wering in glorious array along the axis of the range, serene,
majestic, snow-laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and ridges shining below
them, forests, lakes, and meadows in the hollows, the pure blue
bell-flower sky brooding them all,--a glory day of admission into a new
realm of wonders as if Nature had wooingly whispered, "Come higher."
What questions I asked, and how little I know of all the vast show, and
how eagerly, tremulously hopeful of some day knowing more, learning the
meaning of these divine symbols crowded together on this wondrous page.

Mount Hoffman is the highest part of a ridge or spur about fourteen
miles from the axis of the main range, perhaps a remnant brought into
relief and isolated by unequal denudation. The southern slopes shed
their waters into Yosemite Valley by Tenaya and Dome Creeks, the
northern in part into the Tuolumne River, but mostly into the Merced by
Yosemite Creek. The rock is mostly granite, with some small piles and
crests rising here and there in picturesque pillared and castellated
remnants of red metamorphic slates. Both the granite and slates are
divided by joints, making them separable into blocks like the stones of
artificial masonry, suggesting the Scripture "He hath builded the
mountains." Great banks of snow and ice are piled in hollows on the cool
precipitous north side forming the highest perennial sources of Yosemite
Creek. The southern slopes are much more gradual and accessible. Narrow
slot-like gorges extend across the summit at right angles, which look
like lanes, formed evidently by the erosion of less resisting beds. They
are usually called "devil's slides," though they lie far above the
region usually haunted by the devil; for though we read that he once
climbed an exceeding high mountain, he cannot be much of a mountaineer,
for his tracks are seldom seen above the timber-line.

[Illustration: APPROACH OF DOME CREEK TO YOSEMITE]

The broad gray summit is barren and desolate-looking in general views,
wasted by ages of gnawing storms; but looking at the surface in detail,
one finds it covered by thousands and millions of charming plants
with leaves and flowers so small they form no mass of color visible at a
distance of a few hundred yards. Beds of azure daisies smile confidingly
in moist hollows, and along the banks of small rills, with several
species of eriogonum, silky-leaved ivesia, pentstemon, orthocarpus, and
patches of _Primula suffruticosa_, a beautiful s