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WHEN I set out on the long
excursion that finally led to California, I wandered, afoot and alone, from
Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico, with a plant-press on my back, holding a
generally southward course, like the birds when they are going from summer
to winter. From the west coast of Florida I crossed the Gulf to Cuba,
enjoyed the rich tropical flora there for a few months, intending to go
thence to the north end of South America, make my way through the woods to
the head waters of the Amazon, and float down that grand river to the ocean.
But I was unable to find a ship bound for South America - fortunately,
perhaps, for I had incredibly little money for so long a trip and had not
yet fully recovered from a fever caught in the Florida swamps. Therefore I
decided to visit California for a year or two to see its wonderful flora and
the famous Yosemite Valley. All the world was before me and every day was a
holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's
wildernesses I first should wander.
Arriving by the Panama
steamer, I stopped one day in San Francisco and then inquired for the
nearest way out of town. "But where do you want to go?" asked the man to
whom I had applied for this important information. "To any place that is
wild," I said. This reply startled him. He seemed to fear I might be crazy,
and therefore the sooner I was out of town the better, so he directed me to
the Oakland ferry.
So on the 1st of April, 1868,
I set out afoot for Yosemite. It was the bloom-time of the year over the
lowlands and coast ranges; the landscapes of the Santa Clara Valley were
fairly drenched with sunshine, all the air was quivering with the songs of
the meadowlarks, and the hills were so covered with flowers that they seemed
to be painted. Slow, indeed, was my progress through these glorious gardens,
the first of the California flora I had seen. Cattle and cultivation were
making few scars as yet, and I wandered enchanted in long, wavering curves,
knowing by my pocket map that Yosemite Valley lay to the east and that I
should surely find it.
THE SIERRA FROM THE WEST
Looking eastward from the
summit of the Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed
that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever
beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and
flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five
hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow composit. And from the
eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra,
miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not
clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some
celestial city. Along the top and extending a good way down, was a rich
pearl- gray belt of snow; below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking
the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a
broad belt of rose-purple; all these colors, from the blue sky to the yellow
valley smoothly blending as they do in a rainbow, making a wall of light
ineffably fine. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not
the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of
wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods
of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the
noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the
irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the
Range of Light.
In general views no mark of
man is visible upon it, nor anything to suggest the wonderful depth and
grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent forest-crowned ridges
seems to rise much above the general level to publish its wealth. No great
valley or river is seen, or group of well-marked features of any kind
standing out as distinct pictures. Even the summit peaks, marshaled in
glorious array so high in the sky, seem comparatively regular in form.
Nevertheless the whole range five hundred miles long is furrowed with canons
two to five thousand feet deep, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and
in which now flow and sing the bright rejoicing rivers.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CAŇONS
Though of such stupendous
depth, these canons are not gloomy gorges, savage and inaccessible. With
rough passages here and there they are flowery pathways conducting to the
snowy, icy fountains; mountain streets full of life and light, graded and
sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting throughout all their
courses a rich variety of novel and attractive scenery - the most attractive
that has yet been discovered in the mountain ranges of the world. In many
places, especially in the middle region of the western flank, the main
canons widen into spacious valleys or parks diversified like landscape
gardens with meadows and groves and thickets of blooming bushes, while the
lofty walls, infinitely varied in form, are fringed with ferns, flowering
plants, shrubs of many species, and tall evergreens and oaks that find
footholds on small benches and tables, all enlivened and made glorious with
rejoicing streams that come chanting in chorus over the cliffs and through
side canons in falls of every conceivable form, to join the river that flows
in tranquil, shining beauty down the middle of each one of them.
THE INCOMPARABLE YOSEMITE
The most famous and
accessible of these caņon valleys, and also the one that presents their most
striking and sublime features on the grandest scale, is the Yosemite,
situated in the basin of the Merced River at an elevation of four thousand
feet above the level of the sea.. It is about seven miles long, half a mile
to a mile wide, and nearly a mile deep in the solid granite flank of the
range. The walls are made up of rocks, mountains in size, partly separated
from each other by side canons, and they are so sheer in front, and so
compactly and harmoniously arranged on a level floor, that the Valley,
comprehensively seen, looks like an immense hall or temple lighted from
above.
But no temple made with hands
can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life.
Some lean back in majestic repose; others, absolutely sheer or nearly so for
thousands of feet, advance beyond their companions in thoughtful attitudes,
giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly aware, yet heedless, of
everything going on about them. Awful in stern, immovable majesty, how
softly these rocks are adorned, and how fine and reassuring the company they
keep: their feet among beautiful groves and meadows, their brows in the sky,
a thousand flowers leaning confidingly against their feet, bathed in floods
of water, floods of light, while the snow and waterfalls, the winds and
avalanches and clouds shine and sing and wreathe about them as the years go
by, and myriads of small winged creatures - birds, bees, butterflies - give
glad animation and help to make all the air into music. Down through the
middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully
quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and
fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless
forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest
treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.
THE APPROACH TO THE VALLEY
Sauntering up the foothills
to Yosemite by any of the old trails or roads in use before the railway was
built from the town of Merced up the river to the boundary of Yosemite Park,
richer and wilder become the forests and streams. At an elevation of six
thousand feet above the level of the sea the silver firs are two hundred
feet high, with branches whorled around the colossal shafts in regular
order, and every branch beautifully pinnate like a fern frond. The Douglas
spruce, the yellow and sugar pines and brown-barked libocedrus here reach
their finest developments of beauty and grandeur. The majestic sequoia is
here, too, the king of conifers, the noblest of all the noble race. These
colossal trees are as wonderful in fineness of beauty and proportion as in
stature - an assemblage of conifers surpassing all that have ever yet been
discovered in the forests of the world. Here, indeed, is the tree-lover's
paradise; the woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering
masses of half sunshine, half shade; the night air as well as the day air
indescribably spicy and exhilarating; plushy fir boughs for campers' beds,
and cascades to sing us to sleep. On the highest ridges, over which these
old Yosemite ways passed, the silver fir (Abies magnifica) forms the bulk of
the woods, pressing forward in glorious array to the very brink of the
Valley walls on both sides, and beyond the Valley to a height of from eight
to nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. Thus it appears that
Yosemite, presenting such stupendous faces of bare granite, is nevertheless
imbedded in magnificent forests, and the main species of pine, fir, spruce,
and libocedrus are also found in the Valley itself, but there are no "Big
Trees "(Sequoia gigantea) in the Valley or about the rim of it. The nearest
are about ten and twenty miles beyond the lower end of the valley on small
tributaries of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers.
