This fall drops on a heap
of giant boulders in one unbroken sheet of a thousand feet
perpendicular, thus being the next in height among all the
Valley-cataracts to the Yo-Semite itself, and having a width of fifty
feet. Its name of "The Bridal Veil" is one of the few successes in
fantastic nomenclature; for, to one viewing it in profile, its snowy
sheet, broken into the filmy silver lace of spray and falling quite free
of the brow of the precipice, might well seem the veil worn by the earth
at her granite wedding,--no commemorator of any fifty-years' bagatelle
like the golden one, but crowning the one-millionth anniversary of her
nuptials.
On either side of Po-ho-no the sky-line of the precipice is
magnificently varied. The fall itself cuts a deep gorge into the crown
of the battlement. On the southwest border of the fall stands a nobly
bold, but nameless rock, three thousand feet in height. Near by is
Sentinel Rock, a solitary truncate pinnacle, towering to thirty-three
hundred feet. A little farther are "Eleachas," or "The Three Brothers,"
flush with the front-surface of the precipice, but their upper posterior
bounding-planes tilted in three tiers, which reach a height of
thirty-four hundred and fifty feet.
One of the loveliest places in the Valley is the shore of Lake
Ah-wi-yah,--a crystal pond of several acres in extent, fed by the north
fork of the Valley-stream, and lying right at the mouth of the narrow
strait between the North and South Domes.
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