supposed it would be five miles farther before I should see anything but fine trees and bushes, and grand beyond description. I forgot my aching feet and tired legs, and walked along almost unconscious of them, down the zigzag road into the valley, which runs up in a northeasterly direction, the road entering it at the lower end.
The word valley hardly describes it, for the sides are perpendicular and almost a mile high, and this immense chasm is ten miles long and hardly a mile wide. The roar of the Merced River, so many thousand feet almost perpendicularly below, is heard even before one gets a glimpse of the river itself or even the valley, and my first thought was, is there any bottom to this chasm. On the opposite side of the valley I recognized Bridal Veil Fall from the many views I had seen of it, and a little farther down the road, which runs dangerously near the edge of precipices four and five hundred feet high, El Capitan came suddenly into sight, the most prominent object to be seen in the whole valley from that point of view.
It was quite dark when I reached the hotel, which is half way up the valley, and the next morning my feet were too tired to think of much hill climbing, so I walked up the valley about a mile where it seems to separate into two branches, and taking the right hand one, climbed up a rocky trail to the Vernal Falls. Here the Merced, a comparatively small stream, falls straight down three hundred and fifty feet, sending mist and spray up the sides of the rocks in all directions, making a roar that can be heard long before one gets in sight of the falls. “You can’t follow that trail up by the falls; we got wet through trying it,” said a couple of tourists whom I met just below the falls, and they started off on another trail two miles farther around. But I took the shorter route,up over slippery shelving rocks that would let one slide quickly down into the pool where the waters came thundering down from a height of perhaps thirty feet, and before I got through the shower of mist and spray, up to the ladders that lead to the top of the falls, I was wet through, too. Lying on the rocks, the warm sun soon dried my clothes, and after a good meal at Snow’s, a small hotel situated midway between the Vernal and Nevada Falls, I climbed up to the top of the Nevada Falls. Here the water comes rushing down over high rocks, goes through a narrow gorge under the bridge with a roar, and plunges over the cliff. Down a short distance, the water strikes a projecting rock, and the whole river is sent out with a twist into the air, one mass of white foam that spreads out into hundreds of little white rockets that never explode, but fade away into thin spray. Down farther, another projecting rock tears the water to pieces again and sends it shooting out into the air, till, when it reaches the bottom and has fallen a distance of fully seven hundred feet, there is scarcely anything left of the water but foam.
All the afternoon I lay on the flat rock at the top of the falls, and after sleeping and writing by turns, and resting all the time, I became so accustomed to the roar that I hardly realized that the water was rushing by me and falling almost directly down seven hundred feet to the rocks below. The Cap of Liberty is a very appropriate name for a mass of granite that rises up over half a mile within a few rods of the top of the falls.
The next morning, after a good night’s rest at Snow’s, where the roar of the falls makes a soothing sound, I started up the trail for Clouds Rest. “O you can’t miss your way. Just follow the trail,” is what everybody says, landlords, guides, ranchmen, and everybody of whom thequestion is asked: “Is there any trouble in finding the way?” This was the case in Colorado and it is so here, and one starts off on such trips with the impression that he has simply to follow his nose and he will get there. But it is the easiest thing in the world for a tenderfoot, like myself, to miss the way.
I had gone nearly three miles up the only fresh trail there was to follow, when coming to a log hut I asked how far it was to Clouds Rest. “This is not the way. You missed the trail back there a mile and a half,” and so I turned back and hunted for an hour, climbed over boulders, small rocky ridges and fallen trees, tore one knee out of my trousers, ripped open my stockings, and was on the point of going back and giving up the whole trip, when I found what was the trail; but a heavy rain had completely obliterated the foot prints three days before and the trail itself was washed out of existence in many places. But up I started and walked in the direction of the peak for an hour or two, when the trail seemed to lead away from the object of my trip, and so I started straight up the side of the mountain, crawling up over rocks on my hands and knees, sometimes slipping back, but always struggling on, till I finally reached the top. Then how thankful I was that I had not turned back. The top of the peak is, perhaps, twenty by thirty feet in area, and is ten thousand feet above the sea. That is not very high compared with some mountain peaks, but it is six thousand feet above the valley, and as I write these words I can look down, almost straight down, eight hundred feet more than a mile. Think of sitting in the front row of the gallery and looking down into the parquet six thousand feet below. I am sitting in such a place now, only there is no railing or protection in front. The sight is enough to make one almost lose his senses. Ihad been on top but a few minutes when there was a rumbling sound like thunder not very far off, and I began to wish myself somewhere else. Whether it was a rock falling or simply the reverberation of a gun I don’t know, but it made me feel very uncomfortable for a while. The peak is the highest of any in sight for many miles, and one can look down into the whole length of the Yosemite Valley as he would into a deep trench. The river, looking white and slender down there so far, is roaring on its downward course, but I can’t hear it. The heavy pine trees from one to two hundred feet high down there in the valley, look like standing evergreens in a meadow. El Capitan, the Half Dome, the Cap of Liberty, the North Dome, and all the other immense peaks that rise up three or four thousand feet above the valley, I can look down on as a tall man upon a crowd of boys.
