North Dome
lifts its rounded granite bulk three thousand five hundred and seventy feet above the valley. It looks as if built of huge, concentric, overlapping, hemispherical domes, piled one upon another, and having their overlapping edges irregularly broken away. On the valley side, that is, toward the south and southeast, it is so steep that no human foot has ever climbed it. In the rear, however, that is, toward the north and west, it falls away in a vast ridge or spine, along which one can easily gain the very summit of the dome itself. The Indian name was To-coy-ah, meaning the shade of an Indian baby basket.
Passing three quarters of a mile still down, we reach the angle or turn between the Tenaya cañon and the valley proper. In this turn, in fact forming the angle, stands the