What an awe-inspiring, wondrous exposure of a section of the veritable backbone of the world this El Capitan is. Old as the universe, three thousand and three hundred feet of it exposed as by the cut of a surgeon's knife! and how deep, deep down into the very body below, out of sight, who can tell? Beneath the feet of El Capitan all is guess and scientific speculation, and man's finite faculties stand abashed. […] What, from over the valley upon the heights of Inspiration Point, looked smooth as cream, we see now seamed and rent from base to topmast, with vertical cleavage lines and ragged indents, as if some giant had ripped away the outer skin and left the quivering sinews to harden by exposure. […]
From: Charles Quincy Turner, Yosemite Valley Through the Stereoscope, Underwood & Underwood, New York, 1902, pp. 23-24.
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