The Yosemite | Page 9

waters are wrought are more closely and voluminously
veiled, while higher, towards 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-oak 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 200 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 600 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 half-way 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 canyon 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 canyon 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 400 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 canyons in gray
roaring rapids, dear to the ouzel, and below the confluence of the
Illilouette, sweeping around the shoulder of the Half Dome on its
approach to the head of the tranquil