ook down its
throat, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of
the South Dome, each waving a white glowing banner against the dark blue
sky, as regular in form and firm and fine in texture as if it were made
of silk. So rare and splendid a picture, of course, smothered everything
else and I at once began to scramble and wallow up the snow-choked
Indian Canyon to a ridge about 8000 feet high, commanding a general
view of the main summits along the axis of the Range, feeling assured I
should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least
disappointed. I reached the top of the ridge in four or five hours, and
through an opening in the woods the most imposing wind-storm effect I
ever beheld came full in sight; unnumbered mountains rising sharply
into the cloudless sky, their bases solid white their sides plashed with
snow, like ocean rocks with foam, and on every summit a magnificent
silvery banner, from two thousand to six thousand feet in length,
slender at the point of attachment, and widening gradually until about
a thousand or fifteen hundred feet in breadth, and as shapely and as
substantial looking in texture as the banners of the finest silk, all
streaming and waving free and clear in the sun-glow with nothing to blur
the sublime picture they made.

Fancy yourself standing beside me on this Yosemite Ridge. There is a
strange garish glitter in the air and the gale drives wildly overhead,
but you feel nothing of its violence, for you are looking out through a
sheltered opening in the woods, as through a window. In the immediate
foreground there is a forest of silver fir their foliage warm
yellow-green, and the snow beneath them strewn with their plumes,
plucked off by the storm; and beyond broad, ridgy, canyon-furrowed,
dome-dotted middle ground, darkened here and there with belts of pines,
you behold the lofty snow laden mountains in glorious array, waving
their banners with jubilant enthusiasm as if shouting aloud for joy.
They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for
every feature is distinct and the whole wonderful show is seen in its
right proportions, like a painting on the sky.

And now after this general view, mark how sharply the ribs and
buttresses and summits of the mountains are defined, excepting the
portions veiled by the banners; how gracefully and nobly the banners
are waving in accord with the throbbing of the wind flood; how trimly
each