THE FIRST VIEW: THE BRIDAL
VEIL
From the margin of these
glorious forests the first general view of the Valley used to be gained - a
revelation in landscape affairs that enriches one's life forever. Entering
the Valley, gazing overwhelmed with the multitude of grand objects about us,
perhaps the first to fix our attention will be the Bridal Veil, a beautiful
waterfall on our right. Its brow, where it first leaps free from the cliff,
is about nine hundred feet above us; and as it sways and sings in the wind,
clad in gauzy, sun-sifted spray, half falling, half floating, it seems
infinitely gentle and fine; but the hymns it sings tell the solemn, fateful
power hidden beneath its soft clothing.
The Bridal Veil shoots free
from the upper edge of the cliff by the velocity the stream has acquired in
descending a long slope above the head of the fall. Looking from the top of
the rock avalanche talus on the west side, about one hundred feet above the
foot of the fall, the under surface of the water arch is seen to be finely
grooved and striated; and the sky is seen through the arch between rock and
water, making a novel and beautiful effect.
Under ordinary weather
conditions the fall strikes on flat-topped slabs, forming a kind of ledge
about two thirds of the way down from the top, and as the fall sways back
and forth with great variety of motions among these flat- topped pillars,
kissing and plashing notes as well as thunder-like detonations are produced,
like those of the Yosemite Fall, though on a smaller scale.
The rainbows of the Veil, or
rather the spray and foam bows, are superb, because the waters are dashed
among angular blocks of granite at the foot, producing abundance of spray of
the best quality for iris effects, and also for a luxuriant growth of grass
and maidenhair on the side of the talus, which lower down is planted with
oak, laurel and willows.
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE VALLEY
On the other side of the
Valley, almost immediately opposite the Bridal Veil, there is another fine
fall, considerably wider than the Veil when the snow is melting fast and
more than one thousand feet in height, measured from the brow of the cliff
where it first springs out into the air to the head of the rocky talus on
which it strikes and is broken up into ragged cascades. It is called the
Ribbon Fall, or Virgin's Tears. During the spring floods it is a magnificent
object, but the suffocating blasts of spray that fill the recess in the wall
which it occupies prevent a near approach. In autumn, however, when its
feeble current falls in a shower, it may then pass for tears with the
sentimental onlooker fresh from a visit to the Bridal Veil.
Just beyond this glorious
flood El Capitan Rock, regarded by many as the most sublime feature of the
Valley, is seen through the pine groves, standing forward beyond the general
line of the wall in most imposing grandeur, a type of permanence. It is
thirty-three hundred feet high, a plain, severely simple, glacier-
sculptured face of granite, the end of one of the most compact and enduring
of the mountain ridges, unrivaled in height and breadth and flawless
strength.
Across the Valley from here,
next to the Bridal Veil, are the picturesque Cathedral Rocks, nearly
twenty-seven hundred feet high, making a noble display of fine yet massive
sculpture. They are closely related to El Capitan, having been eroded from
the same mountain ridge by the great Yosemite Glacier when the Valley was in
process of formation.
Next to the Cathedral Rocks
on the south side towers the Sentinel Rock to a height of more than three
thousand feet, a telling monument of the glacial period.
Almost immediately opposite
the Sentinel are the Three Brothers, an immense mountain mass with three
gables fronting the Valley, one above another, the topmost gable nearly four
thousand feet high. They were named for three brothers, sons of old Tenaya,
the Yosemite chief, captured here during the Indian war, at the time of the
discovery of the Valley in 1852.
Sauntering up the Valley
through meadow and grove, in the company of these majestic rocks, which seem
to follow us as we advance, gazing, admiring, looking for new wonders ahead
where all about us is so wonderful, the thunder of the Yosemite Fall is
heard, and when we arrive in front of the Sentinel Rock it is revealed in
all its glory from base to summit, half a mile in height, and seeming to
spring out into the Valley sunshine direct from the sky. But even this fall,
perhaps the most wonderful of its kind in the world, cannot at first hold
our attention, for now the wide upper portion of the Valley is displayed to
view, with the finely modeled North Dome, the Royal Arches and Washington
Column on our left; Glacier Point, with its massive, magnificent sculpture
on the right; and in the middle, directly in front, looms Tissiack or Half
Dome, the most beautiful and most sublime of all the wonderful Yosemite
rocks, rising in serene majesty from flowery groves and meadows to a height
of four thousand seven hundred and fifty feet.
THE UPPER CAŇONS
Here the Valley divides into
three branches, the Tenaya, Nevada, and Illilouette Canons, extending back
into the fountains of the High Sierra, with scenery every way worthy the
relation they bear to Yosemite.
In the south branch, a mile
or two from the main Valley, is the Illiouette Fall, six hundred feet high,
one of the most beautiful of all the Yosemite choir, but to most people
inaccessible as yet on account of its rough, steep, boulder-choked caņon.
Its principal fountains of ice and snow lie in the beautiful and interesting
mountains of the Merced group, while its broad open basin between its
fountain-mountains and caņon is noted for the beauty of its lakes and
forests and magnificent moraines.
Returning to the Valley, and
going up the north branch of Tenaya Caņon, we pass between the North Dome
and Half Dome, and in less than an hour come to Mirror Lake, the Dome
Cascades, and Tenaya Fall. Beyond the fall, on the north side of the caņon,
is the sublime El Capitan-like rock called Mount Watkins; on the south the
vast granite wave of Clouds' Rest, a mile in height; and between them the
fine Tenaya Cascade with silvery plumes outspread on smooth glacier-polished
folds of granite, making a vertical descent in all of about seven hundred
feet.
Just beyond the Dome
Cascades, on the shoulder of Mount Watkins, there is an old trail once used
by Indians on their way across the range to Mono, but in the caņon above
this point there is no trail of any sort. Between Mount Watkins and Clouds'
Rest the caņon is accessible only to mountaineers, and it is so dangerous
that I hesitate to advise even good climbers, anxious to test their nerve
and skill, to attempt to pass through it. Beyond the Cascades no great
difficulty will be encountered. A succession of charming lily gardens and
meadows occurs in filled-up lake basins among the rock waves in the bottom
of the caņon, and everywhere the surface of the granite has a smooth-wiped
appearance, and in many places reflects the sunbeams like glass, a
phenomenon due to glacial action, the caņon having been the channel of one
of the main tributaries of the ancient Yosemite Glacier.
