une. Thereafter a
dark perpendicular stain on the cliff marks its position. Another minor
fall, this from the south rim, is that of Sentinel Creek. It is seen
from the road at the right of Sentinel Rock, dropping five hundred feet
in one leap of several which aggregate two thousand feet.

Next in progress come Yosemite Falls, loftiest by far in the world, a
spectacle of sublimity. These falls divide with Half Dome the honors of
the upper Valley. The tremendous plunge of the Upper Fall, and the
magnificence of the two falls in apparent near continuation as seen from
the principal points of elevation on the valley floor, form a spectacle
of extraordinary distinction. They vie with Yosemite's two great rocks,
El Capitan and Half Dome, for leadership among the individual scenic
features of the continent.

The Upper Fall pours over the rim at a point nearly twenty-six hundred
feet above the valley floor. Its sheer drop is fourteen hundred and
thirty feet, the equal of nine Niagaras. Two-fifths of a mile south of
its foot, the Lower Fall drops three hundred and twenty feet more. From
the crest of the Upper Fall to the foot of the Lower Fall lacks a little
of half a mile. From the foot of the Lower Fall, after foaming down the
talus, Yosemite Creek, seeming a ridiculously small stream to have
produced so monstrous a spectacle, slips quietly across a half mile of
level valley to lose itself in the Merced.

From the floods of late May when the thunder of falling water fills the
valley and windows rattle a mile away, to the October drought when the
slender ribbon is little more than mist, the Upper Yosemite Fall is a
thing of many moods and infinite beauty. Seen from above and opposite at
Glacier Point, sideways and more distantly from the summit of Cloud's
Rest, straight on from the valley floor, upwards from the foot of the
Lower Fall, upwards again from its own foot, and downwards from the
overhanging brink toward which the creek idles carelessly to the very
step-off of its fearful leap, the Fall never loses for a moment its
power to amaze. It draws and holds the eye as the magnet does the iron.

Looking up from below one is fascinated by the extreme leisureliness of
its motion. The water does not seem to fall; it floats; a pebble dropped
alongside surely would reach bottom in half the time. Speculating upon
this appearance, one guesses that the air retards the water's drop, but
this idea is quickly dispelled by the observa