ches or snow avalanches. Farther on we come
to a gentle stream slipping down the face of the Cliff in lace-like
strips, and dropping from ledge to ledge--too small to be called a
fall--trickling, dripping, oozing, a pathless wanderer from one of
the upland meadow lying a little way back of the Valley rim, seeking
a way century after century to the depths of the Valley without any
appreciable channel. Every morning after a cool night, evaporation being
checked, it gathers strength and sings like a bird, but as the day
advances and the sun strikes its thin currents outspread on the heated
precipices, most of its waters vanish ere the bottom of the Valley is
reached. Many a fine, hanging-garden aloft on breezy inaccessible heights
owes to it its freshness and fullness of beauty; ferneries in shady
nooks, filled with Adiantum, Woodwardia, Woodsia, Aspidium, Pellaea,
and Cheilanthes, rosetted and tufted and ranged in lines, daintily
overlapping, thatching the stupendous cliffs with softest beauty, some
of the delicate fronds seeming to float on the warm moist air, without
any connection with rock or stream. Nor is there any lack of colored
plants wherever they can find a place to cling to; lilies and mints,
the showy cardinal mimulus, and glowing cushions of the golden bahia,
enlivened with butterflies and bees and all the other small, happy
humming creatures that belong to them.

After the highest point on the lower division of the trail is gained it
leads up into the deep recess occupied by the great fall, the noblest
display of falling water to be found in the Valley, or perhaps in the
world. When it first comes in sight it seems almost within reach of
one's hand, so great in the spring is its volume and velocity, yet it is
still nearly a third of a mile away and appears to recede as we advance.
The sculpture of the walls about it is on a scale of grandeur, according
nobly with the fall plain and massive, though elaborately finished, like
all the other cliffs about the Valley.

In the afternoon an immense shadow is cast athwart the plateau in front
of the fall, and over the chaparral bushes that clothe the slopes and
benches of the walls to the eastward, creeping upward until the fall is
wholly overcast, the contrast between the shaded and illumined sections
being very striking in these near views.

Under this shadow, during the cool centuries immediately following the
breaking-up of the Glacial Period, dwelt a small re