This was the flood-wave of Yosemite Creek, which had just arrived delayed by the distance it had to travel, and by the choking snows of its widespread fountains.

Now, with volume tenfold increased beyond its springtime fullness, it took its place as leader of the glorious choir.
And the winds, too, were singing in wild accord, playing on every tree and rock, surging against the huge brows and domes and outstanding battlements, deflected hither and thither and broken into a thousand cascading, roaring currents in the canyons, and low bass, drumming swirls in the hollows.

And these again, reacting on the clouds, eroded immense cavernous spaces in their gray depths and swept forward the resulting detritus in ragged trains like the moraines of glaciers.

These cloud movements in turn published the work of the winds, giving them a visible body, and enabling us to trace them.

As if endowed with independent motion, a detached cloud would rise hastily to the very top of the wall as if on some important errand, examining the faces of the cliffs, and then perhaps as suddenly descend to sweep imposingly along the meadows, trailing its draggled fringes through the pines, fondling the waving spires with infinite gentleness, or, gliding behind a grove or a single tree, bringing it into striking relief, as it bowed and waved in solemn rhythm.