About ten miles above the
Valley we come to the beautiful Tenaya Lake, and here the caņon terminates.
A mile or two above the lake stands the grand Sierra Cathedral, a building
of one stone, hewn from the living rock, with sides, roof, gable, spire and
ornamental pinnacles, fashioned and finished symmetrically like a work of
art, and set on a well-graded plateau about nine thousand feet high, as if
Nature in making so fine a building had also been careful that it should be
finely seen. From every direction its peculiar form and graceful, majestic
beauty of expression never fail to charm. Its height from its base to the
ridge of the roof is about twenty-five hundred feet, and among the pinnacles
that adorn the front grand views may be gained of the upper basins of the
Merced and Tuolumne Rivers.
Passing the Cathedral we
descend into the delightful, spacious Tuolumne Valley, from which excursions
may be made to Mounts Dana, LyeIl, Ritter, Conness, and Mono Lake, and to
the many curious peaks that rise above the meadows on the south, and to the
Big Tuolumne Caņon, with its glorious abundance of rocks and falling,
gliding, tossing water. For all these the beautiful meadows near the Soda
Springs form a delightful center.
NATURAL FEATURES NEAR THE
VALLEY
Returning now to Yosemite and
ascending the middle or Nevada branch of the Valley, occupied by the main
Merced River, we come within a few miles to the Vernal and Nevada Falls,
four hundred and six hundred feet high, pouring their white, rejoicing
waters in the midst of the most novel and sublime rock scenery to be found
in all the world. Tracing the river beyond the head of the Nevada Fall we
are led into the Little Yosemite, a valley like the Great Yosemite in form,
sculpture and vegetation. It is about three miles long, with walls fifteen
hundred to two thousand feet high, cascades coming over them, and the river
flowing through the meadows and groves of the level bottom in tranquil,
richly embowered reaches.
Beyond this Little Yosemite
in the main caņon, there are three other little yosemites, the highest
situated a few miles below the base of Mount Lyell, at an elevation of about
seventy-eight hundred feet above the sea. To describe these, with all their
wealth of yosemite furniture, and the wilderness of lofty peaks above them,
the home of the avalanche and treasury of the fountain snow, would take us
far beyond the bounds of a single book. Nor can we here consider the
formation of these mountain landscapes - how the crystal rocks were brought
to light by glaciers made up of crystal snow, making beauty whose influence
is so mysterious on every one who sees it.
Of the small glacier lakes so
characteristic of these upper regions, there are no fewer than sixty-seven
in the basin of the main middle branch, besides countless smaller pools. In
the basin of the Illilouette there are sixteen, in the Tenaya basin and its
branches thirteen, in the Yosemite Creek basin fourteen, and in the Pohono
or Bridal Veil one, making a grand total of one hundred and eleven lakes
whose waters come to sing at Yosemite. So glorious is the background of the
great Valley, so barmonious its relations to its wide-spreading fountains.
The same harmony prevails in
all the other features of the adjacent landscapes. Climbing out of the
Valley by the subordinate caflons, we find the ground rising from the brink
of the walls: on the south side to the fountains of the Bridal Veil Creek,
the basin of which is noted for the beauty of its meadows and its superb
forests of silver fir; on the north side through the basin of the Yosemite
Creek to the dividing ridge along the Tuolumne Caņon and the fountains of
the Hoffman Range.
DOWN THE YOSEMITE CREEK
In general views the Yosemite
Creek basin seems to be paved with domes and smooth, whaleback masses of
granite in every stage of development -some showing only their crowns;
others rising high and free above the girdling forests, singly or in groups.
Others are developed only on one side, forming bold outstanding bosses
usually well fringed with shrubs and trees, and presenting the polished
surfaces given them by the glacier that brought them into relief. On the
upper portion of the basin broad moraine beds have been deposited and on
these fine, thrifty forests are growing. Lakes and meadows and small spongy
bogs may be found hiding here and there in the woods or back in the fountain
recesses of Mount Hoffman, while a thousand gardens are planted along the
banks of the streams.
All the wide, fan-shaped
upper portion of the basin is covered with a network of small rills that go
cheerily on their way to their grand fall in the Valley, now flowing on
smooth pavements in sheets thin as glass, now diving under willows and
laying their red roots, oozing through green, plushy bogs, plashing over
small falls and dancing down slanting cascades, calming again, gliding
through patches of smooth glacier meadows with sod of alpine agrostis mixed
with blue and white violets and daisies, breaking, tossing among rough
boulders and fallen trees, resting in calm pools, flowing together until,
all united, they go to their fate with stately, tranquil gestures like a
full-grown river. At the crossing of the Mono Trail, about two miles above
the head of the Yosemite Fall, the stream is nearly forty feet wide, and
when the snow is melting rapidly in the spring, it is about four feet deep,
with a current of' two and a half miles an hour. This is about the volume of
water that forms the fall in May and June when there had been much snow the
preceding winter; but it varies greatly from month to month. The snow
rapidly vanishes from the open portion of the basin, which faces southward,
and only a few of the tributaries reach back to perennial snow and ice
fountains in the shadowy amphitheaters on the precipitous northern slopes of
Mount Hoffman. The total descent made by the stream from its highest sources
to its confluence with the Merced in the Valley is about six thousand feet,
while the distance is only about ten miles, an average fall of six hundred
feet per mile. The last mile of its course lies between the sides of sunken
domes and swelling folds of the granite that are clustered and pressed
together like a mass of bossy cumulus clouds. Through this shining way
Yosemite Creek goes to its fate, swaying and swirling with easy, graceful
gestures and singing the last of its mountain songs before it reaches the
dizzy edge of Yosemite to fall twenty-six hundred feet into another world,
where climate, vegetation, inhabitants, all are different. Emerging from
this last caņon the stream glides, in flat, lace-like folds, down a smooth
incline into a small pool where it seems to rest and compose itself before
taking the grand plunge. Then calmly, as if leaving a lake, it slips over
the polished lip of the pool down another incline and out over the brow of
the precipice in a magnificent curve thick- sown with rainbow spray.
