For years after it fairly took her breath away to think of it. First they took the familiar road to Inspiration Point, then made their way over the mountains where the Glacier Point Road now runs, and camped for the night in the highlands of never-failing frost. Next morning they pursued their way through the woods an interminable distance, as it seemed to Mamie, until finally they stood upon the brink of a huge cañon, with a snowy mountain range in the distance beyond, and in the intervening space, a vast panorama of granite mountain sides, almost white,—here and there covered with a sparse growth of timber. The waters from these mountain reaches had cut a channel for themselves known as Little Yosemite Valley, where pour the two wonderful cataracts known as Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls. Their deep roar came up from the valley. Mamie felt that she would be content to watch that scene the whole day through.
But Mat took her on to Glacier Point, where you look straight down more than three thousand feet to the level floor of the Yosemite Valley. There below, more than half a mile below, she saw her neighbors' cottages; and the thought occurred to her, as she clung to Mat, that if she should fall over the precipice she might crash through the roof of one of these. She actually saw the good neighbor who was caring for her own child during his mother's absence. Before the day of aviators it seemed strange enough to look straight down from half a mile up in the sky.
Then came those scenes of terrifying magnificence when she followed Mat over the trail cut along the perpendicular walls of the cañon five miles down to the floor of the Valley. One who has not passed over that trail can scarcely conceive of it; and one who has, brings away a sense of the sublime and the beautiful mingled with terror. There against the blue sky stands the perpendicular wall of Half Dome, almost within arm's reach, seemingly, in that clear atmosphere. There stand El Capitan and the Three Graces. And there at every turn of the trail pours the glorious Yosemite Fall, at first too far away for the ear to notice its distant thunder. Then on closer approach the faint roar is heard across the cañon. The attention becomes fixed more and more upon this majestic cataract, to set off which the wonderful mountain walls seem to have been specially created. The trail from Glacier Point, beginning at an altitude above the top of the fall opposite, reveals it in its whole nakedness—shows its rise in the vast watershed of upland mountain valleys, and then by degrees leads you closer and closer to it until, at Union Point, its glory is perfect.
But why attempt to outline the wonders of that famous valley?
If Mr. and Mrs. Mat Bailey were not actually happy ever after, they found life worth living. As only people of humble fortune are likely to do, they lived the simple life. And they found it pleasant. They realized, as many people of humble fortune do not, that the sweetest pleasure can be derived from the cheerful performance of obvious and commonplace duties. Mat had always taken pride in his unpretentious calling, and his wife learned to love the blessed busy life of wife and mother.
Her sons and daughters, knowing no better because of their peculiar environment, grew up believing this old earth most beautiful, and the nobility of their world seemed to create in them nobility of character. The sheltered peace of that green valley entered into their souls.
THE END