IN GREEN ALASKA 



detached groups, made slow progress down to this 

 ferry, there was so much to arrest and fascinate the 

 attention. The new, strange birds, such as the 

 white-throated swift, the violet-backed swallow ; 

 the strange and beautiful wild flowers in the rocks ; 

 the rocks themselves in towering six-sided col- 

 umns, the spray from the falls below us rising up 

 over the chasm, — these and other features made 

 us tarry long by the way. 



In order to get to the front of the falls and pluck 

 out the heart of the sublimity, the traveler must 

 cross to the south side of the river, at this point less 

 than half a mile wide. Here the shore recedes in 

 broad, irregular terraces, upon one of which stands 

 a comfortable summer hotel. Scaling slippery and 

 perilous rocky points near it, we stood on the very 

 brink of the chasm and took our fill of the awful 

 and the sublime as born of cliff and cataract. We 

 clung to stretched ropes and wires and peered down 

 into the abyss. Elemental displays on such a scale 

 crowd all trivial and personal thoughts out of the 

 mind of the beholder. It is salutary to look upon 

 them occasionally, if only to winnow out of our minds 

 the dust and chaff of the petty affairs of the day, and 

 feel the awe and hush that come over the spirit in 

 the presence of such sublimity. 



Shoshone Falls are probably second only to Ni- 

 agara, — less in volume, but of greater height and 

 far more striking and picturesque in setting. In- 



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