THE YOSEMITE 211 himself. Below are dark pillars of cedar and pine which impress their slender shapes against the back- ground of the wall. The calmed river slips past shores that are edged with alder and dogwood, and gemmed with the whorls and cymes of a flower- mosaic. This is the wonder of the Yosemite: this tender- ness of growing things, living waters, shrilling birds in a hall of rigid stone. If we wish, we can go down to the brim of El Cap- itan, whose enormous expanse of dogged granite is visible for miles. Verily this is the Chieftain who rules the Valley's unparalleled concourse of rock Braves, this a prow-like bulwark which drops three thousand and three hundred perpendicular feet from vertex to base. From its ridge, forests and hummocky plains, green as only a tract can be that is watered by snow-streams, stretch to the Tuolumne. The course of this river has the same tendency as that of the Merced. The Hetch Hetchy, or Hatchat- chie, 6 Valley is at the lower or western end of the jagged canyon which more than equals in fierce display the upper path of the Merced. This paragon of a Valley is doomed to become the bed of San Francisco's storage reservoir. 6 According to Stephen Powers in his report to the Gov- ernment following a survey of the Rocky Mt. Region, this is the correct spelling.
