LITTLE GOSSIPS.
OUR POST-OFFICE BOX.
Yosemite Valley, California.
I thought I would write you, as you might like to receive a letter from the Yosemite Valley. I am a little boy eleven years old. I have never written to you, but have taken Harper's Young People from the beginning. I like it very much. I like the story of "Talking Leaves" best. I live at Merced Falls, Merced County, California. I came here for my health. I have not many pets, but have a goat, which I harness to my wagon, and take a ride. They caught a bear here in the valley a few nights ago. They set a trap for him, and he got in it, and dragged it into the river, and was drowned. It was a cinnamon bear. There are some big bears around here, and there are deer in the mountains around the valley. There is a little pet fawn here.
The valley is ten miles long and three wide, with high mountains around it averaging 4000 feet in height. The valley itself is 4000 feet above the sea. One big mountain here is called Clouds' Rest, which is 6450 feet high. I have not been on the top of it yet, but expect to go. One other is called South or Half Dome, and is 6000 feet high. You have to climb a rope-ladder 900 feet high to get to the top of the mountain. I think it is dangerous climbing there, but quite a number of ladies and gentlemen have been to the top. I have been to Glacier Point, another mountain, which is 3700 feet above the valley. It is four and a half miles up a zigzag trail. I walked up. Most of the tourists go there, as a very fine view of the valley and the Vernal and Nevada falls can be had from this point. These are the upper falls, and you go up a trail to get to them.
Vernal Fall is 400 and Nevada 700 feet high. The Merced River forms these falls, and flows on through the valley. I have been to these falls, and think them very pretty. There is a valley called Little Yosemite above Nevada Fall. Yosemite and Bridal Veil are two other falls in the valley. Yosemite, which is 2634 feet high, is nearly dry now. Bridal Veil Fall is 900 feet high. I have been to Mirror Lake, which the guides call Looking-glass Lake, because its waters reflect the mountains around its shore.
When you enter the valley you pass the mountain El Capitan, which the Indians call the Great Chief of the Valley. There is an Indian one hundred and six years old, the last of the Yosemite tribe, who lives here. Last Saturday it snowed nearly all day long. The mountains are covered with snow now, but in the valley it has melted. On one of the roads to the valley eighteen inches of snow fell.
Willie F. O.
Chicago, Illinois.
About one month ago my papa and myself were visiting out on a farm about fifty miles west of Chicago, where the folks were getting in hay. They have an old dog named Major, and he and I had lots of fun killing field-mice and moles that would run out of the hay when it was stirred up. He would swallow the mice, and hardly chew them at all. The moles he would not eat, neither will cats eat moles. At last Major grabbed a large frog that jumped out of the hay, and bit and shook him until we thought Mr. Frog was dead, when I took him up and set him on the end of the hay-rack, letting his long hind-legs hang down, and he looked just like many frog pictures I have seen. He never tried to get away or appeared to be alive for at least half an hour, and I was just saying what a fine funeral Ernest and I would have with the frog when Ernest came home from school, when, just as we were crossing a bridge on our way home, and I was holding froggy by his hind-legs, he gave a jerk and slipped out of my hands to the bridge, and then jumped into the creek below, looking up, as much as to say, "I've spoiled your funeral this time." Do you think he was partly killed, or was he playing 'possum, as I have heard people say?
My papa is writing this, as I can't write well enough for printers to read. He brings me Young People every week, and I like it.
Marvie.
Wouldn't I have given Major a shake for his treatment of the frog if I had been there? I am so glad poor froggy revived, and went leaping off. I suppose he was quite exhausted by Major's rough play, and revived when he felt his native air as you crossed the bridge. Long life to him!