THE YOSEMITÉ VALLEY.
But from what I have told you, you must perceive that each step in this strange valley affords a study for weeks, whether to an artist, a geologist, or any other lover of beautiful and wonderful scenes; and more than ever, I congratulate myself on having arrived here while all the oaks, alders, willows, and other deciduous trees, are bare and leafless, so that no curtain of dense foliage conceals the countless beauties of the valley. Already I have seen innumerable most beautiful views, scarcely veiled by the filmy network of twigs, but which evidently will be altogether concealed a month hence, when these have donned their summer dress. To me these leafless trees rank with fires and snows. I have not seen one since I left England, so I look at them with renewed interest, and delight in the beauty of their anatomy, as you and I have done many a time in the larch woods and the “birken braes” of the Findhorn (where the yellow twigs of the larch, and the grey aspen, and claret-coloured sprays of birch, blend with russet oak and green Scotch firs, and produce a winter colouring well-nigh as varied as that of summer).
Here there is an enchanting reminder of home in the tall poplar-trees—the Balm of Gilead—which are just bursting into leaf, and fill the air with heavenly perfume. They grow in clumps all along the course of the Merced, the beautiful “river of Mercy,” which flows through this green level valley so peacefully, as if it was thankful for this quiet interval in the course of its restless life.
There is no snow in the valley, but it still lies thickly on the hills all round. Very soon it will melt, and then the falls will all be in their glory, and the meadows will be flooded and the streams impassable. I am glad we have arrived in time to wander about dry-footed, and to learn the geography of the country in its normal state.
The valley is an almost dead level, about eight miles long, and varies in width from half a mile to two miles. It is like a beautiful park of greenest sward, through which winds the clear, calm river—a capital trout-stream, of about eighty feet in width. In every direction are scattered picturesque groups of magnificent trees, noble old oaks, and pines of 250 feet in height! The river is spanned by two wooden bridges; and three neat hotels are well placed about the middle of the valley, half a mile apart—happily not fine, incongruous buildings, but wooden bungalows, well suited to the requirements of such pilgrims as ourselves....
May-day, 1877.
May-day! What a vision of langsyne! Of the May-dew we used to gather from off the cowslips by the sweet burnside, in those dear old days
“When we all were young together,
And the earth was new to me.”
I dare say you forgot all about May-day this morning, in the prosaic details of town life. But here we ran no such risk, for we had determined to watch the Beltane sunrise, reflected in the glassiest of mountain-tarns, known as the Mirror Lake; and as it lies about three miles from here, in one of the upper forks of the valley, we had to astir betimes.