One cannot look upon Yosemite or walk beneath its towering walls
without the question arising in his mind, How did all this happen?
What were the agents that brought it about? There has been a great
geologic drama enacted here; who or what were the star actors? There
are two other valleys in this part of the Sierra, Hetch-Hetchy and
King's River, that are almost identical in their main features,
though the Merced Yosemite is the widest of the three. Each of them
is a tremendous chasm in the granite rock, with nearly vertical
walls, domes, El Capitans, and Sentinel and Cathedral Rocks, and
waterfalls--all modeled on the same general plan. I believe there
is nothing just like this trio of Yosemites anywhere else on the
globe.

Guided by one's ordinary sense or judgment alone, one's judgment as
developed and disciplined by the everyday affairs of life and the
everyday course of nature, one would say on beholding Yosemite that
here is the work of exceptional and extraordinary agents or
world-building forces. It is as surprising and exceptional as would
be a cathedral in a village street, or a gigantic sequoia in a grove
of our balsam firs. The approach to it up the Merced River does not
prepare one for any such astonishing spectacle as awaits one. The
rushing, foaming water amid the tumbled confusion of huge granite
rocks and the open V-shaped valley, are nothing very remarkable or
unusual. Then suddenly you are on the threshold of this hall of the
elder gods. Demons and furies might lurk in the valley below, but
here is the abode of the serene, beneficent Olympian deities. All is
so calm, so hushed, so friendly, yet so towering, so stupendous, so