'The Days of a Man 1:1892 



to Mount Starr King, though the mountains facing 

 Miirren — Eiger, Monch, Schneehorn, Jungfrau, 

 Silberhorn, Gletscherhorn, and Ebnefluh — are in- 

 comparably more beautiful than Lyell and its 

 fellows, because much nearer and covered with 

 eternal snow. As for trees, the second growth of 

 larch and pine in the Bernese Oberland, dainty as 

 it is, bears no comparison with the Mariposa forests. 

 The preceding winter having been long and 

 heavy, very few of the upper trails were open at 

 the time of our visit. Our chief excursion, there- 

 fore, was up the Merced River to Vernal and Nevada 

 Falls, then along the mountain rim to Glacier Point. 

 Reaching the small Illilouette, swollen with melted 

 snow, we found the foot-log ten inches or more 

 under water. But rather than turn back, Mrs. 

 Jordan insisted on crossing, a feat which so impressed 

 the Park Commission, then in session, that it at 

 once arranged for a bridge. 

 Nevada After we passed the superb Nevada Fall, a German 



^^t-Titu tourist who happened along persisted in comparing 

 it with a cataract of his native Bavaria. "But you 

 should see the Rheinfall at Schaffhausen," said he. 

 The Rheinfall, however, though its stream carries 

 four times as much water as the Merced, is merely 

 a break of some sixty feet, only one twelfth as high 

 as Nevada Fall. Moreover, nothing of the kind is 

 finer than the glorious outward leap of the latter as 

 viewed from the rocky ascending trail by its side; to 

 my mind, only one other mountain cascade in Amer- 

 ica, the Great Fall of the Yellowstone, surpasses it 

 in beauty. Yet I must not forget the superb double 

 plunge of 2500 feet of Yosemite Fall on the north 

 side of the valley, a veritable drop from the clouds. 



c 432 ;] 



Rheinfall 



