ON FOOT IN THE YOSEMITE 



of our boasted New England cataracts ; pleasant 

 to look upon they might be, no doubt, but hardly- 

 worth much running after. And now these falls 

 of the Merced and its larger tributaries had taken 

 me by storm. Indeed they are altogether another 

 story ; as little to be compared with anything in 

 New Hampshire as Flagstaff Hill on Boston 

 Common is to be set beside Mount Washington. 

 Merely a difference in degree ? Yes, if you choose 

 to put it so ; but such a difference in degree as 

 amounts fairly to a difference in kind. Imagine 

 the Merrimac tumbling over the face of a ledge 

 five hundred, six hundred, fifteen hundred feet 

 high ! And the Yosemite Fall, be it remembered, 

 after its first plunge of fifteen or sixteen hundred 

 feet, makes at once two others of four hundred 

 and six hundred feet respectively. In other words, 

 it drops almost plumb from an altitude nearly as 

 great (as great within six hundred feet) as that 

 of the summit of Mount Lafayette above the 

 level of Profile Notch. And furthermore, it is to 

 be considered that the water does not slip over 

 the edge of the awful cliff, but comes to it at head- 

 long speed, foaming white, having been crowded 

 together and rounded up between the rocky walls 

 of its steep and narrow bed, exactly as the Niag- 

 ara River is in the rapids above the whirlpool, — 

 which rapids are to my apprehension, as I sup- 

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