CIII. - THE YO SEMITE VALLEY. REV. WAYLAND HOYT. [The Rev. Wayland Hoyt is a Baptist clergyman, and pastor of the Strong Place Church of Brooklyn, New York. The following description of the celebrated Yo Semite Valley of California is taken from a sermon delivered October 17, 1869.] 1. THE valley of the Yo Semite is a chasm between the two ranges of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, four thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is about one hundred and twenty miles eastward in a direct line from San Francisco. Having advanced by stage and steamboat to within about twenty-five miles of the valley, the visitor must then complete his journey on horseback. And so up and over a spur of the Sierra Nevada, you ride for twenty-five miles along a narrow forest trail, winding in and out between columns of pine trees rising from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in height. At length the ride is nearly finished, and you stop your horse upon a jutting rock, and look over into the mighty mountain gorge, the upper end of which forms the Yo Semite Valley, and through which the Merced River rushes, and roars, and plunges two thousand feet below you. 2. You are appalled and dizzied at the spectaclethe deep shadows falling on the gorges- the sheer rent between the mountains here and there large mountain birds, unterrified, wheeling in majestic flight the river dashing against the rocks, as though angry at the obstructions in its channel, and angrier still that with its utmost strength it cannot hurl them from its course. Then, entranced and yet appalled, you turn your horse and seek again the narrow trail. 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 fascination 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 Rock keeping 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. 1 JUTTING. Shooting out; projecting. 5 TRANS-FIXED' Pierced through. 3 AERIE (e're or a'e-re). The nest of a bird of prey, as the eagle or the hawk. |4 CỌN-VŬL'SION. Disturbance; tumult. CIV. DECORATION DAY. S. F. SMITH. [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, May 30, 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; 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. |