The Yosemite | Page 7

fall. Seen from this point
towards 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 gem, 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 hose 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 meadow 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 awes to it its freshness and fullness
of beauty; ferneries in shady nooks, filled with Adiantum, Woodwardia,
Woodsia, Aspidium, Pellaea, 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