The first leap of Yosemite Falls is sixteen hundred 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 inspect the hidden recess in which this
airy spirit again took on a more tangible form of still, running
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 foot
of the fall. At first I was surprised at the volume of water that
came hurrying out of the hidden recess of dripping rocks and
trees--a swiftly flowing stream, thirty or forty feet wide, and four
or five feet deep. How could that comparatively narrow curtain of
white spray up there give birth to such a full robust stream? But I
saw that in making the tremendous leap from the top of the
precipice, the stream was suddenly drawn out, as we stretch a rubber
band in our hands, and that the solid and massive current below was
like the rubber again relaxed. The strain was over, and the united
waters deepened and slowed up over their rocky bed.

Yosemite for a home or a camp, the Grand Canon for a spectacle. I
have spoken of the robin I saw in Yosemite Valley. Think how forlorn
and out of place a robin would seem in the Grand Canon! What would
he do there? There is no turf for him to inspect, and there are no
trees for him to perch on. I should as soon expect to find him amid
the pyramids of Egypt, or amid the ruins of Karnak. The bluebird was
in the Yosemite also, and the water-ouzel haunted the lucid waters.