But When We Approached The Base Of A Majestic Rock Like The Yosemite Half Dome At The Head Of The Fiord, Where Two Short Branches Put Out, And Came In Sight Of Another Glacier Of The First Order Sending Off Bergs, Our Joy Was Complete.

I had a most glorious view of it, sweeping in grand majesty from high mountain fountains, swaying around one mighty bastion after another, until it fell into the fiord in shattered overleaning fragments.

When we had feasted awhile on this unhoped-for treasure, I directed the Indians to pull to the head of the left fork of the fiord, where we found a large cascade with a volume of water great enough to be called a river, doubtless the outlet of a receding glacier not in sight from the fiord.

This is in form and origin a typical Yosemite valley, though as yet its floor is covered with ice and water, - ice above and beneath, a noble mansion in which to spend a winter and a summer! It is about ten miles long, and from three quarters of a mile to one mile wide. It contains ten large falls and cascades, the finest one on the left side near the head. After coming in an admirable rush over a granite brow where it is first seen at a height of nine hundred or a thousand feet, it leaps a sheer precipice of about two hundred and fifty feet, then divides and reaches the tide-water in broken rapids over boulders.

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