Yosemite—Vernal—Nevada—Yellowstone—Shoshone—St. Maurice—Montmorency.
For the purpose of comparison it may be interesting to note other cataracts in the United States, and in other parts of the world, and also some of the remarkable rapids, which may be successors to what were once perpendicular falls. For descriptions of those in foreign countries we are chiefly indebted to the geographical gazetteers and the journals of Humboldt, Livingstone, Bohle, and Stanley; for information regarding the cataracts of Norway we are indebted to Murray's "Norway, Denmark and Sweden."
Yosemite Falls
In the United States, after Niagara, the first to claim our attention are the Falls of the Yosemite, so graphically and scientifically made known to us in the second volume of Professor J. D. Whitney's Geological Report for California.
Before describing them it is necessary to note the physical features of the region in which they are placed. The valley of the Yosemite forms a portion of the bed of the Merced River, which flows through it and passes from it by a wild, deep cañon into the San Joaquin. It is about eight miles long and from half a mile to a mile wide, with a sharp bend to the west, about two miles from its upper end. To this place the Merced and two tributaries, called the North and South Forks, have come through the most rugged cañons, falling nearly two thousand feet in the space of two miles.
Near the southerly end of the valley is the remarkable rock El Capitan, an almost vertical cliff 3,600 feet high, and one of the grandest objects in the valley. Just above this is the imposing pile called the Cathedral Rocks, and behind these, connected with them, two slender and beautiful granite columns called the Cathedral Spires.
Two miles above, on the opposite side, is the row of summits, rising like steps one above another, named the Three Brothers. On the other side, in the angle of the valley, stands Sentinel Rock, so called from its fancied resemblance to a watch-tower. Three-fourths of a mile in a southerly direction from this is the Sentinel Dome, more than four thousand feet high and affording from its summit a most magnificent view. Following up the North Fork, just at the entrance of the cañon, rises the Half Dome, the grandest and loftiest in the Yosemite Valley, an inaccessible crest of granite, having an elevation—according to Prof. Brewer—of 6,000 feet. On the opposite side of the same cañon stands the North Dome, another of those rounded masses of granite so characteristic of the sierras. Appearing as a buttress to this is Washington's Column, and below this the Royal Arches, an immense arched cavity, formed by the giving way and sliding down of portions of the rock, and presenting, in the upper part, a vaulted appearance.