THE CATARACT OF VELINO. THE roar of waters !—from the headlong height The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Making it all one emerald: how profound The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent To the broad column which rolls on, and shows With many windings through the vale :-Look back! As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread,-a matchless cataract, Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: BYRON. Velino (Veléno), a river of Central Italy, joining the Nera (a tributary of the Tiber) a little above the town of Terni. The cataract is about two miles from Terni.-"That of Velino is the most perfect and beautiful [fall of water I have seen]." "I prefer the fall of Velino, because its parts are in harmony. It displays all the force and power of the element, in its rapid and precipitous descent, and you feel that even man would be nothing in its waves, and would be dashed to pieces by its force. The whole scene is embraced at once by the eye, and the effect is almost as sublime as that of the Glommen [in Norway], where the river is at least one hundred times as large."-(SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.) Headlong height.-500 feet. Phlegethon, a river fabled to roll in a flaming torrent in the infernal regions. Grk. Phlegethon, "flaming." See also page 382. THE YOSEMITÉ VALLEY. SEE Yosemité and die! I shall not attempt to describe it; the subject is too large, and my capacity too small. Here might the author of the Divine Comedy, whose troubled brow and yearning eyes appeal to us through the shadows of five centuries, despairingly repeat: "I may not paint them all in full, for the long theme so chases me that many times the word comes short of the reality." Yosemite should be studied for months; I saw it but five days. Volumes ought to be and will be written about it; I can only group a few hints and impressions. Yosemite-signifying grizzly-bear—was the name of a tribe of Indians. In 1851 they were hostile. The whites, pursuing them into their home and stronghold, discovered this crowning wonder of the world. Finding in one lodge a very aged squaw, they asked how old she was. The Indians replied that when she was a girl these mountains were hills! To appreciate the statement one should see the mountains. On the seventh of August, after four days' hard travel from San Francisco, we galloped out of the pine woods, dismounted, stood upon the rocky precipice of Inspiration Point, and looked down into Yosemite, as one from a house-top looks down into his garden, or as he would view the interior of some stupendous roofless cathedral, from the top of one of its towering walls. In the distance, across the gorge, were snow-streaked mountains. Right under us was the narrow winding basin of meadow, grove, and shining river, shut in by granite walls from two thousand to five thousand feet high-walls with immense turrets of bare rock, walls so upright and perfect that an expert cragman can climb out of the valley at only three or four points. Flinging a pebble from the rock upon which we stood, and looking over the brink, I saw it fall more than half a mile before striking. Glancing across the narrow, profound chasm, I surveyed an unbroken, seamless wall of granite, two-thirds of a mile high, and more than perpendicular-the top projecting one hundred and fifty feet over the base. Turning toward the upper end of the valley, I beheld a half-dome of rock, one mile high, and on its summit a solitary gigantic cedar, appearing like the merest twig. Originally a vast granite mountain, it was riven from top to bottom by some ancient convulsion, which cleft asunder the everlasting hills and rent the great globe itself. The measureless, inclosing walls, with these leading towers and many other turrets-grey, brown, and white rock, darkly veined from summit to base with streaks and ribbons of falling water-hills almost upright, yet studded with tenacious firs and cedars; and the deepdown level floor of grass, with its thread of river and pigmy trees--all burst upon me at once. Nature had lifted her curtain to reveal the vast and the infinite. It elicited no adjectives, no exclamations. With be wildering sense of divine power and human littleness, I could only gaze in silence, till the view strained my brain and pained my eyes, compelling me to turn away and rest from its oppressive magnitude. Riding for two hours, down, down, among sharp rocks and dizzy zig-zags, where the five ladies of our party found it difficult to keep in their saddles, and narrowly escaped pitching over their horses' heads, we were in the valley, entering by the Mariposa trail. The length of the valley or cleft is nine miles; its average width three-fourths of a mile.1 Riding up the valley for five miles, past Bridal Vail fall (on the brook entering the Merced from the south, above Inspiration Point), Cathedral rocks, and the Sentinel, we dismounted and established our headquarters at Hutchings'. This is a two-story frame : 1 The following dimensions are in feet :Average width of Merced river Height of Yosemite falls (Upper, 1,600; Rapids, 434; Lower, 600) Width of these falls at upper summit, in August Height of South Fork fall 60 2,634 15 940 740 Height of Vernal fall 330 Height of Nevada fall 700 |