THE YOSEMITE FALL
Long ago before I had traced
this fine stream to its head back of Mount Hoffman, I was eager to reach the
extreme verge to see how it behaved in flying so far through the air; but
after enjoying this view and getting safely away I have never advised any
one to follow my steps. The last incline down which the stream journeys so
gracefully is so steep and smooth one must slip cautiously forward on hands
and feet alongside the rushing water, which so near one's head is very
exciting. But to gain a per- feet view one must go yet farther, over a
curving brow to a slight shelf on the extreme brink. This shelf, formed by
the flaking off of a fold of granite, is about three inches wide, just wide
enough for a safe rest for one's heels. To me it seemed nerve-trying to slip
to this narrow foothold and poise on the edge of such a precipice so close
to the confusing whirl of the waters; and after casting longing glances over
the shining brow of the fall and listening to its sublime psalm, I concluded
not to attempt to go nearer, but, nevertheless, against reasonable judgment,
I did. Noticing some tufts of artemisia in a cleft of rock, I filled my
mouth with the leaves, hoping their bitter taste might help to keep caution
keen and prevent giddiness. In spite of myself I reached the little ledge,
got my heels well set, and worked sidewise twenty or thirty feet to a point
close to the out-plunging current. Here the view is perfectly free down into
the heart of the bright irised throng of comet-like streamers into which the
whole ponderous volume of the fall separates, two or three hundred feet
below the brow. So glorious a display of pure wildness, acting at close
range while cut off from all the world beside, is terribly impressive. A
less nerve-trying view may be obtained from a fissured portion of the edge
of the cliff about forty yards to the eastward of the fall. Seen from this
point toward noon, in the spring, the rainbow on its brow seems to be broken
up and mingled with the rushing comets until all the fall is stained with
iris colors, leaving no white water visible. This is the best of the safe
views from above, the huge steadfast rocks, the flying waters, and the
rainbow light forming one of the most glorious pictures conceivable.
The Yosemite Fall is
separated into an upper and a lower fall with a series of falls and cascades
between them, but when viewed in front from the bottom of the Valley they
all appear as one.
So grandly does this
magnificent fall display itself from the floor of the Valley, few visitors
take the trouble to climb the walls to gain nearer views, unable to realize
how vastly more impressive it is near by than at a distance of one or two
miles.
A WONDERFUL ASCENT
The views developed in a walk
up the zigzags of the trail leading to the foot of the Upper Fall are about
as varied and impressive as those displayed along the favorite Glacier Point
Trail. One rises as if on wings. The groves, meadows, fern-flats and reaches
of the river gain new interest, as if never seen before; all the views
changing in a most striking manner as we go higher from point to point. The
foreground also changes every few rods in the most surprising manner,
although the earthquake talus and the level bench on the face of the wall
over which the trail passes seem monotonous and commonplace as seen from the
bottom of the Valley. Up we climb with glad exhilaration, through shaggy
fringes of laurel, ceanothus, glossy-leaved manzanita and live-oak, from
shadow to shadow across bars and patches of sunshine, the leafy openings
making charming frames for the Valley pictures beheld through them, and for
the glimpses of the high peaks that appear in the distance. The higher we go
the farther we seem to be from the summit of the vast granite wall. Here we
pass a projecting buttress whose grooved and rounded surface tells a plain
story of the time when the Valley, now filled with sunshine, was filled with
ice, when the grand old Yosemite Glacier, flowing river-like from its
distant fountains, swept through it, crushing, grinding, wearing its way
ever deeper, developing and fashioning these sublime rocks. Again we cross a
white, battered gully, the pathway of rock avalanches or snow avalanches.
Farther on we come to a gentle stream slipping down the face of the cliff in
lace-like strips, and dropping from ledge to ledge - too small to be called
a fall trickling, dripping, oozing, a pathless wanderer from one of the
upland meadows lying a little way back of the Valley rim, seeking a way
century after century to the depths of the Valley without any appreciable
channel. Every morning after a cool night, evaporation being checked, it
gathers strength and sings like a bird, but as the day advances and the sun
strikes its thin currents outspread on the heated precipices, most of its
waters vanish ere the bottom of the Valley is reached. Many a fine, hanging
garden aloft on breezy inaccessible heights owes to it its freshness and
fullness of beauty; ferneries in shady nooks, filled with adiantum,
woodwardia, woodsia, aspidium, peihea, and cheilanthes, rosetted and tufted
and ranged in lines, daintily overlapping, thatching the stupendous cliffs
with softest beauty, some of the delicate fronds seeming to float on the
warm moist air, without any connection with rock or stream. Nor is there any
lack of colored plants wherever they can find a place to cling to; lilies
and mints, the showy cardinal mimulus, and glowing cushions of the golden
bahia, enlivened with butterflies and bees and all the other small, happy
humming creatures that belong to them.
After the highest point on
the lower division of the trail is gained it leads up into the deep recess
occupied by the great fall, the noblest display of falling water to be found
in the Valley, or perhaps in the world. When it first comes in sight it
seems almost within reach of one's hand, so great in the spring is its
volume and velocity, yet it is still nearly a third of a mile away and
appears to recede as we advance. The sculpture of the walls about it is on a
scale of grandeur, according nobly with the fall - plain and massive, though
elaborately finished, like all the other cliffs about the Valley.
In the afternoon an immense
shadow is cast athwart the plateau in front of the fall, and over the
chaparral bushes that clothe the slopes and benches of the walls to the
eastward, creeping upward until the fall is wholly overcast, the contrast
between the shaded and illumined sections being very striking in these near
views.
Under this shadow, during the
cool centuries immediately following the breaking-up of the glacial period,
dwelt a small residual glacier, one of the few that lingered on this
sun-beaten side of the Valley after the main trunk glacier had vanished. It
sent down a long winding current through the narrow caņon on the west side
of the fall, and must have formed a striking feature of the ancient scenery
of the Valley; the lofty fall of ice and fall of water side by side, yet
separate and distinct.
The coolness of the afternoon
shadow and the abundant dewy spray make a fine climate for the plateau ferns
and grasses, and for the beautiful azalea bushes that grow here in profusion
and bloom in September, long after the warmer thickets down on the floor of
the Valley have withered and gone to seed. Even close to the fall, and
behind it at the base of the cliff, a few venturesome plants may be found
undisturbed by the rock-shaking torrent.
The basin at the foot of the
fall into which the current directly pours, when it is not swayed by the
wind, is about ten feet deep and fifteen to twenty feet in diameter. That it
is not much deeper is surprising, when the great height and force of the
fall is considered. But the rock where the water strikes probably suffers
less erosion than it would were the descent less than half as great, since
the current is outspread, and much of its force is spent ere it reaches the
bottom - being received on the air as' upon an elastic cushion, and borne
outward and dissipated over a surface more than fifty yards wide.
