rocks compresses
its channel, and with a gurgling, choking struggle, it leaps with a
single bound, sheer from an even level shelf, into the tremendous
chasm. The sheet could not be more perfect if wrought by art. The
Almighty has vouchsafed no grander scene to human eyes. Every object
that meets the vision increases its sublimity. There is a majestic
harmony in the whole, which I have never seen before in nature's
grandest works. The fall itself takes its leap between the jaws of rocks
whose vertical height above it is more than six hundred feet, and more
than nine hundred feet above the chasm into which it falls. Long before
it reaches the base it is enveloped in spray, which is woven by the
sun's rays into bows radiant with all the colors of the prism, and
arching the face of the cataract with their glories. Five hundred feet
below the edge of the canon, and one hundred and sixty feet above the
verge of the cataract, and overlooking the deep gorge beneath, on the
flattened summit of a projecting crag, I lay with my face turned into
the boiling chasm, and with a stone suspended by a large cord measured
its profoundest depths. Three times in its descent the cord was parted
by abrasion, but at last, securing the weight with a leather band, I was
enabled to ascertain by a measurement which I think quite exact, the
height of the fall. It is a little more than three hundred and twenty
feet; while the perpendicular wall down which I suspended the weight was
five hundred and ten feet.

[Illustration: LOWER FALL OF THE YELLOWSTONE.]

Looking down from this lofty eminence through the canon below the falls,
the scene is full of grandeur. The descent of the river for more than a
mile is marked by continuous cascades varying in height from five to
twenty feet, and huge rapids breaking over the rocks, and lashing with
foam the precipitous sides of the gorge. A similar descent through the
entire canon (thirty miles), is probable, as in no other way except by
distinct cataracts of enormous height can the difference in altitude
between this point and its outlet be explained. The colors of the rock,
which is shaly in character, are variegated with yellow, gray and brown,
and the action of the water in its rapid passage down the sides of the
canon has worn the fragments of shale into countless capricious forms.
Jets of steam issue from the sides of the canon at frequent intervals,
marking the presence of thermal springs and active volc