The river varies in width from fifty to seventy feet, and in depth from six to twelve feet. Its bottom is gravelly, its current remarkably swift, its waters clear as crystal. Trout, of delicious quality, abound, but seldom allow white men to catch them.

The rocky wall which shuts it in, averages over three quarters of a mile in perpendicular height. Nothing on wheels has ever gone up or down this tremendous precipice, and in only two places have the surest-footed horses or mules been able to find a safe trail.

Yosemite Valley is really a huge sink or cleft in a tangle of rock-mountains; a gigantic trough, not scooped or hollowed out from above, but sunk straight down, as if the bottom had dropped plumb toward the centre, leaving both walls so high that if either should fall, its top would reach clear across the valley and crash against the opposite cliff several hundred feet above its base.

In many places these cliffs rise into rock-mountains, or swell into huge mountainous domes, two or three of which have been split squarely in two, or cleft straight down from top to bottom, and the two halves, still standing straight up, have been heaved or thrown a half-mile asunder, whence each looks wistfully across at its old mate, or frowns sternly and gloomily down upon the beautiful valley which quietly keeps them apart.

Here and there they tower into lofty spires, shoot up in shattered or splintered needles, or solemnly stand in stately groups of massive turrets. High bastions surmount steep precipices, and both look down on awful chasms.

Back from the edge of the valley, behind these cliffs, the rock country stretches away in every direction through leagues of solid granite, rising irregularly into scattered hills, peaks and mountains, between which run the various snow-fed streams, whose final, sudden plunge over the valley's sharp and rocky brink makes the numerous falls of such wonderful height.

Coming in by either trail, one enters the western or lower end of the valley. We will suppose ourselves entering by the Mariposa trail. We have clambered, or allowed our animals to clamber, safely down the rocky, steep, and crooked trail, which lands us finally at the foot of the precipitous slope of two thousand seven hundred feet. As we follow the trail up the valley, that is, bearing away to the right, going eastward along the foot of the south wall, we encounter the falls, mountains, spires and domes in the following order:

One coming in by the Coulterville, Hardin's or Big Oak Flat trail, finds himself at the same end of the valley, directly opposite the foot of the Mariposa trail, having the river between; and as he bears away to the left, along the base of the north wall, he would, of course, meet all these wonders in exactly the reverse order. But to return to the foot of the Mariposa or Clark's trail:

First, the

Bridal Veil Fall,

Indian name Po-ho-no, meaning, "The Spirit of the Evil Wind." The fall is over nine hundred feet high, and of indescribable beauty. The stream which forms it has an average width of some sixty-five feet at the edge of the cliff where it breaks over the brink. It is narrower in summer and wider in winter. For six hundred and thirty feet the stream leaps clear of the cliff in one unbroken fall. Thence it rushes down the steep slope of broken rocks in a confusion of intermingled cascades nearly three hundred feet more.

The varying pressure of the changeful wind causes a veil-like waving, swaying and fluttering, which readily suggests the obviously fitting and most appropriate name.