At the base of Yo-wi-ye we seem standing in a _cul-de-sac_ of Nature's
grandest labyrinth. Look where we will, impregnable battlements hem us
in. We gaze at the sky from the bottom of a savage granite _barathrum_,
whence there is no escape but return through the chinks and over the
crags of an Old-World convulsion. We are at the end of the stupendous
series of Yo-Semite _effects_; eight hundred feet above us, could we
climb there, we should find the silent causes of power. There lie the
broad, still pools that hold the reserved affluence of the snow-peaks;
thence might we see, glittering like diamond lances in the sun, the
eternal snow-peaks themselves. But these would still be as far above us
as we stood below Yo-wi-ye on the lowest valley-bottom whence we came.
Even from Inspiration Point, where our trail first struck the
battlement, we could see far beyond the Valley to the rising sun,
towering mightily above Tis-sa-ack herself, the everlasting
snow-forehead of Castle Rock, his crown's serrated edge cutting the sky
at the topmost height of the Sierra. We had spoken of reaching him,--of
holding converse with the King of all the Giants. This whole weary way
have we toiled since then,--and we know better now. Have we endured all
these pains only to learn still deeper Life's saddest lesson,--"Climb
forever, and there is still an Inaccessible"?
Wetting our faces with the melted treasure of Nature's topmost
treasure-house, Yo-wi-ye answers us ere we turn back from the
Yo-Semite's last precipice toward the haunts of men:--
"Ye who cannot go to the Highest, lo, the Highest comes down to you!"
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
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