The First View: The Bridal Veil


From the margin of these glorious forests the first general view of the
Valley used to be gained--a revelation in landscape affairs that
enriches one's life forever. Entering the Valley, gazing overwhelmed
with the multitude of grand objects about us, perhaps the first to fix
our attention will be the Bridal Veil, a beautiful waterfall on our
right. Its brow, where it first leaps free from the cliff, is about 900
feet above us; and as it sways and sings in the wind, clad in gauzy,
sun-sifted spray, half falling, half floating, it seems infinitely
gentle and fine; but the hymns it sings tell the solemn fateful power
hidden beneath its soft clothing.

The Bridal Veil shoots free from the upper edge of the cliff by the
velocity the stream has acquired in descending a long slope above the
head of the fall. Looking from the top of the rock-avalanche talus
on the west side, about one hundred feet above the foot of the fall,
the under surface of the water arch is seen to be finely grooved and
striated; and the sky is seen through the arch between rock and water,
making a novel and beautiful effect.

Under ordinary weather conditions the fall strikes on flat-topped slabs,
forming a kind of ledge about two-thirds of the way down from the top,
and as the fall sways back and forth with great variety of motions
among these flat-topped pillars, kissing and plashing notes as well as
thunder-like detonations are produced, like those of the Yosemite Fall,
though on a smaller scale.