This surface, easily examined
when the water is low, is intensely clean and fresh looking. It is the raw,
quick flesh of the mountain wholly untouched by the weather. In summer
droughts, when the snowfall of the preceding winter has been light, the fall
is reduced to a mere shower of separate drops without any obscuring spray.
Then we may safely go back of it and view the crystal shower from beneath,
each drop wavering and pulsing as it makes its way through the air, and
flashing off jets of colored light of ravishing beauty. But all this is
invisible from the bottom of the Valley, like a thousand other interesting
things. One must labor for beauty as for bread, here as elsewhere.
THE GRANDEUR OF THE YOSEMITE
FALL
During the time of the spring
floods the best near view of the fall is obtained from Fern Ledge on the
east side above the blinding spray at a height of about four hundred feet
above the base of the fall. A climb of about fourteen hundred feet from the
Valley has to be made, and there is no trail, but to any one fond of
climbing this will make the ascent all the more delightful. A narrow part of
the ledge extends to the side of the fall and back of it, enabling us to
approach it as closely as we wish. When the afternoon sunshine is streaming
through the throng of comets, ever wasting, ever renewed, the marvelous
fineness, firmness, and variety of their forms are beautifully revealed. At
the top of the fall they seem to burst forth in irregular spurts from some
grand, throbbing mountain heart. Now and then one mighty throb sends forth a
mass of solid water into the free air far beyond the others, which rushes
alone to the bottom of the fall with long streaming tail, like combed silk,
while the others, descending in clusters, gradually mingle and lose their
identity. But they all rush past us with amazing velocity and display of
power, though apparently drowsy and deliberate in their movements when
observed from a distance of a mile or two. The heads of these comet-like
masses are composed of nearly solid water, and are dense white in color like
pressed snow, from the friction they suffer in rushing through the air, the
portion worn off forming the tail, between the white lustrous threads and
films of which faint, grayish pencilings appear, while the outer, finer
sprays of water-dust, whirling in sunny eddies, are pearly gray throughout.
At the bottom of the fall there is but little distinction of form visible.
It is mostly a hissing, clashing, seething, upwhirling mass of scud and
spray, through which the light sifts in gray and purple tones, while at
times when the sun strikes at the required angle, the whole wild and
apparently lawless, stormy, striving mass is changed to brilliant rainbow
hues, manifesting finest harmony. The middle portion of the fall is the most
openly beautiful; lower, the various forms into which the waters are wrought
are more closely and voluminously veiled, while higher, toward the head, the
current is comparatively simple and undivided. But even at the bottom, in
the boiling clouds of spray, there is no confusion, while the rainbow light
makes all divine, adding glorious beauty and peace to glorious power. This
noble fall has far the richest, as well as the most powerful, voice of all
the falls of the Valley, its tones varying from the sharp hiss and rustle of
the wind in the glossy leaves of the live-oaks and the soft, sifting,
hushing tones of the pines, to the loudest rush and roar of storm winds and
thunder among the crags of the summit peaks. The low bass, booming,
reverberating tones, heard under favorable circumstances five or six miles
away, are formed by the dashing and exploding of heavy masses mixed with air
upon two projecting ledges on the face of the cliff, the one on which we are
standing and another about two hundred feet above it. The torrent of massive
comets is continuous at time of high water, while the explosive, booming
notes are wildly intermittent, because, unless influenced by the wind, most
of the heavier masses shoot out from the face of the precipice, and pass the
ledges upon which at other times they are exploded. Occasionally the whole
fall is swayed away from the front of the cliff, then suddenly dashed flat
against it, or vibrated from side to side like a pendulum, giving rise to
endless variety of forms and sounds.
THE NEVADA FALL
The Nevada Fall is six
hundred feet high and is usually ranked next to the Yosemite in general
interest among the five main falls of the Valley. Coming through the Little
Yosemite in tranquil reaches, the river is first broken into rapids on a
moraine boulder-bar that crosses the lower end of the Valley. Thence it
pursues its way to the head of the fall in a rough, solid rock channel,
dashing on side angles, heaving in heavy surging masses against elbow knobs,
and swirling and swashing in pot-holes without a moment's rest. Thus,
already chafed and dashed to foam, overfolded and twisted, it plunges over
the brink of the precipice as if glad to escape into the open air. But
before it reaches the bottom it is pulverized yet finer by impinging upon a
sloping portion of the cliff about halfway down, thus making it the whitest
of all the falls of the Valley, and altogether one of the most wonderful in
the world.
On the north side, close to
its head, a slab of granite projects over the brink, forming a fine point
for a view, over its throng of streamers and wild plunging, into its
intensely white bosom, and, through the broad drifts of spray, to the river
far below, gathering its spent waters and rushing on again down the caņon in
glad exultation into Emerald Pool, where at length it grows calm and gets
rest for what still lies before it. All the features of the view correspond
with the waters in grandeur and wildness. The glacier-sculptured walls of
the caņon on either hand, with the sublime mass of the Glacier Point Ridge
in front, form a huge triangular pit-like basin, which, filled with the
roaring of the falling river, seems as if it might be the hopper of one of
the mills of the gods in which the mountains were being ground.
THE VERNAL FALL
The Vernal, about a mile
below the Nevada, is four hundred feet high, a staid, orderly, graceful,
easy-going fall, proper and exact in every movement and gesture, with scarce
a hint of the passionate enthusiasm of the Yosemite or of the impetuous
Nevada, whose chafed and twisted waters hurrying over the cliff seem glad to
escape into the open air, while its deep, booming, thunder-tones reverberate
over the listening landscape. Nevertheless it is a favorite with most
visitors, doubtless because it is more accessible than any other, more
closely approached and better seen and heard. A good stairway ascends the
cliff beside it and the level plateau at the head enables one to saunter
safely along the edge of the river as it comes from Emerald Pool and to
watch its waters, calmly bending over the brow of the precipice, in a sheet
eighty feet wide, changing in color from green to purplish gray and white
until dashed on a boulder talus. Thence issuing from beneath its fine broad
spray clouds we see the tremendously adventurous river still unspent,
beating its way down the wildest and deepest of all its canons in gray
roaring rapids, dear to the ouzel, and below the confluence of the
liiilouette, sweeping around the shoulder of the Half Dome on its approach
to the head of the tranquil levels of the Valley.
THE ILLILOIJETTE FALL
The Illilouette in general
appearance most resembles the Nevada. The volume of water is less than half
as great, but it is about the same height (six hundred feet) and its waters
receive the same kind of preliminary tossing in a rocky, irregular channel.
