To convince me of my error of judgment, he stated that he had interviewed Captain Boling and some others, and that none had estimated the highest cliffs above a thousand feet. He further said that he would not like to risk his own reputation as a correspondent, without considerable modification of my statements, etc. Feeling outraged at this imputation, I tore up the manuscript, and left the “newspaper man” to obtain where he could such data for his patrons as would please him. It remained for those who came after us to examine scientifically, and to correctly describe what we only observed as wonderful natural curiosities. With but few exceptions, curiosity was gratified by but superficial examination of the objects now so noted. We were aware that the valley was high up in the regions of the Sierra Nevada, but its altitude above the sea level was only guessed at. The heights of its immense granite walls was an uncertainty, and so little real appreciation was there in the battalion, that some never climbed above the Vernal Fall. They knew nothing of the beauties of the Nevada Fall, or the “Little Yosemite.” We, as a body of men, were aware that the mountains, cañons and waterfalls were on a grandly extensive scale, but of the proportions of that scale we had arrived at no very definite conclusions. During our explorations of the Sierras, we noticed the effects of the huge avalanches of snow and ice that had in some age moved over the smooth granite rocks and plowed the deep cañons. The evidences of past glacial action were frequently visible; so common, in fact, as hardly to be objects of special interest to us. The fact that glaciers in motion existed in the vast piles of snow on the Sierras, was not dreamed of by us, or even surmised by others, until discovered, in 1870, by Mr. John Muir, a naturalist and most persistent mountain explorer, who by accurate tests verified the same, and gave his facts to the world. Mr. Muir has also brought into prominent notice, by publications in “Scribner’s Monthly Illustrated Magazine,” some of the beautiful lakes of the Sierras, having discovered many unknown before. Mr. Muir’s descriptions combine the most delightful imagery with the accuracy of a true lover of nature. His article upon the water-auszel, “The humming-bird of the California waterfalls,” in the same magazine, proves him a most accomplished observer.