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Show 152 WESTERN WILDS. essaries upon the road, and the same for each day in the valley for guide and horse ; that is, if you go to see all that is there, and if you do not, you had better not go at all. But hundreds of visitors never go out of the little open flat around the hotel, contenting them-selves with a general view of distant wonders. Horace Greeley, when he visited the valley, rode sixty miles on horseback, though he had not been in a saddle for twenty years, reach-ing the hotel at midnight completely exhausted, and minus at least two square feet of abraded cuticle. He went supperless to bed, and having an engage-ba* ' '~' ment to fill, left at noon next day, and the second night there-after lectured at a town nearly two hundred miles away. When the railroad is completed southward to the Merced, it i s estimated that a first-class stage-road could be built from the crossing right up the Mer-ced to the Yosemite, for $ 100,000, and certainly the State could not make a better investment. The road would have to be blasted out of the foot of the cliffs along the gateway, where the Merced flows out of Yosemite ; below, the grade would not be difficult, and it would save two- thirds of the wear at present required. All that man can do has been done on the present route, and still the trip is very exhausting. With all set and every thing tightly " cinched," we took the start BRIDAL VEIL FALL. |