two months before they climbed up out
of the valley to Inspiration Point, renewing their acquaintance with
familiar scenes and experiencing more stupendous grandeur. It was two
years after they came into the valley that Mat disclosed the most
tremendous magnificence of all.

For years after it fairly took her breath away to think of it. First
they took the familiar road to Inspiration Point, then made their way
over the mountains where the Glacier Point Road now runs, and camped for
the night in the highlands of never-failing frost. Next morning they
pursued their way through the woods an interminable distance, as it
seemed to Mamie, until finally they stood upon the brink of a huge
canon, with a snowy mountain range in the distance beyond, and in the
intervening space, a vast panorama of granite mountain sides, almost
white,--here and there covered with a sparse growth of timber. The
waters from these mountain reaches had cut a channel for themselves
known as Little Yosemite Valley, where pour the two wonderful cataracts
known as Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls. Their deep roar came up from the
valley. Mamie felt that she would be content to watch that scene the
whole day through.

But Mat took her on to Glacier Point, where you look straight down more
than three thousand feet to the level floor of the Yosemite Valley.
There below, more than half a mile below, she saw her neighbors'
cottages; and the thought occurred to her, as she clung to Mat, that if
she should fall over the precipice she might crash through the roof of
one of these. She actually saw the good neighbor who was caring for her
own child during his mother's absence. Before the day of aviators it
seemed strange enough to look straight down from half a mile up in the
sky.

Then came those scenes of terrifying magnificence when she followed Mat
over the trail cut along the perpendicular walls of the canon five miles
down to the floor of the Valley. One who has not passed over that trail
can scarcely conceive of it; and one who has, brings away a sense of the
sublime and the beautiful mingled with terror. There against the blue
sky stands the perpendicular wall of Half Dome, almost within arm's
reach, seemingly, in that clear atmosphere. There stand El Capitan and
the Three Graces. And there at every turn of the trail pours the
glorious Yosemite Fall, at first too far away for the ear to notice its
distant thunder. Then on closer approach the faint roar is