The trip we took from the Meadows, again without trail, was down the Tuolumne to Hetch-Hetchy Valley. The journey's start literally was flower-strewn, and we tramped carefully lest we crush over-many of the purple daisies and tiny violets dotting the dewy grass, while lupin offered gentle resistance to our progress. First came the canyon of Conness Creek, shaded with groves of hemlock, and neighbored by three falls, the first of the countless cataracts which mark the wild river's course through the rockbound gorge, to the valley of our destination, miles below. Beyond the falls the stream flows quietly for a space, between banks lined with pines and deciduous trees. As Marion Randall Parsons has quoted, here, Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro' the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. And standing beside the white waters with the ground shaking underfoot to the tune of their mighty onrush, with the meadows, trees, and flowers round about, the awesome cliffs for guardians, and the bright blue sky over all, it requires no visionary to conjure up legendary cities at this river's end, for but half lend yourself to the notion and the glorious Sierran stream becomes a beckoning highway to a land of pleasant dreams. [Illustration: "A vast flower garden maintained enticingly by Dame Nature" Copyright 1912 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.] [Illustration: Light and shadow in Yosemite] Of the Tuolumnic canyon journey this same lover of the Sierras, Mrs. Parsons, has sketched the following description: It is impossible to do justice to the canyon after one brief journey through it; impossible to set down in order the details of that day's travel and the next, confused as they were by the consciousness of tired muscles and eyes bewildered by the all too hurried succession of interests. Little more than impressions remain--memories of cliffs rising from three to five thousand feet above us; of a walk of half a mile on stepping stones along the river; of more talus-piles; of the entrance into the rattlesnake zone; of a walk through a still forest of tall firs and young cedars, where our voices seemed to break the silence of ages; of more talus-piles; of a camp beneath the firs among deep fern-beds, and of the red ants that there congregated; of more brush and more talus-piles; of a look down Muir Gorge and a hot climb up a thousand feet over the rocks to the cairn of stones containing the precious register; of a cliff extending to the river's edge which presented the alternative of edging across it on a crack or climbing a five-hundred-foot hill to get around it.