air of peace and protection, and of homelike seclusion that pervades
it; the charm of a nook, a retreat, combined with the power and
grandeur of nature in her sternest moods.

After passing from the hotel at El Portal along the foaming and
roaring Merced River, and amid the tumbled confusion of enormous
granite boulders shaken down from the cliffs above, you cross the
threshold of the great valley as into some vast house or hall carved
out of the mountains, and at once feel the spell of the brooding
calm and sheltered seclusion that pervades it. You pass suddenly
from the tumultuous, the chaotic, into the ordered, the tranquil,
the restful, which seems enhanced by the power and grandeur that
encompass them about. You can hardly be prepared for the hush that
suddenly falls upon the river and for the gentle rural and sylvan
character of much that surrounds you; the peace of the fields, the
seclusion of the woods, the privacy of sunny glades, the enchantment
of falls and lucid waters, with a touch of human occupancy here and
there--all this, set in that enormous granite frame, three or four
thousand feet high, ornamented with domes and spires and peaks still
higher,--it is all this that wins your heart and fills your
imagination in the Yosemite.

As you ride or walk along the winding road up the level valley amid
the noble pines and spruces and oaks, and past the groves and bits
of meadow and the camps of many tents, and the huge mossy granite
boulders here and there reposing in the shade of the trees, with the
full, clear, silent river winding through the plain near you, you
are all the time aware of those huge vertical walls, their faces
scarred and niched, streaked with color, or glistening with
moisture, and animated with waterfalls, rising up on either hand,