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Introduction
Ever since my first visit to the Yosemite Valley, nearly thirty years ago, I have believed that no verbal description can give the reader an adequate idea of its marvelous and manifold features; that the ordinary forms of verse cannot compass it; that at most the poet can only suggest; and that, after all, the mere suggestion is sufficient—the imagination supplying what is lacking in form, color, and detail. But the suggestion must be offered by one singularly gifted, and possessed of a temperament as picturesque, as variable, as unique as the Valley itself.
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