Preview
Circa Date
circa 1887
Transcription
8
Now the stream is larger & flows with river-like stateliness hoarding back the united riches of all its songful affluents [effluents] leading a peaceful life shaded by arrowy close planted pines & its banks matted with heathy bryanthus in the shady borders of the pine groves. And in open reaches by willow thickets & tall arching sedges & bush honeysuckle. The drier margins are fringed [glorious] with white & purple spiraea & mimulus & innumerable gilias so small as to be almost invisible covering the ground like a purple mist
Domes
The whole basin of Yo. [Yosemite] Creek above the fall is paved with granite domes in various stages of development some of them more than half sunk beneath the general rock surface. Nowhere in this section of the Sierra is the dome structure of granite more conspicuous. Some sunk deep showing only their smoothly curved crowns others rising hundreds of feet into the air. Some developed only on one side while the other remains buried in the mountain side. (They are very abundant) near the head of the main fall, & the stream goes winding through the most of them (where they are) they are clustered together like foambells [crowded together] into [some side] a pool near at the [head] base of the [a] fall.
9
Most of these domes are bare as if the glaciers that brought them into relief by removing the less resisting rocks [that] in which they were imbedded had just left them to dry in the sun. For they shine in many places with the polish given them by the ice pressure & motion as if they had not yet suffered exposure to a single storm
A general view of the basin shows these domes & curved wavy ridges in such abundance that they appear to occupy nearly all the surface leaving only narrow lines & rings of soil between them for trees & flowers which make but little mark amid the bare waving mass of gray desolate rocks
But when we go into the basin we find it far from sterile in spite of its rockiness, abounding in all that is sublime & beautiful in mountains, dark forests of fir & pine carpets of fairest meadows glassy mirror lakes countless singing brooks birds bees butterflies deer bears marmots. A place of groves & a thousand flowers with all the love & life& joy that ever accompanies them.
General view of the Yo [Yosemite] waters
After making the acquaintance of the great Yo [Yosemite] Falls it is natural to crave some knowledge concerning the early life of the
Date Occurred
1872-1874
Resource Identifier
MuirReel32 Notebook01 Img007.Jpeg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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