A more frantic and perilous rush than usual, over a rough, shingly road, somewhat damped our keen look-out and eager expectation for the first sight of the longed-for Valley, till we drew up point blank opposite a sign board,—"Inspiration Point."
This is the most memorable incident in a visit to Yosemite, for in this first comprehensive glance you take an impression of the Valley, the one which is to remain always with you, and for all time.
I think this Valley ought to be counted as one of the wonders of the world, and that this Inspiration Point ought to have a world-wide fame; to see it should be counted as much an event in a man's life as "to see Naples and die."
I hope we were not like the gentleman "who had written largely and felicitously on many subjects," but who exclaimed as he reached this point, "My God! self-convicted as a spendthrift in words, the only terms applicable to this spot I have wasted on minor scenes," but I know that we felt awestruck and stunned for a moment by the beauty before us. We were on a platform that projected, so that we saw ourselves hanging over the precipice, just midway between the valley which seemed some immeasurable distance below, and those strangely human rocks above. Six miles long, but at no part broader than one mile, the Valley is simply formed of a cleft or gorge in one of the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. It is full of gigantic sequoias, dwarfed into ordinary fir-trees when seen from this tremendous height.
We traced the green waters of the Merced, whose source is in the imperishable fields of ice and snow, of some far-away peak, in its wayward wanderings, through the centre of the flat valley.
But the grandeur and sublimity of the valley lie above us in those marvellous configurations, those fanciful phantoms and wayward fancies placed there by nature. For centuries and centuries since the foundation of the world, they have stood there alone in their solemn glory, unseen by civilized eye, unknown until some thirty years ago.
The Sentinel, Yosemite Valley.
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