- mountain systems. 3
their several portions of invented woe. Five thous- and feet below, and far as eye can reach, spreads out a periscope of beauty such as makes us loath to put off humanity even to be gods, lest mayhap as gods we should have no sympathy with scenes like this. Often have I thout>:ht when standincr entranced before entrancing nature, what a pity it was we could not alwa3^s have her scenes before us; and as for heaven, give it to those who are dissatisfied with earth. Only exterminate north winds, nervousness, and all rascal- ity, and I could rest contented yet awhile here upon this bench, though not a god.
Walled in on every side, without loop-hole or portal save by passes to the plateau regions of Utah and Arizona, and the bay of San Francisco, which across the concave from where we sit, and midway between its north and south extremes, parts the Coast Kange, whose green and grizzly hills it crowds back, and paves the way through the Golden Gate to the Pacific, we have before us what was once broad ocean, then an inland sea, afterward a hedged-in Eden, God- given to a thrice happy race, and later converted into a nineteenth-century coliseum, wherein was destined to be performed a play entitled The New Greed- struo-orle of the Nations. Time enouoh however, to talk about that to-morrow. Sit still awhile and we shall presently see, out here upon this holiday of creation, elves and fays, if any there are left for these new Arcadian vales. We can offer them whereon to sport ground which one day will be as classic as that of Greece, plains up-swelling beneath their feet, and slopes of evergreen and sweeps of forest. Then there are warm inviting knolls under star-lit skies, and enchanted groves where heaven's witchery might wanton regardless of irate ocean on one side or shadowless deserts on the other.
When this mighty Sierra was a-building, this grand up-lift, with its fluted sides flushed with never-
