into the whole length of the Yosemite Valley as he would into a deep trench. The river, looking white and slender down there so far, is roaring on its downward course, but I can't hear it. The heavy pine trees from one to two hundred feet high down there in the valley, look like standing evergreens in a meadow. El Capitan, the Half Dome, the Cap of Liberty, the North Dome, and all the other immense peaks that rise up three or four thousand feet above the valley, I can look down on as a tall man upon a crowd of boys. A swallow rushed by me with the whiz of a bullet, making my heart beat with excitement for the moment, and then I began to think how nice it would be to fly down to some of the peaks below; but when a person begins to think of flying in such a place it is dangerous business. He might suddenly take it into his head to try it. The peaks to the east are all covered with snow, and the whole country for miles in every direction has a very light colored appearance, the granite of which it is all composed giving it that look. The mass of rocks that are entirely bare, free from all kinds of vegetation, is fully one-half of the entire area of the country within view. Straight across the valley, and only a little lower down, is a mass of granite, smooth as a floor, containing hundreds of acres, with scarcely a tree or shrub on it. It is less than a mile away, and yet what an awful chasm between us, a chasm deeper than it is wide. The distant views from Pike's Peak are more extended, but there are no such perpendicular heights as are here seen on all sides. I cannot give any good reason for feeling so, but it takes all the courage I have to stay here and eat my luncheon and write what little I have written. Sitting in the middle of this small area the only objects seen over the edge are from five to six thousand feet below, and it is only by going near the edge, which I don't like to do, that I can see the immense granite mountain that supports this small, flat surface, and the sight of that reassures me. But I can't endure it any longer. It is not pleasant up here alone. I feel all the time as if I was just on the point of losing control of myself. I keep thinking what if I should jump off, how would it feel going down a mile or more through the air. People who talk contemptuously of what is called altitude sickness can never have experienced it.