ON FOOT IN THE YOSEMITE 



that no words could begin to intimate its beauty. 

 I looked and looked (but half the time I must be 

 attending to the mad rush of the river under my 

 feet), and then started on. If this was Vernal 

 Fall, as to which, in my happy ignorance, I was 

 a little uncertain, then I must go far enough to 

 see the Nevada. 



The trail carried me about and about, past big 

 snowbanks and along the edge of flowery slopes, 

 with ever-shifting views of the mighty canon and 

 the lofty cliffs beyond, till after what may have 

 been an hour's work it brought me out upon a 

 mountain shoulder whence I looked straight away 

 to another fall, higher and wilder by much than 

 the one I had lately seen. Here, then, was the 

 Nevada, to many minds the grandest of the great 

 four, as in truth it must be, taking the months to- 

 gether. 



Now there was nothing for it, after a few min- 

 utes of hesitation (still considering my years), 

 but I must keep on, down to the river-level again, 

 after all this labor in getting above it, and over 

 another bridge, till a final breathless, sharper and 

 sharper zigzag brought me to the top, where 

 I stood gazing from above at an indescribable, 

 unimaginable sight, — the plunge of the swollen 

 river over a sheer precipice to a huddle of 

 broken rocks six hundred feet below. 

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