say outside of California. Here we have others, so
that if the great chasm of chasms should ever be lost
to us, we still should not be without our wonder.
There is the Little Yosemite valley above the Nevada
fall, with its concentric granite structures, and the
same river flowing: throuoh it in beautiful cascades;
and there is the Hetch-hetchy valley, which, if a little
less grand than the Yosemite, would answer well
enough in place of it. The Hetch-hetchy chasm walls
the Tuolumne river about sixteen miles north-west
from Yosemite. It is three miles in length, from an
eighth to half a mile in width, with walls not quite so
high as those of the Yosemite, though the volume of
water flowing into it is much greater. It extends in
the same direction as Yosemite, has a perpendicular
blufl* — the counterpart of El Capitan, a large stream
fed by the melting snows which fall over a clifl" 1,000
feet in height; has in the Hetch-hetchy fall, 1700
feet in height, the counterpart of the Yosemite fall,
with its Cathedral rock, 2,270 feet in height ; finally,
at its upper end, it splits into two canons instead of
three as at Yosemite. All alono; the base of the
Sierra, and mounting upward to its summit, are innu-
merable valleys, meadows and springs, lakes, water-
falls, and cascades, eroded canons, polished domes, and
volcanic spindles, finger posts of the early gold-seekers,
obelisk groups, table mountains, kettles, chests, forts,
caves, bridges, sugar-loaves, cathedral-peaks, and uni-
corn peaks ; the which, if they should be described
every one, I suppose that even the world itself could
not contain the books that would be written. Many
mighty chasms we have on this Pacific slope beside
the Yosemite canon of the Merced, and the Hetch-
hetchy canon of the Tuolumne. There is the Amer-
ican river with its north and south forks down two or
three thousand feet in hard slate. The Columbia and
the Fraser rivers have their fifty miles and more of
gorges several thousand feet deep ; and grander yet,
the KincT river canon, with its hard granite walls
