Down the trail to Barnard’s again, and up the opposite side of the valley to the foot of the Upper Yosemite Falls. Here a small stream plunges over the edge of the rocks and falls directly down over sixteen hundred feet, ten times as high as Niagara; before the water reaches the bottom the wind has reduced it to little less than spray, and just before I got to the foot of the cliff the wind suddenly changed and I was drenched to my skin before I could get away. These falls produce a peculiar sound down in the valley that is not heard at all near them. It is that of falling rocks or suppressed thunder, caused probably by the water being blown against the face of the precipice. Whether it was the small volume of water compared with the Nevada Falls, or having my ardor so suddenly dampened by the shower bath, but the Yosemite Falls did not impress me as the other falls I had seen did. On the way back, a gentleman just ahead of me suddenly came upon a rattlesnake a yard long, and the man jumped into the air, and ran back like a deer, but his courage returning he struck the snake a well-directed blow with a stone, and now has the four rattles in his pocket as a trophy.
On the way out of the valley, in the afternoon, I stopped at the Bridal Veil Falls, which are nine hundred feet high. Here I met a lady painting near the falls. Two days before that I first saw her at the Nevada Falls, where, before night, she had put upon canvas a most striking picture of the falls. Now she was doing the same here, and we sat upon the rocks at the foot of the falls and had a most delightful talk, for nearly an hour, on the advantages we had (she traveled horseback) over common tourists who depend upon cars and stages.
Like the Yosemite, these falls reach the bottom all blown to spray, and I began to perceive that after three days of this tremendous sight-seeing such common heights as one or two thousand feet were passed by unnoticed, and it took some such prominent figure as El Capitan to awaken any special interest. This solid, smooth, perpendicular piece of granite juts out boldly into the valley over three thousand feet high, and it easily holds first place in point of interest at the south end of the valley, as the Half Dome does at the north end.
The Half Dome rises above the valley four thousand eight hundred feet, and as its name indicates, one-half of the upper portion is rounded and smooth like any dome, but it is split in half; the other side being vertical from the top down for one thousand five hundred feet, and the lower portion descending nearly perpendicularly. And as I climb up out of the valley, over the Big Oak Flat route, and take a last look at the gigantic object below, I try to form some idea how this valley, different from any other in the world, could have been formed. But all attempted theorizing upon this stupendous subject proves unsatisfactory, and I am more than willing to leave the problem for some other fellow to solve.
Distance traveled on the wheel, 2,874 miles.
Chapter XVI.
On the Shores of the Pacific.
To get out of the Yosemite Valley required nearly ten miles of hill climbing, or rather walking, for there is no such thing as riding up even an ordinary hill with three or four inches of fine dust and numberless loose stones in the road. But once at the summit there were thirty miles of coasting, such as it was. Long before, in going into the valley, I had been obliged to take off the spring under the brake, for it required every ounce of strength I had to control the machine in coasting down some of those long hills without wasting any of my strength in pressing down a stiff spring. The roads were very rough, full of roots and stones, and so steep many times that it needed the full strength of the brake to keep the machine slowed down to a safe speed, but even then sometimes an unseen root or stone would throw me forward on to my feet, and the head of the machine would strike me on the lower part of the backbone till the flesh was black and blue. So in order to keep on the bicycle for any distance, I had to actually lie down on the saddle, keeping as far back on it as possible and reach the handles. In this position, with my legs sprawling out in front and the knapsack rubbing on the backbone of the machine, I rode for miles and miles, often bounding into the air, so that daylight might have been seen between myself and the saddle. It was neither a graceful nor a comfortable position, but it was the only way I could get along without walking, and to do that after walking up these same hills in a broiling sun would have been too bad. Some of the hills were too steep and crooked for coasting even, but most of them I rode down without mishap.
The next day after I left the valley, just before dark, while riding over a smooth, level strip of road, the felloe on the little wheel broke. The butt end of an eight-penny nail was sticking through the tire just at the point of fracture, but whether that was the cause of the breakage or not I cannot say. But this I did know, the machine was apparently useless,—forty-five miles from any railroad, and how many miles from a blacksmith’s shop I had not an idea. But with the use of a piece of hoop iron and some wire that I brought all the way from Indiana, where the old rubber tire had made the only previous trouble with the machine, I bound up the felloe and it carried me thirty miles, till the next noon, when a blacksmith riveted a piece on, and made the wheel strong again.