A swallow rushed by me with the whiz of a bullet, making my heart beat with excitement for the moment, and then I began to think how nice it would be to fly down to some of the peaks below; but when a person begins to think of flying in such a place it is dangerous business. He might suddenly take it into his head to try it. The peaks to the east are all covered with snow, and the whole country for miles in every direction has a very light colored appearance, the granite of which it is all composed giving it that look. The mass of rocks that are entirely bare, free from all kinds of vegetation, is fully one-half of the entire area of the country within view.
Straight across the valley, and only a little lower down, is a mass of granite, smooth as a floor, containing hundreds of acres, with scarcely a tree or shrub on it. It is less than a mile away, and yet what an awful chasm between us, a chasm deeper than it is wide. The distant views fromPike’s Peak are more extended, but there are no such perpendicular heights as are here seen on all sides.
I cannot give any good reason for feeling so, but it takes all the courage I have to stay here and eat my luncheon and write what little I have written. Sitting in the middle of this small area the only objects seen over the edge are from five to six thousand feet below, and it is only by going near the edge, which I don’t like to do, that I can see the immense granite mountain that supports this small, flat surface, and the sight of that reassures me. But I can’t endure it any longer. It is not pleasant up here alone. I feel all the time as if I was just on the point of losing control of myself. I keep thinking what if I should jump off, how would it feel going down a mile or more through the air. People who talk contemptuously of what is called altitude sickness can never have experienced it.
After an hour’s unpleasant stay on top I got back to Nevada Falls all right and then took the new trail around to Glacier Point, where, after twenty-five miles of climbing during the day, I was ready to rest for the night. The next morning I went out to the point, or, that is, within ten feet or so of the edge. Glacier Point is nearly opposite Yosemite Falls, and a magnificent view of the valley, including both its branches, is to be had from this place, although it is nearly three thousand feet lower than Clouds Rest. The rock projects out over the edge of the cliff, and an iron railing has been placed there. They say, I don’t know anything about it, myself, for I did not go out to this railing, but they say you can look down under yourself thirty-two hundred feet into the valley below. The feeling was sufficiently unpleasant the first time I went up the winding stairs on the inside of the dome of the capitol at Hartford,but here the height is over twelve times as great, and I did not care to try it, but some do go out there and have their pictures taken.
Down the trail to Barnard’s again, and up the opposite side of the valley to the foot of the Upper Yosemite Falls. Here a small stream plunges over the edge of the rocks and falls directly down over sixteen hundred feet, ten times as high as Niagara; before the water reaches the bottom the wind has reduced it to little less than spray, and just before I got to the foot of the cliff the wind suddenly changed and I was drenched to my skin before I could get away. These falls produce a peculiar sound down in the valley that is not heard at all near them. It is that of falling rocks or suppressed thunder, caused probably by the water being blown against the face of the precipice. Whether it was the small volume of water compared with the Nevada Falls, or having my ardor so suddenly dampened by the shower bath, but the Yosemite Falls did not impress me as the other falls I had seen did. On the way back, a gentleman just ahead of me suddenly came upon a rattlesnake a yard long, and the man jumped into the air, and ran back like a deer, but his courage returning he struck the snake a well-directed blow with a stone, and now has the four rattles in his pocket as a trophy.
On the way out of the valley, in the afternoon, I stopped at the Bridal Veil Falls, which are nine hundred feet high. Here I met a lady painting near the falls. Two days before that I first saw her at the Nevada Falls, where, before night, she had put upon canvas a most striking picture of the falls. Now she was doing the same here, and we sat upon the rocks at the foot of the falls and had a most delightful talk, for nearly an hour, on the advantages we had (she traveledhorseback) over common tourists who depend upon cars and stages.
Like the Yosemite, these falls reach the bottom all blown to spray, and I began to perceive that after three days of this tremendous sight-seeing such common heights as one or two thousand feet were passed by unnoticed, and it took some such prominent figure as El Capitan to awaken any special interest. This solid, smooth, perpendicular piece of granite juts out boldly into the valley over three thousand feet high, and it easily holds first place in point of interest at the south end of the valley, as the Half Dome does at the north end.
The Half Dome rises above the valley four thousand eight hundred feet, and as its name indicates, one-half of the upper portion is rounded and smooth like any dome, but it is split in half; the other side being vertical from the top down for one thousand five hundred feet, and the lower portion descending nearly perpendicularly. And as I climb up out of the valley, over the Big Oak Flat route, and take a last look at the gigantic object below, I try to form some idea how this valley, different from any other in the world, could have been formed. But all attempted theorizing upon this stupendous subject proves unsatisfactory, and I am more than willing to leave the problem for some other fellow to solve.
Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,874 miles.