The Little Yosemite, an earthly Paradise as yet but little frequented by the omnipresent tourist, opens out of the Yosemite proper just where the Merced tumbles into its depths, bearing the several aliases of Nevada Fall, Emery's Pool and Vernal Fall, to return later to its original patronymic.

There is a virginal purity about these untrodden wilds, a silence so awful in its intensity that voices are involuntarily hushed as in the solemn watches of a death chamber an hour before the dawn.

"Ueber allen Gipfeln

Ist Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spärest du

Kann einen Hauch;

Die Vöglein schweigen im Walde

Warte mir, balde

Ruhest du auch."

is the message to the wanderer.

At times one hears the roaring of the Merced pursuing its foam-clothed, tumultuous way to its downfall; but this seems only to intensify the hush-like an organ-note in the vaulted spaces of a vast cathedral.