e time to climb to it to say my prayers and hear the
stone sermons.

The big Tuolumne Meadows are flowery lawns, lying along the south fork
of the Tuolumne River at a height of about eighty-five hundred to nine
thousand feet above the sea, partially separated by forests and bars of
glaciated granite. Here the mountains seem to have been cleared away or
set back, so that wide-open views may be had in every direction. The
upper end of the series lies at the base of Mount Lyell, the lower below
the east end of the Hoffman Range, so the length must be about ten or
twelve miles. They vary in width from a quarter of a mile to perhaps
three quarters, and a good many branch meadows put out along the banks
of the tributary streams. This is the most spacious and delightful high
pleasure-ground I have yet seen. The air is keen and bracing, yet warm
during the day; and though lying high in the sky, the surrounding
mountains are so much higher, one feels protected as if in a grand
hall. Mounts Dana and Gibbs, massive red mountains, perhaps thirteen
thousand feet high or more, bound the view on the east, the Cathedral
and Unicorn Peaks, with many nameless peaks, on the south, the Hoffman
Range on the west, and a number of peaks unnamed, as far as I know, on
the north. One of these last is much like the Cathedral. The grass of
the meadows is mostly fine and silky, with exceedingly slender leaves,
making a close sod, above which the panicles of minute purple flowers
seem to float in airy, misty lightness, while the sod is enriched with
at least three species of gentian and as many or more of orthocarpus,
potentilla, ivesia, solidago, pentstemon, with their gay
colors,--purple, blue, yellow, and red,--all of which I may know better
ere long. A central camp will probably be made in this region, from
which I hope to make long excursions into the surrounding mountains.

On the return trip I met the flock about three miles east of Lake
Tenaya. Here we camped for the night near a small lake lying on top of
the divide in a clump of the two-leaved pine. We are now about nine
thousand feet above the sea. Small lakes abound in all sorts of
situations,--on ridges, along mountain sides, and in piles of moraine
boulders, most of them mere pools. Only in those canyons of the larger
streams at the foot of declivities, where the down thrust of the
glaciers was heaviest, do we find lakes of considerable size and depth.
How grateful a task it would be