What to see in America . ee quarters of a mile deep. Its flooris well grassed, and is adorned with trees and it winds the Merced River by which the valleywas cut from the solid granite nearly to its present meandering Merced was then a roaring torrent thatgouged constantly deeper, helped by the friction of quan-tities of sand and rock frag-ments it carried down fromthe High Sierra. It scouredthe canyon day and nightfor millions of years. Thevalley was V-shaped whenthe glaciers arrived, and thepresent waterfalls were cas-cades. The ice that filledthe canyon for unknownt
What to see in America . ee quarters of a mile deep. Its flooris well grassed, and is adorned with trees and it winds the Merced River by which the valleywas cut from the solid granite nearly to its present meandering Merced was then a roaring torrent thatgouged constantly deeper, helped by the friction of quan-tities of sand and rock frag-ments it carried down fromthe High Sierra. It scouredthe canyon day and nightfor millions of years. Thevalley was V-shaped whenthe glaciers arrived, and thepresent waterfalls were cas-cades. The ice that filledthe canyon for unknownthousands of years widenedand deepened it, made it U-shaped and transformed thecascades into waterfalls. Alake occupied the valley,after the ice vanished, butfinally filled with twenty-five small gla-ciers still remain in the park,and there are ten times thatnumber of glacier-formedlakes. An Indian legend tells of a young brave, one of the dwellers in the valley, who, Wawona TiiKK while going to Mirror Lake. California 481 to spear figh, encountered a hugegrizzly bear. He fought thebeast with his spear and aclub, and finally killed it. Thisexploit won for the youngbrave the name Yosemite, whichmeans Full-grown GrizzlyBear. The name was trans-mitted to his children, andeventually given to the entiretribe inhabiting the valley. Mir-ror Lake was called the Sleep-ing Water by the Indians. The valley was first seen bywhite men in 1851, when amilitary expedition went thereto negotiate with the till four years later did ithave any more white visitors,and then the flow of Yosemitesightseers began, though the an-nual average in the next halfdozen years was only about ahundred. Not until 1874 werethe first wagon roads completedto the valley. A few Indiansare even yet permanent dwell-ers in the valley, and otherscome there to live during thesummer. They gather wood, pine nuts, and acorns, catchfish, do household work for the whites, and sit in their cabinsor under
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1919
