If report was true, we were going to the original site of the Garden of
Eden,--into a region which out-Bendemered Bendemere, out-valleyed the
valley of Rasselas, surpassed the Alps in its waterfalls, and the
Himmal'yeh in its precipices. As for the two former subjects of
comparison, we never met any tourist who could adjust the question from
his own experience; but the superiority of the Yo-Semite to the Alpine
cataracts was a matter put beyond doubt by repeated judgments, and a
couple of English officers who had explored the wildest Himmal'yeh
scenery told Starr King that there was no precipice in Asia to be
compared for height or grandeur with Tu-toch-anula and Tis-sa-ack.
We were going into the vale whose giant domes and battlements had months
before thrown their photographic shadow through Watkins's camera across
the mysterious wide continent, causing exclamations of awe at Goupil's
window, and ecstasy in Dr. Holmes's study. At Goupil's counter and in
Starr King's drawing-room we had gazed on them by the hour already,--I,
let me confess it, half a Thomas-a-Didymus to Nature, unwilling to
believe the utmost true of her till I could put my finger in her very
prints. Now we were going to test her reported largess for ourselves.
No Saratoga affair, this! A total lack of tall trunks, frills, and
curling-kids.
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