We lunched in the open air at the big trees, and made the return trip in a reverent mood, almost in silence, each of the party given over to his or her reflections.  I realize that there is in my mind an ineffaceable mental picture of those gigantic trees, which are so tall, so large, so impressive and massive that they overpower the understanding.

During our stay at Wawona we tried fishing in the main river, which was swollen to a raging torrent by the melting snows.  We found it so discolored and so turbulent that fishing was not a success.  We also visited the cascades.  An immense body of water comes down a rocky gorge very precipitously.  From one rock to another the water dashes with an awful roar.  Mist and spray ascend and fall over a considerable area, keeping the trees and brush and grass and ferns dripping wet, and it would soon render one’s clothing exceedingly uncomfortable.

We Go To Yosemite By Stage.

It is twenty-six miles from Wawona to Yosemite Valley.  The stages leave Wawona at eleven thirty a. m. to make the trip.  On June sixteenth we took our places with some other victims of this piece of transportation idiocy, on an open four-horse stage for Yosemite.  The going was very slow.  It was hot and dusty, and we soon got irritable and uncomfortable.  Why the traveling public should be subjected to this outrage is beyond me.  We ground our weary way over the dusty road, oblivious to the scenery, until six o’clock, when we suddenly came to Inspiration Point, our first view of the great Valley.

Yosemite Valley.

The beauty of the scene to some extent compensated us for a beastly ride.  Beyond us lay the great gorge known as the Yosemite.  Below us the Merced River.  On the left were Ribbon Falls, and just beyond them El Capitan.  On our right, but well in front of us, were the Bridal Veil Falls.  We were just in time to see that wonderful rainbow effect for which they are celebrated.  Surely no more beautiful sheet of water could be found anywhere.  A wonderful volume of water dashes over the cliff, unbroken by intercepting rocks, and drops a straight distance of six hundred feet.  Then it drops three hundred feet more in dancing cascades to the floor of the valley and divides up into three good-sized streams which empty into the Merced River.  When once started on its downward course, the water seems all spray.  At the bottom of the first six-hundred-foot descent it made a mighty shower of mist like escaping steam from a giant rift in some titanic boiler, and soon reached the floor of the valley.  The road from El Portal comes up on the north side of the river.  We passed El Capitan, which rears its massive head three thousand three hundred feet in the distance, perpendicularly above the river.  We were shown the pine tree, one hundred and fifty feet high, growing out of a rift in the rocks on its perpendicular face, more than two-thirds of the distance from its base.  The tree looked to us like a rose bush, not two feet high, in a garden.