As we proceeded up the Valley there were pointed out to us the Three Brothers, a triple group of rocks, three thousand eight hundred feet high.  Cathedral Spire, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite and Lost Arrow Falls, and all the other points of interest that can be seen on entering the Valley.

The river was abnormally high—­higher we were told, than it had been in many years.  It flowed with great rapidity, as if hurrying out of the valley to join the flood waters which had already submerged many acres of land in the San Joaquin valley, miles below.  It looked dark and wicked, as if it carried certain death in its cold embrace.  Half of the Yosemite valley was flooded.  Meadows, rich in natural grasses, were knee deep with back water.

We reached the Sentinel Hotel, and sloughing off the most of the fine emery-like mountain dust with which we were enveloped, we got our first good look at the Yosemite Falls.  They were at their best.  Imagine a large river, coming over a cliff, a seething, foaming mass of spray, and dropping, in two descents, two thousand six hundred and thirty-four feet, sending heavenward great clouds of mist!  I took one look, then looked up the Valley to the great Half Dome, to Glacier Point, from there to Sentinel Peak and the Cathedral Spires, and I concluded that the Yosemite is too beautiful for description, too sublime for comprehension and too magnificent for immediate human understanding.  In the presence of those awful cliffs, towering, with an average height of over three thousand feet, above the floor of the valley; those immense waterfalls, as they thundered over the canyon walls; that mad river, gathering their united flow into one embrace, scurrying away with an irresistible energy that almost sweeps you off your feet as you look at it, all things human seem to shrink into the infinitesimal.  You do not ask yourself, “How did all this get here?” You accept the situation as you find it.  You leave it to the scientists to dispute whether the valley was formed wholly by glacial action or by some gigantic convulsion of nature, which tore its frowning cliffs apart, leaving the Valley rough, unfinished and uncouth to the gentle, molding hand of Time to smooth it up and beautify its floor with its present growth of oaks and pines and shrub and bush and ferns and vines, and laughing, running waters.

You are four thousand feet above sea-level.  All around you cliffs and walls tower three thousand feet and upwards above you.  Back of these are still higher peaks, whole mountain ranges, clothed in their snowy mantles, this season far beyond their usual time.  The air is delightful, pure as the waters of the Yosemite Falls, soft as a carpet of pine needles to the foot-fall, balmy as the breath of spring, and cool and invigorating.

The Valley Overflowing With Visitors.