Transcription:
4 The floor of the Valley is about three and a half miles long and from a fourth to half a mile wide. The lower portion
is mostly a level meadow about a mile long with the trees restricted to the sides, and partially separated from the upper
forested portion by a low bar of glacier-polished granite, across whioh the river breaks in rapids. The principal trees are
the Yellow and Sugar pines, Sabine pine, Incense cedar, Douglas spruce, Silver fir, the California and Gold-cup oaks, Balm
of Gilead poplar, Nuttall's Flowering dogwood, Alder, Naple, Laurel, Tomion etc. The most abundant and influential are the
great Yellow pines, the tallest over 200 feet in height, and the oaks with massive rugged trunks four to six or seven feet
in diameter, and broad heads, assembled in magnificent groves. The shrubs forming conspicuous flowery clumps and tangles are
Manzanita, Azalea, Spiraea, Brier-rose, Ceanothus, Calycanthus, Philadelphus, Wild cherry etc; with abundance of showy and
fragrant herbaceous plants growing about them or out in the open in beds by themselves - Lilies, Mariposa tulips, Brodiaeas,
Orchids - several speoies of eaoh, - Iris, Spraguea, Draperia, Collomia, Collinsia, Castilleia, Nemophila, Larkspur, Columbine,
Goldenrods, Sunflowers and Nints of many species, Foneysuckle etc. etc. Many fine ferns dwell here also, especially the beautiful
and interesting rook-ferns, - Pellaea, and Cheilanthes of several species, - fringing and rosetting dry rock piles and ledges;
Woodwardia and Asplenium on damp spots with fronds six or seven feet high, the delicate Maidenhair in mossy nooks by the falls,
and the sturdy broad-shouldered Pteris beneath the oaks and pines, It appears therefore that Betch Betchy Valley far from
being a plain common rook-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seen to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of
Nature's rarest and most precious mountain mansions. As in Yosemite the sublime rocks of its walls seem to the Nature lover
to glow with life whether leaning back in repose or standing erect in thoughtful attitudes giving welcome to storms and calms
alike. And how softly these mountain rocks are adorned, and how fine and reassuring the company they keep -