W. H. Brewer—Hail in the Spray of the Yosemite Fall. 168 
sheet as it was possible to stand or breathe. No fresh light on 
the matter was here gained. Having no protection for the eyes 
but our hats, nothing could be seen distinctly, and if any hail 
occurred there I could not feel it. At a little greater distance 
from the fall, and where from time to time by the swaying of the 
sheet we were left sufficiently outside the spray to look 
upward, the near views were indescribably grand. More than 
a quarter of a mile above us the clear stream leaped out into 
the air and was soon torn into spray. It seemed as mobile as 
smoke and assumed new varieties of outlines each instant, so 
light and airy that it seemed as easily swayed by wind as lace, 
yet it struck with deafening thunder; the concussion was per 
ceptible through the granite for some distance ain _ was only 
by this that the vast forces involved were apprecia 
Although foreshortened from our position, by an :altuiniod its 
height appeared greatly and abnormally increased 
of spray increases downward so that the base of the sheet is 
several times wider and thicker than the top, forming a sort of 
curving truncated cone. The actual height is so vast and so 
_— beyond ordinary experience that it excites the imagina- 
n and deceives the judgment, and when thus seen from be- 
eat in the intense illumination of the midday sun in that clear 
climate, looking up and along this white, airy, changeable cone, 
its tapering from the observer seems due mostly to its distance, 
and by this false or imaginary perspective it seems to stretch 
upward toward the intensely blue sky to an immense but vague 
eight. 
We had no thermometer with us to test temperatures at or 
near the fall. At Leidig’s hotel in the valley, which is one and 
five-eighths miles distant in an air lineand a thousand feet lower, 
my ap opened showed the following Sy (pes) for that 
day. At 6 a.m. 52° FL; at 2.30 p.m, 784°; at 3.15 P.M, 
79°; at 9 P. ak 58° : and at 6 the iiext morning, ” 50°. These 
were probably about the temperatures of the other days of our 
visit. I had no wet-bulb to determine the dryness of the air, 
but that the air was very dry was shown by the rapidity with 
which our saturated clothes dried. 
few will be noticed that at the time when this hail was ob- 
rved, the sheet was in the full blaze of the sun from top to 
boabeks and the heat further reflected toward it by the naked 
walls of rock sloping toward it on either side, and that the air 
near was of a temperature above 70°, perhaps, however, much 
less near the top of the fall We were fully convinced while 
there that the hail was then actually forming, and not that it 
was merely portions of ice torn from the great ice-cone and 
hurled along with the spray by the blast. 
When I first visited this fall in June, 1863, we had intended 
