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Show 354 necessarily the most sacred mountain in America. He knew that people tended to avoid seeing Nature in and of itself, and preferred abstractions to the real thing. The desire not to miss any "scenic turnout," "feature," or "point of interest" could finally be traced to the same vulgar following of crowds which created a cluster of people surrounding the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, perhaps. In a place like the Sierra, such behavior was a crime against Nature, who was inseparable and incomparable. He felt, justifiably, that recreation was not the same thing as entertainment. After being shown two rooms in Cave City Cave, near Murphy's camp, and being told that one was used as a chapel and the other as a dancing hall, he became impatient. The stream of satire, which rippled somewhere below the surface of all these articles, surfaced, and he sounded like this: Mass-saying is not so generally developed in connection with natural wonders as dancing. One of the first conceits excited by the giant Sequoias was to cut one of them down and dance on its stump. We have also seen dancing in the spray of Niagara; dancing in the famous Bower Cave above Coulterville; and nowhere have I seen so much dancing as in Yosemite. A dance on the inaccessible South Dome would likely follow the making of an easy way to the top of it. Social games and entertainments turned the tourist's attention away from Nature, and were clearly linked to his |