seven thousand feet, and then hurries down
through the leaves of the trees, turns a bend and emerges in full view
of the grand Yosemite.

There it lay in all its grandeur--the unroofed temple of God, Nature's
great cathedral. Three thousand feet down, level as the floor, sunk
beneath the surrounding mountains which stretched away to right and
left in a gigantic mass, it lay clothed in a carpet of green grass and
trees so far below that they seem to merge into one. Cut by a silvery
stream that winds lazily amid the Edenic beauty, as if loath to be
away, the valley a mile wide stretches back for nearly six miles, and
then is lost to view as it wanders around the jutting peaks of the
Three Sisters and climbs on for five more miles to the falls of the
Merced, as they come tumbling down from the region of perpetual snow
to that of perpetual beauty.

To the left is old El Capitan, three thousand feet high, and with
width equal to height and depth to width--a mountain of solid rock.
Well did the Bishop lift his hat, and, standing in silent awe, at last
say, "The judgment throne of God." Far beyond it the silvery line of
the Yosemite Creek reached the straight edge of the cliff and shot
down twenty-six hundred feet. To the right, Bridal Veil Falls, a tiny
brooklet it seemed in the distance, winding down a mountain meadow,
looking frightened a moment at the edge of the cliff, leaping over
into spray, caught up and transfigured by the afternoon sun, as it
fell on the rocks hundreds of feet below. Beyond it, Cathedral Rocks,
the Three Sisters and a mass of jutting summits stretching ever on
till they were lost to view. Beyond and between them all, between and
back, El Capitan and the Sentinel Peak, looming up, as the Bishop
said, like "the sounding-board of the ages." From far away rose the
Half Dome, at whose feet the famous little lake mirrors again and
again the morning sun as it drives away the shadows of night from this
home of the sublime.

Job instinctively bared his head and found himself repeating, "Before
the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth,
from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God."

Just then the silence was broken by the voices in the stage. "Ain't it
pretty?" said the giggler. "Well, now, is that the Cemet'ry? Do tell!
Driver, you're sure we can go back to-day? We've seen it now!" said
the fussy woman. The practical man was asking the driver for minute
statistics and copyin