Therefore it is a very white and fine-grained fall. When it is in full
springtime bloom it is partly divided by rocks that roughen the lip of the
precipice, but this division amounts only to a kind of fluting and grooving
of the column, which has a beautiful effect. It is not nearly so grand a
fall as the Upper Yosemite, or so symmetrical as the Vernal, or so airily
graceful and simple as the Bridal Veil, nor does it ever display so
tremendous an outgush of snowy magnificence as the Nevada; but in the
exquisite fineness and richness of texture of its flowing folds it surpasses
them all.
One of the finest effects of
sunlight on falling water I ever saw in Yosemite or elsewhere I found on the
brow of this beautiful fall. It was in the Indian summer, when the leaf
colors were ripe and the great cliffs and domes were transfigured in the
hazy golden air. I had scrambled up its rugged talus-dammed can-on,
oftentimes stopping to take breath and look back to admire the wonderful
views to be had there of the great Half Dome, and to enjoy the extreme
purity of the water, which in the motionless pools on this stream is almost
perfectly invisible; the colored foliage of the maples, dogwoods, rubus
tangles, etc., and the late goldenrods and asters. The voice of the fall was
now low, and the grand spring and summer floods had waned to sifting,
drifting gauze and thinbroidered folds of linked and arrowy lace-work. When
I reached the foot of the fall sunbeams were glinting across its head,
leaving all the rest of it in shadow; and on its illumined brow a group of
yellow spangles of singular form and beauty were playing, flashing up and
dancing in large flame-shaped masses, wavering at times, then steadying,
rising and falling in accord with the shifting forms of the water. But the
color of the dancing spangles changed not at all. Nothing in clouds or
flowers, on bird wings or the lips of shells, could rival it in fineness. It
was the most divinely beautiful mass of rejoicing yellow light I ever beheld
- one of Nature's precious gifts that perchance may come to us but once in a
lifetime.
THE MINOR FALLS
There are many other
comparatively small falls and cascades in the Valley. The most notable are
the Yosemite Gorge Fall and Cascades, Tenaya Fall and Cascades, Royal Arch
Falls, the two Sentinel Cascades and the falls of Cascade and Tamarack
Creeks, a mile or two below the lower end of the Valley. These last are
often visited. The others are seldom noticed or mentioned; although in
almost any other country they would be visited and described as wonders.
The six intermediate falls in
the gorge between the head of the Lower and the base of the Tipper Yosemite
Falls, separated by a few deep pools and strips of rapids, and three
slender, tributary cascades on the west side form a series more strikingly
varied and combined than any other in the Valley, yet very few of all the
Valley visitors ever see them or hear of them. No available standpoint
commands a view of them all. The best general view is obtained from the
mouth of the gorge near the head of the Lower Fall. The two lowest of the
series, together with one of the three tributary cascades, are visible from
this standpoint, but in reaching it the last twenty or thirty feet of the
descent is rather dangerous in time of high water, the shelving rocks being
then slippery on account of spray, but if one should chance to slip when the
water is low, only a bump or two and a harmless plash would be the penalty.
No part of the gorge, however, is safe to any but cautious climbers.
Though the dark gorge hail of
these rejoicing waters is never flushed by the purple light of morning or
evening, it is warmed and cheered by the white light of noonday, which,
falling into so much foam and spray of varying degrees of fineness, makes
marvelous displays of rainbow colors. So filled, indeed, is it with this
precious light, at favorable times it seems to take the place of common air.
Laurel bushes shed fragrance into it from above and live-oaks, those
fearless mountaineers, hold fast to angular seams and lean out over it with
their f ringing sprays and bright mirror leaves.
One bird, the ouzel, loves
this gorge and flies through it merrily, or cheerily, rather, stopping to
sing on foam-washed bosses where other birds could find no rest for their
feet. I have even seen a gray squirrel down in the heart of it beside the
wild rejoicing water.
One of my favorite night
walks was along the rim of this wild gorge in times of high water when the
moon was full, to see the lunar bows in the spray.
For about a rnil8 above
Mirror Lake the Tenaya Caņon is level, and richly planted with fir, Douglas
spruce and libocedrus, forming a remarkably fine grove, at the head of which
is the Tenaya Fall. Though seldom seen or described, this is, I think, the
most picturesque of all the small falls. A considerable distance above it,
Tenaya Creek comes hurrying down, white and foamy, over a flat pavement
inclined at an angle of about eighteen degrees. In time of high water this
sheet of rapids is nearly seventy feet wide, and is varied in a very
striking way by three parallel furrows that extend in the direction of its
flow. These furrows, worn by the action of the stream upon cleavage joints,
vary in width, are slightly sinuous, and have large boulders firmly wedged
in them here and there in narrow places, giving rise, of course, to a
complicated series of wild dashes, doublings, and upleaping arches in the
swift torrent. Just before it reaches the head of the fall the current is
divided, the left division making a vertical drop of about eighty feet in a
romantic, leafy, flowery, mossy nook, while the other forms a rugged
cascade.
The Royal Arch Fall in time
of high water is a magnificent object, forming a broad ornamental sheet in
front of the arches. The two Sentinel Cascades, three thousand feet high,
are also grand spectacles when the snow is melting fast in the spring, but
by the middle of summer they have diminished to mere streaks scarce
noticeable amid their sublime surroundings.
THE BEAUTY OF THE RAINBOWS
The Bridal Veil and Vernal
Falls are famous for their rainbows; and special visits to them are often
made when the sun shines into the spray at the most favorable angle. But
amid the spray and foam and fine-ground mist ever rising from the various
falls and cataracts there is an affluence and variety of iris bows scarcely
known to visitors who stay only a day or two. Both day and night, winter and
summer, this divine light may be seen wherever water is falling, dancing,
singing; telling the heart- peace of Nature amid the wildest displays of her
power. In the bright spring mornings the black-walled recess at the foot of
the Lower Yosemite Fall is lavishly filled with irised spray; and not simply
does this span the dashing foam, but the foam itself, the whole mass of it,
beheld at a certain distance, seems to be colored, and drifts and wavers
from color to color,, mingling with the foliage of the adjacent trees,
without suggesting any relationship to the ordinary rainbow. This is perhaps
the largest and most reservoir-like fountain of iris colors to be found in
the Valley.
