The Approach To The Valley
Sauntering up the foothills to Yosemite by any of the old trails or
roads in use before the railway was built from the town of Merced up the
river to the boundary of Yosemite Park, richer and wilder become the
forests and streams. At an elevation of 6000 feet above the level of the
sea the silver firs are 200 feet high, with branches whorled around the
colossal shafts in regular order, and every branch beautifully pinnate
like a fern frond. The Douglas spruce, the yellow and sugar pines and
brown-barked Libocedrus here reach their finest developments of beauty
and grandeur. The majestic Sequoia is here, too, the king of conifers,
the noblest of all the noble race. These colossal trees are as wonderful
in fineness of beauty and proportion as in stature--an assemblage of
conifers surpassing all that have ever yet been discovered in the
forests of the world. Here indeed is the tree-lover's paradise; the
woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering masses of
half sunshine, half shade; the night air as well as the day air
indescribably spicy and exhilarating; plushy fir-boughs for campers'
beds and cascades to sing us to sleep. On the highest ridges, over which
these old Yosemite ways passed, the silver fir (Abies magnifica) forms
the bulk of the woods, pressing forward in glorious array to the very
brink of the Valley walls on both sides, and beyond the Valley to a
height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above the level of the sea.
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