Yet inconceivable as it must seem even to
those who love all Nature's wildness, the storm was telling its story
on the mountains in still grander characters.
A Wonderful Winter Scene
I had long been anxious to study some points in the structure of the
ice-hill at the foot of the Upper Yosemite Fall, but, as I have already
explained, blinding spray had hitherto prevented me from getting
sufficiently near it. This morning the entire body of the Fall was
oftentimes torn into gauzy strips and blown horizontally along the face
of the cliff, leaving the ice-hill dry; and while making my way to the
top of Fern Ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to look down its
throat, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder of
the South Dome, each waving a white glowing banner against the dark blue
sky, as regular in form and firm and fine in texture as if it were made
of silk. So rare and splendid a picture, of course, smothered everything
else and I at once began to scramble and wallow up the snow-choked
Indian Canyon to a ridge about 8000 feet high, commanding a general
view of the main summits along the axis of the Range, feeling assured I
should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in the least
disappointed. I reached the top of the ridge in four or five hours, and
through an opening in the woods the most imposing wind-storm effect I
ever beheld came full in sight; unnumbered mountains rising sharply
into the cloudless sky, their bases solid white their sides plashed with
snow, like ocean rocks with foam, and on every summit a magnificent
silvery banner, from two thousand to six thousand feet in length,
slender at the point of attachment, and widening gradually until about
a thousand or fifteen hundred feet in breadth, and as shapely and as
substantial looking in texture as the banners of the finest silk, all
streaming and waving free and clear in the sun-glow with nothing to blur
the sublime picture they made.
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