Lunar rainbows or spray-bows
also abound in the glorious affluence of dashing, rejoicing, hurrahing,
enthusiastic spring floods, their colors as distinct as those of the sun and
regularly and obviously banded, though less vivid. Fine specimens may be
found any night at the foot of the Tipper Yosemite Fall, glowing gloriously
amid the gloomy shadows and thundering waters, whenever there is plenty of
moonlight and spray. Even the secondary bow is at times distinctly visible.
The best point from which to
observe them is on Fern Ledge. For some time after moonrise, at time of high
water, the are has a span of about five hundred feet, and is set upright;
one end planted in the boiling spray at the bottom, the other in the edge of
the fall, creeping lower, of course, and becoming less upright as the moon
rises higher. This grand are of color, glowing in mild, shapely beauty in so
weird and huge a chamber of night shadows, and amid the rush and roar and
tumultuous dashing of this thunder-voiced fall, is one of the most
impressive and most cheering of all the blessed mountain evangels.
Smaller bows may be seen in
the gorge on the plateau between the Tipper and Lower Falls. Once toward
midnight, after spending a few hours with the wild beauty of the Upper Fall,
I sauntered along the edge of the gorge, looking in here and there, wherever
the footing felt safe, to see what I could learn of the night aspects of the
smaller falls that dwell there. And down in an exceedingly black, pit-like
portion of the gorge, at the foot of the highest of the intermediate falls,
into which the moonbeams were pouring through a narrow opening, I saw a
well-defined spray-bow, beautifully distinct in colors, spanning the pit
from side to side, while pure white fOam-waves beneath the beautiful bow
were constantly springing up out of the dark into the moonlight like dancing
ghosts.
AN UNEXPECTED ADVENTURE
A wild scene, but not a safe
one, is made by the moon as it appears through the edge of the Yosemite Fall
when one is behind it. Once, after enjoying the night-song of the waters and
watching the formation of the colored bow as the moon came round the domes
and sent her beams into the wild uproar, I ventured out on the narrow bench
that extends back of the fall from Fern Ledge and began to admire the
dim-veiled grandeur of the view. I could see the fine gauzy threads of the
fall's filmy border by having the light in front; and wishing to look at the
moon through the meshes of some of the denser portions of the fall, I
ventured to creep farther behind it while it was gently wind- swayed,
without taking sufficient thought about the consequences of its swaying back
to its natural position after the wind-pressure should be removed. The
effect was enchanting: fine, savage music sounding above, beneath, around
me; while the moon, apparently in the very midst of the rushing waters,
seemed to be struggling to keep her place, on account of the ever-varying
form and density of the water masses through which she was seen, now darkly
veiled or eclipsed by a rush of thick-headed comets, now flashing out
through openings between their tails. I was in fairyland between the dark
wall and the wild throng of illumined waters, but suffered sudden
disenchantment; for, like the witch-scene in Alloway Kirk, "in an instant
all was dark." Down came a dash of spent comets, thin and harmless-looking
in the distance, but they felt desperately solid and stony when they struck
my shoulders, like a mixture of choking spray and gravel and big hailstones.
Instinctively dropping on my knees, I gripped an angle of the rock, curled
up like a young fern frond with my face pressed against my breast, and in
this attitude submitted as best I could to my thundering bath. The heavier
masses seemed to strike like cobblestones, and there was a confused noise of
many waters about my ears - hissing; gurgling, clashing sounds that were not
heard as music. The situation was quickly realized. How fast one's thoughts
burn in such times of stress! I was weighing chances of escape. Would the
column be swayed a few inches away from the wall, or would it come yet
closer? The fall was in flood and not so lightly would its ponderous mass be
swayed. My fate seemed to depend on a breath of the "idle wind." It was
moved gently forward, the pounding ceased, and I was once more visited by
glimpses of the moon. But fearing I might be caught at a disadvantage in
making too hasty a retreat, I moved only a few feet along the bench to where
a block of ice lay. I wedged myself between the ice and the wall, and lay
face downwards, until the steadiness of the light gave encouragement to rise
and get away. Somewhat nerve-shaken, drenched, and benumbed, I made out to
build a fire, warmed myself, ran home, reached my cabin before daylight, got
an hour or two of sleep, and awoke sound and comfortable, better, not worse,
for my hard midnight bath.
CLIMATE AND WEATHER
Owing to the westerly trend
of the Valley and its vast depth there is a great difference between the
climates of the north and south sides - greater than between many countries
far apart; for the south wall is in shadow during the winter months, while
the north is bathed in sunshine every clear day. Thus there is mild spring
weather on one side of the Valley while winter rules the other. Far up the
north-side cliffs many a nook may be found closely embraced by sun-beaten
rock-bosses in which flowers bloom every month of the year. Even butterflies
may be seen in these high winter gardens except when snowstorms are falling
and a few days after they have ceased. Near the head of the Lower Yosemite
Fall in January I found the ant lions lying in wait in their warm sand-cups,
rock ferns being unrolled, club mosses covered with fresh-growing points,
the flowers of the laurel nearly open, and the honeysuckle rosetted with
bright young leaves; every plant seemed to be thinking about summer. Even on
the shadow-side of the Valley the frost is never very sharp. The lowest
temperature I ever observed during four winters was 7° Fahrenheit. The first
twenty-four days of January had an average temperature at 9 A.M. of 32°,
minimum 22°; at 3 P.M. the average was 40° 30', the minimum 32°. Along the
top of the walls, seven and eight thousand feet high, the temperature was,
of course, much lower. But the difference in temperature between the north
and south sides is due not so much to the winter sunshine as to the heat of
the preceding summer, stored up in the rocks, which rapidly melts the snow
in contact with them. For though summer sun-heat is stored in the rocks of
the south side also, the amount is much less because the rays fall obliquely
on the south wall even in summer and almost vertically on the north.
The upper branches of the
Yosemite streams are buried every winter beneath a heavy mantle of snow, and
set free in the spring in magnificent floods. Then, all the fountains, full
and overflowing, every living thing breaks forth into singing, and the glad
exulting streams, shining and falling in the warm sunny weather, shake
everything into music, making all the mountain world a song.
The great annual spring thaw
usually begins in May in the forest region, and in June and July on the high
Sierra, varying somewhat both in time and fullness with the weather and the
depth of the snow. Toward the end of summer the streams are at their lowest
ebb, few even of the strongest singing much above a whisper as they slip and
ripple through gravel and boulder-beds from pool to pool in the hollows of
their channels, and drop in pattering showers like rain, and slip down
precipices and fall in sheets of embroidery, fold over fold. But, however
low their singing, it is always ineffably fine in tone, in harmony with the
restful time of the year.
