MERCED
Merced (mercy), is the name of the county south of Stanislaus, of its own principal stream, and of its county-seat. The river was named by the Spaniards, in honor of the Virgin, El Río de Nuestra Señora de la Merced (the river of our Lady of Mercy). This name was given to the stream by the Moraga party as an expression of their joy and gratitude at the sight of its sparkling waters, after an exhausting journey of forty miles through a water-less country.
According to Fremont, this stream was called Auxumne by the Indians: “In about seventeen miles we reached the Auxumne River, called by the Mexicans Merced.... We encamped on the southern side of the river, where broken hills made a steep bluff, with a narrow bottom. On the northern side was a low undulating wood and prairie land, over which a band of about three hundred elk was slowly coming to water, feeding as they approached.”
The Merced River is notable in that it flows along the floor of the Yosemite Valley. Like all the other streams that have their rise in the Sierras, its character in its upper and lower reaches is vastly dissimilar. In the days of its turbulent youth it is a wild and boisterous stream, and in the voice of its hissing, roaring waters the wayfarer hears no sound of “mercy,” but after it makes its tremendous plunge down the western slope of the Sierras, and debouches upon the floor of the valley, it takes on a serene air of maturity, and widens into a placid river, its current flowing sluggishly between low, level banks.