It was a popular saying that the teamsters of California, by a natural process, developed gizzards to enable them to digest the quantities of grit which they had to swallow. But the beauty of the country through which we travelled paid for all, and a bath, with a long, cool drink of many ingredients in crushed ice, prepared by the cunning hands of Public-spirited Smith, the famous barman of the Valley, was a drink of the water of Lethe, killing all memory of heat and that dust which adds so greatly to fatigue. But I was already under the spell, for as I rode into the Yosemite Valley at nightfall the scene was striking. The huge, eerie rocks, rising some two thousand feet sheer on either side, looked like gigantic, black, threatening fortresses, built by the Titans in their war against the gods. All of a sudden a bright light began to search the gloom. I looked up, and just above the Bridal Veil Waterfall the full moon was rising. For a few minutes it looked as if that thin, airy veil of the most delicate gossamer lace, waving from side to side in the gentlest of breezes, were being poured, a silvery stream, out of the very centre of the fairy disc, scattering diamonds and opals as it touched the ground. I stopped my horse and watched, half hoping that I, poor mortal, might surprise the revels of the gnomes and fairies who surely must be holding high festival among the moonlit patches in the thickets. Soon, in full glory, the valley was lighted up, and I rode on, listening to the music of the water, knowing that I had seen a sight full of mystery, the most beautiful that ever had been or ever would be vouchsafed to my eyes. How captivating is the charm even of the idea of beautiful scenery. Poor blind Bob Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, used to say that the greatest enjoyment of which he was capable was that of travelling through beautiful scenery—beautiful scenery which he, unhappy man, never saw, but of which the idea possessed him, dominated him as nothing else could. And what a pity it was that he should have been so afflicted, for with his power of words he would have brought home to us so much. There have been a few, a very few, lords of language who have been able to describe, but even they are baffled by the masterpieces of God’s handiwork. Of these the Yosemite Valley is one; it is too great for mere words; the most we can do is to fall down and worship in silence in one of God’s own cathedrals.