It leads you down the mountain. The descent is steep and fearful — often but the narrow footway clinging to the mountain side; above you, vast heights of rock; below you, and right at your side, the sheer and seemingly measureless abyss. And so the path goes winding down. At last you reach the level, and find yourself enclosed amid huge piles of fallen rocks wrenched by the frosts from the mountain-side. Then winding out of these, you approach the entrance of the valley.

3. And the first thing which thrusts itself upon your sight, and will not let you turn your eyes away from it, is the immense El Capitan the captain rock of all, rightly so named the great chief of the valley. It is a ponderous mass of granite- unbroken, square, perpendicular, with so smooth a front no pine or moss can gain foothold on it-lifting its gray front full three quarters of a mile direct into the sky: You have seen nothing like that in your life before. Probably there is not in the wide world, anywhere, such a simply ponderous mass. At once you feel its power. It is a complete tyrant-it will compel your gaze. There are crowds of wonders around you calling for your attention; but you are enslaved - you can simply gaze, and gaze again. You can look nowhere else until at last the pressure of its power becomes almost insupportable.

4. Then, when you may turn away, and pass a little farther on, you are transfixed 2 and fascinated by beauty. Opposite the El Capitan, and right across the valley, perhaps two miles away, falls, and yet it does not fall; it floats, almost as lightly as the mists do along the mountain-side, floats downward, and

wavers to and fro as the breeze caresses it, changing it into fantastic shapes of spray- the Bridal Veil. It is a waterfall nine hundred and forty feet in height, so high in descent, so light and beautiful in substance, that the water divides itself into minute and pearly drops, and glides down in whitest spray; coming down softly and lovingly as the feathery snow descends, when sometimes, on some bright day in winter, a passing cloud scatters below a few of its shining crystals.

5. When you have recovered a little from the fas cination of such beauty, you pass on to behold on the same side of the valley the solemn masses of the Cathedral Spires, of sombre color and Gothic shape, looking down upon you from heights averaging two thousand four hundred feet. Just opposite these, on the other side the valley, are other pinnacled rocks, four thousand three hundred feet aloft. So you pass on along the floor of the valley - as level as the bosom of a lake on some still summer noon, rich with the greenest grass, and flaming with myriad flowers, and holding in its embrace a river, now swift and flecked with foam, then led round into pools pure and unruffled; and on either side of you the steep and lofty walls of rock, rising into an average altitude of four thousand feet above the plain on which you stand.

6. And now, from behind a turn or corner in the valley wall, flashes out upon you the Falls of the Yo Semite. It is the loftiest waterfall in the world. The water, leaping over the distant rocky rim, must fall more than half a mile before it can touch the level plain below. It takes one sheer bound of sixteen

hundred feet, then it boils over rocks in a cascade for four hundred, then it rushes on to its last leap of seven hundred feet. What power, and yet what lightness! What fearful, furious plunge, and yet what exquisiteness of beauty!-- swaying draperies of spray down-shooting rockets of silver-the lustrous gleam of the water against the solemn purple of the smooth and uplifted rocks.

7. Yet from this fresh wonder must you tear yourself, and go onward still. Opposite to you, and on the other side the valley, is the Sentinel Rockkeeping continual watch above it from its aerie,3 three thousand two hundred and seventy feet above you. You pause to lift a wondering gaze towards that. But now, as you pass a little onward, you are thrust into new thraldom by another power; for right before you tower the majestic Domes of the Yo Semite. Yes, they are domes domes of bare granite domes as absolute and exact as that of the Capitol at Washington, or as that of St. Peter's at Rome; only those, in height and size, compared with these, are but as a hillock to an Alp.

8. There is the North Dome, heaving its rounded mass more than three thousand seven hundred feet into the sky above you; and right opposite that on the other side the valley, the wonder of wonders, as the Indians rightly named it, the Goddess of the Valley, the South Dome, piled six thousand feet aloft from the plain on which you stand. Some awful convulsion of nature has split off a vast section of it, hurling it no one can tell where there is no trace of it in all the valley. And so it stands there, rounded on the thither side, steep and abrupt on this, a vast,

gray, towering half-dome, and inaccessible; no human foot ever has scaled, or probably ever can scale it.

[Rev. Samuel F. Smith, D. D., is a native of Boston, and a graduate of Harvard College of the class of 1829. He is a clergyman of the Baptist denomination, and the editor of the publications of the American Baptist Missionary Union. He is best known as the author of the national hymn beginning, "My country, 'tis of thee."

The following poem was written for Decoration Day, May, 1871. Decoration Day is now generally observed in honor of the heroes of the late war, whose graves are on that day decorated with flowers.]

1. STREW the fair garlands where slumber the dead, Ring out the strains like the swell of the sea; Heartfelt the tribute we lay on each bed;

Sound o'er the brave the refrain of the free;

Sound the refrain of the loyal and free,

Visit each sleeper and hallow each bed; Waves the starred banner from sea-coast to sea; Grateful the living and honored the dead.

2. Dear to each heart are the names of the brave; Resting in glory how sweetly they sleep! Dew-drops at evening fall soft on each grave, Kindred and strangers bend fondly to weep; Kindred bend fondly, and drooping eyes weep

Tears of affection o'er every green grave; Fresh are their laurels and peaceful their sleep; Love still shall cherish the noble and brave.

3. Peace o'er this land, o'er these homes of the free, Brood evermore with her sheltering wing; God of the nation, our trust is in Thee,

God, our Protector, our Guide, and our King; God, our Protector, our Guide, and our King,

Thou art our refuge, our hope is in Thee; Strong in Thy blessing and safe 'neath Thy wing, Peace shall encircle these homes of the free.

1. PRESS on! there's no such word as fail!
Press nobly on! the goal is near !
Ascend the mountain! breast the gale!
Look upward, onward,

Why shouldst thou faint?

never fear!

Heaven smiles above,

Though storm and vapor intervene ; 1
That sun shines on, whose name is Love,
Serenely o'er Life's shadowed scene.

2. Press on

surmount the rocky steeps, 2 Climb boldly o'er the torrent's arch; He fails alone who feebly creeps;

He wins who dares the hero's march.
Be thou a hero! let thy might

Tramp on eternal snows its way,
And through the ebon3 walls of night
Hew down a passage unto day.

3. Press on! if once and twice thy feet Slip back and stumble, harder try;