I have spoken of the Great South Dome in the masculine gender, but the
native tradition makes it feminine. Nowhere is there a more beautiful
Indian legend than that of Tis-sa-ack. I will condense it into a few
short sentences from the long report of an old Yo-Semite brave.
Tis-sa-ack was the tutelar goddess of the Valley, as Tu-toch-anula was
its fostering god,--the former a radiant maiden, the latter an
ever-young immortal,--
"amorous as the month of May."
Becoming desperately fascinated with his fair colleague, Tu-toch-anula
spent in her arms all the divine long days of the California summer,
kissing, dallying, and lingering, until the Valley-tribes began to
starve for lack of the crops which his supervision should have ripened,
and a deputation of venerable men came from the dying people to
prostrate themselves at the foot of Tis-sa-ack. Full of anguish at her
nation's woes, she rose from her lover's arms, and cried for succor to
the Great Spirit. Then, with a terrible noise of thunder, the mighty
cone split from heaven to earth,--its frontal half falling down to dam
the snow-waters back into a lake, whence to this day the beautiful
Valley-stream takes one of its loveliest branches,--its other segment
remaining erect till this present, to be the Great South Dome under the
_in-memoriam_ title of Tis-sa-ack.
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