File:The Pacific tourist (1879) (14781234643).jpg

Identifier: pacifictourist1879will (find matches)
Title: The Pacific tourist
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Williams, Henry T Shearer, Frederick E
Subjects: Union Pacific Railroad Company Central Pacific Railroad Company Railroad travel Railroad travel Railroad travel
Publisher: New York : H.T. Williams
Contributing Library: San Francisco Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: San Francisco Public Library

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e-waters, a rare fer-tility is developed in the ravines opening uponthe shore of the canon. A luxuriance of fernsand mosses, an almost tropical wealth of greenleaves and velvety carpeting line the banks.There are no rocks at the base of the fall. Thesheet of foam plunges almost vertically into adark, beryl-green, lake-like expanse of the river.Immense volumes of foam roll up from the cata-ract-base, and, whirling about in the eddyingwinds, rise often a thousand feet into the air.When the wind blows down the canon, a graymist obscures the river for half a mile; andwhen, as is usually the case in the afternoon, thebreezes blow eastward, the foam-cloud curls overthe brink of the fall, and hangs like a veil overthe uj^per river. The incessant roar, reinforcedby a thousand echoes, fills the canon. From outthis monotone, from time to time, rise strange,wild sounds, and now and then may be heard aslow, measured beat, not unlike the recurring fallof breakers. From the white front of the cata-
Text Appearing After Image:
170 TMM ^maiWIQ W&WMiBW. ract the eye constantly wanders up to the black,frowning parapet of lava. The actual edge isusually formed of irregular blocks and prisms oflava, )>oised upon their ends in an unstable equi-librium, ready to be tumbled over at the firstleverage of the frost. Hardly an hour passeswithout the sudden boom of one of those rock-masses falling upon the ragged debris piled below. After sleeping on the nightmareish brink ofthe falls, it was no small satisfaction to climbout of the Dantean gulf and find myself oncemore upon a pleasantly prosaic foreground ofsage. Nothing more eflectually banishes themelotragic state of the mind than the obtrusiveugliness and abominable smell of this plant.From my feet a hundred miles of it stretchedeastward. A half-hours walk took me out ofsight of the canon, and as the wind blew west-ward, only occasional, indistinct pulsations of thefall could be heard. I walked for an hour, following an old Indiantrail which occasionally appi

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