From the Fern Ledge standpoint its crater-like
throat is seen, down which the fall plunges with deep, gasping
explosions of compressed air, and, after being well churned in the wormy
interior, the water bursts forth through arched openings at its base,
apparently scourged and weary and glad to escape, while belching spray,
spouted up out of the throat past the descending current, is wafted
away in irised drifts to the adjacent rocks and groves. It is built
during the night and early hours of the morning; only in spells of
exceptionally cold and cloudy weather is the work continued through the
day. The greater part of the spray material falls in crystalline showers
direct to its place, something like a small local snow-storm; but a
considerable portion is first frozen on the face of the cliff along the
sides of the fall and stays there until expanded and cracked off in
irregular masses, some of them tons in weight, to be built into the
walls of the cone; while in windy, frosty weather, when the fall is
swayed from side to side, the cone is well drenched and the loose ice
masses and spray-dust are all firmly welded and frozen together. Thus
the finest of the downy wafts and curls of spray-dust, which in mild
nights fall about as silently as dew, are held back until sunrise to
make a store of heavy ice to reinforce the waterfall's thunder-tones.

While the cone is in process of formation, growing higher and wider in
the frosty weather, it looks like a beautiful smooth, pure-white hill;
but when it is wasting and breaking up in the spring its surface is
strewn with leaves, pine branches, stones, sand, etc., that have been
brought over the fall, making it look like a heap of avalanche detritus.

Anxious to learn what I could about the structure of this curious hill
I often approached it in calm weather and tried to climb it, carrying
an ax to cut steps. Once I nearly succeeded in gaining the summit. At
the base I was met by a current of spray and wind that made seeing and
breathing difficult. I pushed on backward however, and soon gained the
slope of the hill, where by creeping close to the surface most of the
choking blast passed over me and I managed to crawl up with but little
difficulty. Thus I made my way nearly to the summit, halting at times
to peer up through the wild whirls of spray at the veiled grandeur of
the fall, or to listen to the thunder beneath me; the whole hill was
sounding as if it were a huge, bellowin