Flat, and to
mountaineers by way of Yosemite Creek basin and the head of the middle
fork of the Tuolumne.

It is said to have been discovered by Joseph Screech, a hunter, in 1850,
a year before the discovery of the great Yosemite. After my first visit
to it in the autumn of 1871, I have always called it the "Tuolumne
Yosemite," for it is a wonderfully exact counterpart of the Merced
Yosemite, not only in its sublime rocks and waterfalls but in the
gardens, groves and meadows of its flowery park-like floor. The floor of
Yosemite is about 4000 feet above the sea; the Hetch Hetchy floor about
3700 feet. And as the Merced River flows through Yosemite, so does the
Tuolumne through Hetch Hetchy. The walls of both are of gray granite,
rise abruptly from the floor, are sculptured in the same style and in
both every rock is a glacier monument.

Standing boldly out from the south wall is a strikingly picturesque rock
called by the Indians, Kolana, the outermost of a group 2300 feet high,
corresponding with the Cathedral Rocks of Yosemite both in relative
position and form. On the opposite side of the Valley, facing Kolana,
there is a counterpart of the El Capitan that rises sheer and plain to
a height of 1800 feet, and over its massive brow flows a stream which
makes the most graceful fall I have ever seen. From the edge of the
cliff to the top of an earthquake talus it is perfectly free in the air
for a thousand feet before it is broken into cascades among talus
boulders. It is in all its glory in June, when the snow is melting fast,
but fades and vanishes toward the end of summer. The only fall I know
with which it may fairly be compared is the Yosemite Bridal Veil; but it
excels even that favorite fall both in height and airy-fairy beauty and
behavior. Lowlanders are apt to suppose that mountain streams in their
wild career over cliffs lose control of themselves and tumble in a noisy
chaos of mist and spray. On the contrary, on no part of their travels
are they more harmonious and self-controlled. Imagine yourself in Hetch
Hetchy on a sunny day in June, standing waist-deep in grass and flowers
(as I have often stood), while the great pines sway dreamily with
scarcely perceptible motion. Looking northward across the Valley you
see a plain, gray granite cliff rising abruptly out of the gardens and
groves to a height of 1800 feet, and in front of it Tueeulala's silvery
scarf burning with irised sun-fire. In the first white outbu