at the most favorable angle. But amid the spray and foam and fine-ground
mist ever rising from the various falls and cataracts there is an
affluence and variety of iris bows scarcely known to visitors who stay
only a day or two. Both day and night, winter and summer, this divine
light may be seen wherever water is falling dancing, singing; telling
the heart-peace of Nature amid the wildest displays of her power. In the
bright spring mornings the black-walled recess at the foot of the Lower
Yosemite Fall is lavishly fine with irised spray; and not simply does
this span the dashing foam, but the foam itself, the whole mass of it,
beheld at a certain distance, seems to be colored, and drips and wavers
from color to color, mingling with the foliage of the adjacent trees,
without suggesting any relationship to the ordinary rainbow. This is
perhaps the largest and most reservoir-like fountain of iris colors to
be found in the Valley.

Lunar rainbows or spray-bows also abound in the glorious affluence of
dashing, rejoicing, hurrahing, enthusiastic spring floods, their colors
as distinct as those of the sun and regularly and obviously banded,
though less vivid. Fine specimens may be found any night at the foot of
the Upper Yosemite Fall, glowing gloriously lid the gloomy shadows and
thundering waters, whenever there is plenty of moonlight and spray. Even
the secondary bow is at times distinctly visible.

The best point from which to observe them is on Fern Ledge. For some
time after moonrise, at time of high water, the arc has a span of about
five hundred feet, and is set upright; one end planted in the boiling
spray at the bottom, the other in the edge of the fall, creeping lower,
of course, and becoming less upright as the moon rises higher. This
grand arc of color, glowing in mild, shapely beauty in so weird and huge
a chamber of night shadows, and amid the rush and roar and tumultuous