clinging to crevice and shelving rock, are tall grace-
ful ferns, with branches of the most delicate tracery,
which from their dizzy height look like tiny shrubs.
United with grandeur are sweet freshness and melody ;
mingling with iris-hued mists is the fragrance of
flowers, and with the music of the waters the songs
of birds. Receiving and giving rest to the troubled
waters after their fearful leap is still the Merced
river, which winds tlirough the valley in sharp angu-
lar bends, strikino- first one side and then the other.
It IS some seventy feet in width, and as transpar-
ent almost as air; indeed, so deceivingly limpid is
it, that the unwary tourist who steps into it is soon
beyond his depth. So too in regard to everything in
and around this region of vastness ; dimensions are
so stupendous that judgment is confounded ; the in-
experienced eye cannot measure them. Distance is
cheated of its effect; until perhaps, one toils in vain
all day to accomplish what appears to be no difficult
task, when the mistake is discovered and the eye is
strained no longer.
Now and then a huge boulder, breaking from its long resting-place, comes crashing down the precipice, thundering in loud reverberations throughout the chasm. Sometimes in spring a flood bursts on Yosemite, when there is a tumult of waters, and high carnival is held in the valley. Scores of newly- born streams and streamlets fall from the upper end, and along the side roar a hundred cataracts whose united voices might waken Endymion. Pyramids of mist stand on the chasm floor, and ribbons of white waters twenty or thirty feet apart hang against black walls, or fall like comet's tails side by side, with jets shooting out from either side like arrows, weaving gauzy lace-work and forging fairy chains.
In May and June the streams are flush, and the monotone of falling waters is broken by crash and boom like angry surf striking the shore ; but as au- tumn approaches, the roaring cataracts dwindle to
