MARVELOUS YO SEMITE VALLEY.
"IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS." By J. M. Hutchings. One of nature's most sublime creations is the Yo Semite Valley. Human language is impotent to describe its grandeur. Selected gems of beauty here and there may be delineated, and salient features portrayed; but the sublimity of its grand entirety can only be absorbed by frequent personal vision of its mighty walls and waters. This inoculation J. M. Hutchings has acquired by a life's residence in this abysmal wonder of the world. With his morning and evening breath for over a quarter of a century he has inhaled the inspirational grandeur of this world's greatest wonder; and now in this book he gives us a right royal setting of his impressions. There does not live a writer who could do this service better. With him it is a work of love, and his entire being is bound up in this volume. Fortunate California to have within her borders the crowning, regnant natural wonder of all the earth! and again to be congratulated with having one of her own citizens competent to best tell the story of its sublimity! No other curiosity of the nations has ever had so capable and sincerely earnest a chronicler of its qualities and merits as the Yo Semite has in Hutchings. All that is interesting in its history, commanding in view, attractive in outline or quiet beauty, and romantic in its mythological lore, is contained in this pretty volume. The illustrations are profuse, commencing with the earliest traditions of the valley, and pictorially tracing the incidents of the valley and visitors to the present day. Some of the sketches from the easels of world-famous painters are reproduced herein with great artistic excellence, which will bring to the distant reader as clear an impression as art can furnish of the massiveness and supernal dignity of the grand originals. Besides a narration of the incidents connected with the valley's discovery, settlement, and progress, this book contains a guide to all trails, waterfalls, lakes, cascades, and outside points of interest. The Big Trees, too, come in for a graphic description, and well they deserve it, for "Not any prince
From all that proud old land
Beyond the sea, ere bore his crown so loftily
As these bear the rich coronal of leaves
With which His grace has crowned them."
In mechanical execution this superb volume is a triumph of the bookmaker's art. Esthetic taste combined with a publisher's skill, and the union of utility and attractiveness make this book a most desirable gift for the holidays approaching. It is a work complete and of permanent authority; for after such an author-essay, so perfectly gleaned, and so fitted by fortune, Hutchings's history will be standard.