The first snow of the season
that comes to the help of the streams usually falls in September or October,
sometimes even in the latter part of August, in the midst of yellow Indian
summer, when the goldenrods and gentians of the glacier meadows are in their
prime. This Indian-summer snow, however, soon melts, the chilled flowers
spread their petals to the sun, and the gardens as well as the streams are
refreshed as if only a warm shower had fallen. The snowstorms that load the
mountains to form the main fountain supply for the year seldom set in before
the middle or end of November.
WINTER BEAUTY OF THE VALLEY
When the first heavy storms
stopped work on the high mountains, I made haste down to my Yosemite den,
not to "hole up" and sleep the white months away; I was out every day, and
often all night, sleeping but little, studying the so-called wonders and
common things ever on show, wading, climbing, sauntering among the blessed
storms and calms, rejoicing in almost everything alike that I could see or
hear: the glorious brightness of frosty mornings; the sunbeams pouring over
the white domes and crags into the groves and waterfalls, kindling marvelous
iris fires in the hoarfrost and spray; the great forests and mountains in
their deep noon sleep; the good-night alpenglow; the stars; the solemn
gazing moon, drawing the huge domes and headlands one by one glowing white
out of the shadows hushed and breathless like an audience in awful
enthusiasm, while the meadows at their feet sparkle with frost-stars like
the sky; the sublime darkness of storm-nights, when all the lights are out;
the clouds in whose depths the frail snow-flowers grow; the behavior and
many voices of the different kinds of storms, trees, birds, waterfalls, and
snow avalanches in the ever-changing weather.
Every clear, frosty morning
loud sounds are heard booming and reverberating from side to side of the
Valley at intervals of a few minutes, beginning soon after sunrise and
continuing an hour or two like a thunderstorm. In my first winter in the
Valley I could not make out the source of this noise. I thought of falling
boulders, rock-blasting, etc. Not till I saw what looked like hoarfrost
dropping from the side of the fall was the problem explained. The strange
thunder is made by the fall of sections of ice formed of spray that is
frozen on the face of the cliff along the sides of the Upper Yosemite Fall a
sort of crystal plaster, a foot or two thick, cracked off by the sunbeams,
awakening all the Valley like cock-crowing, announcing the finest weather,
shouting aloud Nature's infinite industry and love of hard work in creating
beauty.
EXPLORING AN ICE CONE
This frozen spray gives rise
to one of the most interesting winter features of the Valley - a cone of ice
at the foot of the fall, four or five hundred feet high. From the Fern Ledge
standpoint its crater-like throat is seen, down which the fall plunges with
deep, gasping explosions of compressed air, and, after being well churned in
the stormy interior, the water bursts forth through arched openings at its
base, apparently scourged and weary and glad to escape, while belching
spray, spouted up out of the throat past the descending current, is wafted
away in irised drifts to the adjacent rocks and groves. It is built during
the night and early hours of the morning; only in spells of exceptionally
cold and cloudy weather is the work continued through the day. The greater
part of the spray material falls in crystalline showers direct to its place,
something like a small local snowstorm; but a considerable portion is first
frozen on the face of the cliff along the sides of the fall and stays there
until expanded and cracked off in irregular masses, some of them tons in
weight, to be built into the walls of the cone; while in windy, frosty
weather, when the fall is swayed from side to side, the cone is well
drenched and the loose ice masses and spray-dust are all firmly welded and
frozen together. Thus the finest of the downy wafts and curls of spray-
dust, which in mild nights fall about as silently as dew, are held back
until sunrise to make a store of heavy ice to reinforce the waterfall's
thunder-tones.
While the cone is in process
of formation, growing higher and wider in the frosty weather, it looks like
a beautiful, smooth, pure-white hill; but when it is wasting and breaking up
in the spring its surface is strewn with leaves, pine branches, stones,
sand, etc., that have been brought over the fall, making it look like a heap
of avalanche detritus.
Anxious to learn what I could
about the structure of this curious hill, I often approached it in calm
weather and tried to climb it, carrying an axe to cut steps. Once I nearly
succeeded in gaining the summit. At the base I was met by a current of spray
and wind that made seeing and breathing difficult. I pushed on backward,
however, and soon gained the slope of the hill, where by creeping close to
the surface most of the choking blast passed over me and I managed to crawl
up with but little difficulty. Thus I made my way nearly to the summit,
halting at times to peer up through the wild whirls of spray at the veiled
grandeur of the fall, or to listen to the thunder beneath me; the whole hill
was sounding as if it were a huge, bellowing drum. I hoped that by waiting
until the fall was blown aslant I should be able to climb to the lip of the
crater and get a view of the interior; but a suffocating blast, half air,
half water, followed by the fall of an enormous mass of frozen spray from a
spot high up on the wall, quickly discouraged me. The whole cone was jarred
by the blow and some fragments of the mass sped past me dangerously near; so
I beat a hasty retreat, chilled and drenched, and lay down on a sunny rock
to dry.
Once during a windstorm when
I saw that the fall was frequently blown westward, leaving the cone dry, I
ran up to Fern Ledge hoping to gain a clear view of the interior. I set out
at noon. All the way up the storm notes were so loud about me that the voice
of the fall was almost drowned by them. Notwithstanding the rocks and bushes
everywhere were drenched by the wind-driven spray, I approached the brink of
the precipice overlooking the mouth of the ice cone, but I was almost
suffocated by the drenching, gusty spray, and was compelled to seek shelter.
I searched for some hiding-place in the wall from whence I might run out at
some opportune moment when the fall with its whirling spray and torn shreds
of comet tails and trailing, tattered skirts was borne westward, as I had
seen it carried several times before, leaving the cliffs on the east side
and the ice hill bare in the sunlight. I had not long to wait, for, as if
ordered so for my special accommodation, the mighty downrush of comets with
their whirling drapery swung westward and remained aslant for nearly half an
hour. The cone was admirably lighted and deserted by the water, which fell
most of the time on the rocky western slopes mostly outside of the cone. The
mouth into which the fall pours was, as near as I could guess, about one
hundred feet in diameter north and south and about two hundred feet east and
west, which is about the shape and size of the fall at its best in its
normal condition at this season.
The crater-like opening was
not a true oval, but more like a huge coarse mouth. I could see down the
throat about one hundred feet or perhaps farther.
The fall precipice overhangs
from a height of four hundred feet above the base; therefore the water
strikes some distance from the base of the cliff, allowing space for the
accumulation of a considerable mass of ice between the fall and the wall. |