On our return from this short excursion, Francis, Dr. Macleish and Harry, taking their lunch with them, walked up to the top of the Yosemite Falls.  They stood beneath the flag at Yosemite Point and got a comprehensive view of the entire valley.  They reported the trip a heart-breaking one.

Military Government.

The valley has a military government.  What Major Forsyth says goes.  There are no saloons in the Yosemite, nor are there any cats.  The Major saw a cat catch a young gray squirrel.  He issued an edict that the cats must go or be killed.  They went.

Excursion to Glacier Point.

The next day all of our party, except Mrs. Graves, who had made the journey some years before, went to the top of Glacier Point.  We took a stage to the Happy Isles and there mounted mules for the trail.  The climb is a steady one.  Soon we got our first view of the Vernal Falls.  To my mind they are the most perfect waterfalls in the Valley.  The water flows over the cliffs an unbroken mass, one hundred feet wide.  The initial drop is three hundred and fifty feet.  The effect can not be imagined by one who has not seen the actual descent of this great mass of water.  The emerald pond above the falls, in which the waters assume an emerald hue, and appear to seek a momentary rest before taking the final plunge over the cliffs, is one of the Valley’s beauty spots.  The roar of the falling waters, striking the rocks below, is loud and reverberating.  Great clouds of spray and mist float off in falling masses, appearing more like smoke than water.

After passing Vernal Falls you come to the Diamond Cascades.  They are below the Nevada Falls.  The long flowing waters from the Nevada Falls have cut a channel deep into the bed rock.  You cross this channel on a bridge.  Under and below the bridge the water flows with such velocity that great volumes of it are hurled into the air in long strings, one succeeding the other.  The sunlight on these strings of water makes them flash like diamonds.  The effect is as if some one were sowing diamonds by the bushel above the water.  A similar effect is noticed, though not so pronounced, just above the Nevada Falls.  The latter are something like a mile above Vernal Falls.  They are six hundred feet high.  They seem to come over the cliff like the Yosemite Falls, through a broken or distorted lip, and the water is lashed to foam and looks for all the world like the smoke of some mighty conflagration, upon which a score of modern fire engines are playing.  Near the top of the Nevada Falls is a fir tree more than ten feet in diameter, said to be the largest tree in the Yosemite Valley.  Just above the falls we again crossed the river on a bridge.  Near the bridge, on the rocks is plain evidence of glacial scourings.  A glacial deposit is left in patches on the rocks which is today as smooth as plate glass.

Abandoned Eagle’s Nest.