these mountains; and this idea seems to be entertained by the most scientific observers. Bastions, peaks, and shafts rear their heads in imposing grandeur. El Capitan lifts its sheer sides 3,300 feet above the little valley; cathedral spires push their slender granite shafts high in the air, above which the "Three Brothers" rear their unscarred and solemn walls four thousand feet in perpendicular grandeur above the valley. As the observer looks in reverence upon Jehovah's grandest masonry, the eye is relieved by what appears to be a shrub held in a crevice of the perpendicular wall: it seems to cling nervously to the cold rock, yet shakes its tiny branches in defiance of all below: it is more than twenty-five hundred feet from the green vale below. This tiny shrub proves to be a gigantic forest pine, dwarfed in the distance. Still other attractions, mighty walls and frowning turrets, strike the beholder: "Sentinel rock," elevated three thousand feet from the valley, and the crowning grandeur of the scene-the "Dome"-whose bastion and perpendicular walls rear in unbroken masses 4,160 feet above its pedestal, fringed with grass and beautiful flowers below. Contemplating these mighty, stern sentinels of eternity, whose domes may have been reared millions of centuries before the tree from which was plucked the forbidden fruit of Eden sent forth its first leaf-in the midst of these scenes, we sigh for the lost energies of Plato and Kepler, probing the sides and sounding the lungs of mother earth; we bear testimony to the irreparable loss to science that Whitson, Baron Fourier, De Maillet, Leibnitz, Hutton, Werner, Murray, Kirwan, Deluc, Lyell, Buckland, Humboldt, Hugh Miller, and Agassiz have never gazed upon these monumental piles abounding in rich evidences and stern lessons of geological wonders. But these gigantic columns and frowning pillars are not the only wonders or beauties of Yosemite. Mingled with these stately domes, and pouring their sparkling gems from their aerial urns, are the most magnificent waterfalls that ever adorned the earth. Standing upon the sward below and looking upward, the scene is grand beyond description: through the narrow walls of the smooth rocks above is heard the thundering march of Yosemite fall, coming with its mighty torrent, thirty feet wide and three feet deep, dashing at a single bound sixteen hundred feet upon a ledge or grand shelf of granite; here, gathering its spent forces, it rallies again, and, leaping from urn to urn, frolics downward for a distance of seven hundred feet, eddying, curving, and sparkling along; here, marshalling all its forces and raising its hoarse chorus in the wild cry of its last effort, it plunges furiously through the chasm four hundred additional feet, coiling itself like a serpent in the basin of the lawn below, through which it sullenly meanders, whispering in subdued tones to the nodding flowers and foliage, which seem to recognize the presence of a dethroned monarch. The fall of this mightiest of cascades, from its uppermost height to its final repose in the valley below, is 2,700 feet; whilst the famed Voringsfos of Norway, a mere thread in volume, is but 950 feet, and the world-famed Niagara, although so vast in volume that it has no rival on the globe, falls but 160 feet, but one-sixteenth of the fall of Yosemite, leaving the California waterfall the greatest in the world. One of the many charming features of this spot is |