THE SPELL OF THE YOSEMITE 
grand and austere features predominate, of course, 
but underneath these and adorning them are many 
touches of the idyllic and the picturesque. Its many 
waterfalls fluttering like white lace against its verti- 
cal granite walls, its smooth, level floor, its noble 
pines and oaks, its open glades, its sheltering groves, 
its bright, clear, winding river, its soft voice of many 
waters, its flowers, its birds, its grass, its verdure, 
even its orchards of blooming apple trees, all in- 
closed in this tremendous granite frame — what an 
unforgettable picture it all makes, what a blending 
of the sublime and the homelike and familiar it all 
is! It is the waterfalls that make the granite alive, 
and bursting into bloom as it were. What a touch 
they give! how they enliven the scene! What music 
they evoke from these harps of stone! 
The first leap of Yosemite Falls is sixteen hun- 
dred feet — sixteen hundred feet of a compact mass 
of snowy rockets shooting downward and bursting 
into spray around which rainbows flit and hover. 
The next leap is four hundred feet, and the last 
six hundred. We tried to get near the foot and in- 
spect the hidden recess in which this airy spirit 
again took on a more tangible form of still, run- 
ning water, but the spray over a large area fell like a 
summer shower, drenching the trees and the rocks, 
and holding the inquisitive tourist off at a safe 
distance. We had to beat a retreat with dripping 
garments before we had got within fifty yards of the 
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