YOSEMITE  , a famous valley on the W. slope of the Sierra

Nevada of California, about 150 M . E. of San Francisco and 4000 ft. above the sea . It is 7 M. long, half a mile to a mile wide, and nearly a mile deep, eroded out of hard massive granite by glacial action . Its precipitous walls present a great variety of forms, and the bottom, a filled-up lake basin, is level and park-like . The most notable of the wall rocks are: El Capitan, 3300 ft. high, a sheer, plain mass of granite; the Three Brothers, North Dome, Glacier Point, the Sentinel, Cathedral, Sentinel Dome and Cloud's Rest, from 2800 to nearly 6000 ft. high; and Half Dome, the noblest of all, which rises at the head of the valley to the height of 4740 ft . These rocks illustrate on a grand scale the action of ice in mountain sculpture . For here five large glaciers united to form the grand trunk glacier that eroded the valley and occupied • it as its channel . Its moraines, though mostly obscured by vegetation and weathering, may still be traced; while on the snowy peaks at the headwaters of the Merced a considerable number of small glaciers, once tributary to the main Yosemite glacier, still exist . The Bridal Veil Fall, 900 ft. high, is one of the most interesting features of the lower end of the valley . Towards the upper end the great Yosemite Fall pours from a height of 2600 ft . The valley divides at the head into three branches, the Tenaya, Merced and South Fork canyons . In the main (Merced) branch are the Vernal and Nevada Falls, 400 and 600 ft. high .

The Nevada is usually ranked next to the Yosemite among the five main falls of the valley, and is the whitest of all the falls . The Vernal, about half a mile below the Nevada, is famous for its afternoon rainbows, At

flood-time it is a nearly regular sheet about 8o ft. wide, changing as it descends from green to purplish-grey and white . In the S. branch, a mile from the head of the main valley, is the Illilouette Fall, 600 ft. high, one of the most beautiful of the Yosemite choir . Considering the great height of the snowy mountains about the valley, the climate of the Yosemite is remarkably mild . The vegetation is rich and luxuriant . The tallest pines are over 200 ft. high; the trunks of some of the oaks are from 6 to 8 ft. in diameter; violets, lilies, golden-rods, ceanothus, manzanita, wild rose and azalea make broad beds and banks of bloom in the spring; and on the warmest parts of the walls flowers blossom in every month of the year . The valley was discovered in 1851 by a military company in pursuit of marauding Indians; regular tourist travel began in 1856 . The first permanent settler in the valley was Mr J . C . Lamon, who built a cabin in the upper end of it in 186o and planted gardens and orchards . In 1864 the valley was granted to the state of California by act of Congress on condition that it should be held as a place of public use, resort and recreation inalienable for all time, was re-ceded to the United States by California on the 3rd of March 1905, and is now included in the Yosemite National Park . In the number and height of its vertical falls and in the massive grandeur of El Capitan and Half Dome rocks Yosemite is unrivalled .

But there are many other valleys of the same

kind . The most noted of those in the Sierra, visited every summer by tourists, hunters and mountaineers, are the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a wonderful counter-part of Yosemite in the Tuolumne canyon; Tehipitee Valley, in the Middle Fork canyon of King's river; and the King's river Yosemite in the South Fork canyon, the latter being larger and deeper than the Merced Yosemite . All are similar in their trends, forms, sculpture and vegetation, and are plainly and harmoniously related to the ancient glaciers . The Romsdal and Naerodal of Norway and Lauterbrunnen of the Alps are well characterized glacial valleys of the Yosemite type, and in S.E . Alaska many may be observed in process of formation . See the Annual Reports (Washington, 1891 sqq.) of the Superintendent of the Park; the Guide to the Yosemite published by the California Geological Survey; John Muir, Our National Parks (Boston, 1901); and _Bunnell's Discovery of the Yosemite (New York, 1893) . (J .