Pursuing my lonely way down the valley, I turned again and again to gaze
on the glorious picture, throwing up my arms to inclose it as in a
frame. After long ages of growth in the darkness beneath the glaciers,
through sunshine and storms, it seemed now to be ready and waiting for
the elected artist, like yellow wheat for the reaper; and I could not
help wishing that I might carry colors and brushes with me on my
travels, and learn to paint. In the mean time I had to be content with
photographs on my mind and sketches in my note-books. At length, after I
had rounded a precipitous headland that puts out from the west wall of
the valley, every peak vanished from sight, and I pushed rapidly along
the frozen meadows, over the divide between the waters of the Merced and
Tuolumne, and down through the forests that clothe the slopes of Cloud's
Rest, arriving in Yosemite in due time--which, with me, is _any_
time. And, strange to say, among the first people I met here were two
artists who, with letters of introduction, were awaiting my return. They
inquired whether in the course of my explorations in the adjacent
mountains I had ever come upon a landscape suitable for a large
painting; whereupon I began a description of the one that had so lately
excited my admiration.
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