rowing about them or out in the
open in beds by themselves--lilies, Mariposa tulips, brodiaeas, orchids,
iris, spraguea, draperia, collomia, collinsia, castilleja, nemophila,
larkspur, columbine, goldenrods, sunflowers, mints of many species,
honeysuckle, etc. Many fine ferns dwell here also, especially the
beautiful and interesting rock-ferns--pellaea, and cheilanthes of
several species--fringing and rosetting dry rock-piles and ledges;
woodwardia and asplenium on damp spots with fronds six or seven feet
high; the delicate maiden-hair in mossy nooks by the falls, and the
sturdy, broad-shouldered pteris covering nearly all the dry ground
beneath the oaks and pines.

It appears, therefore, that Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain,
common, rock-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seem to suppose,
is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature's rarest and most precious
mountain temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem
to glow with life, whether leaning back in repose or standing erect in
thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, their
brows in the sky, their feet set in the groves and gay flowery meadows,
while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to
stir all the air into music--things frail and fleeting and types of
permanence meeting here and blending, just as they do in Yosemite, to
draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.

Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite
National Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the
uplifting joy and peace and health of the people, is in danger of being
dammed and made into a reservoir to help supply San Francisco with water
and light, thus flooding it from wall to wall and burying its gardens
and groves one or two hundred feet deep. This grossly destructive
commercial scheme has long been planned and urged (though water as pure
and abundant can be got from outside of the people's park, in a dozen
different places), because of the comparative cheapness of the dam and
of the territory which it is sought to divert from the great uses to
which it was dedicated in the Act of 1890 establishing the Yosemite
National Park.

The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the
world, and they increase both in size and number as their value is
recognized. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in
and pray in, where Natu