The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1881-02-04
AN ALASKA YOSEMITE.

John Muir, writing from Alaska to the
San Francisco Bulletin, says one of the
regions which he has visited near Sum
Bum bay:
This is, in form and origin typical
Yosemite valley, though as yet its floor
is covered with ice and waier-ice above
and beneath How noble q mansion in
which TO spend a winter and q summer.
1t is about ten miles long, and from
three-quarters TO one mile wide. 1t con-
tains ten large falls and cascades, the
finest one on the left side, near
the head. After coming in an admir-
able rush over a granite brow where
it is first seen at height
of 1000 to 1900 feet, it leaps a sheer
precipice of about ESQ feet, then divides
and reaches the tide water in broken rap
ids over boulders. Another about !, 900
feet high drops at once into the margin
OF the glacier two miles back from the
spout. Several of the others are upward
of 1900 feet high, descending through
the narrow gorges Is richly teathered
with ferns as any channel that water
ever flowed in, though tremendously
abrupt and deep. A grander array of
rocks and waterfalls have never yet
beheld. The amount Of timber on the
walls is about the same ~ that on
the Yosemite walls, but owing to
greater moisture there 10 more small
vegetation-bushes, MOSES, grasses, etc. !;
though by far the greater portion of the
area of the wall surface is bare, and shin
ing with the polish 1t received when &C.
cupied by the glacier that formed the en-
tire canon. The deep green patches seen
on the mountains back of the walls at
the limit of vegetation are grass. where
the wild goats, or chamoIs rather, roam
and feed. The greener and more luxur-
liant pasture, further down in the gullIes
and slopes, where the declivity is not ex-
cessive, are made up mostly of Willows,
birch and huckleberry bushes, with a
varying amount of pricky ribs and, ru-
bus and echinopanax. This grow tn
when approached, especially on the
lower slopes near the level of the sea
at the jaws of tho great side
canons, is found to be the most impene.
| trable, and tedious and toilsome
combinations of fighting bushes that the
weary explorer ever fell into, incompara.
bly, more Furnishing than the buckthern
and manzanita tangles of the Sierra. The
| cliff gardens of this hidden Yosemite are
exceedingly rich and beautiful. On al
most every rift and bench, however
small, as well as on the wider table rocks
where little soil had lodged, we find
companies of fine, bright flowers, always
fresh and always far more brilliant col.
ored than could be looked for in so cool
and beclouded a region-larkspurs, ger
aniums. paintedcups, blue-bells. gentians
sedums, saxifraxes, epilobiums, VIC.
lets, parnassia, Yeratrums, orchids
fritilaria, smilax, spirsthes as
tiers, daises, the yellow pond
lilly, bryanthus, cassiope, linnea, and s
great variety of Towering ribe and rubus
and heathworts. Many of the above
though with soft bush stems and leaves
arc yet as brightly painted as those Of
the warm sunlands of the south. The
heathworts in particular are very abund
ant and beautiful, both in flowers and
fruit, making delicate green carpets for
the rocks, flushed with pink bells or
dotted with red and blue berries. Tht
grasses are everywhere tall. with ribbon
leaves we'll tempered and arched, anC
with no lack of brisly spikes and nod,
ding. purple panicles. The Alpine
grasses of the Sierra, making close car
pets on the glacier mcads, have not ye
seen in Alaska.