At an early
period the entire mass of water must have plunged that distance without
break. At this day a single ledge of slant projection changes the
headlong flood from cataract to rapids for about four hundred feet; but
the unbroken upper fall is fifteen hundred feet, and the lower thirteen
hundred. In the spring and early summer no more magnificent sight can be
imagined than the tourist obtains from a stand-point right in the midst
of the spray, driven, as by a wind blowing thirty miles an hour, from
the thundering basin of the lower fall. At all seasons Cho-looke is the
grandest mountain-waterfall in the known world.
While I am speaking of waterfalls, let me not omit "Po-ho-no," or "The
Bridal Veil," which was passed on the southern side in our way to the
second and about a mile above the first camp. As Tis-sa-ack was a good,
so is Po-ho-no an evil spirit of the Indian mythology. This tradition is
scientifically accounted for in the fact that many Indians have been
carried over the fall by the tremendous current both of wind and water
forever rushing down a _canon_ through which the stream breaks from its
feeding-lake twelve or fifteen miles before it falls. The savage lowers
his voice to a whisper and crouches trembling past Po-ho-no; while the
very utterance of the name is so dreaded by him that the discoverers of
the Valley obtained it with great difficulty.
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