. The falls of Niagara . of greatsatisfaction to the lover of nature that this famous andfavored territory, so studded with grandeur and frettedwith beauty, has wisely been set apart by Governmentalauthority to minister to the higher needs and betterinstincts of man. The valley of the Yellowstone east of the RockyMountains in the north, like that of the Yosemite westof the sierras of the Pacific slope, is another wonder-land, presenting a bewildering variety of land and waterformations which, in turn, awe, charm, fascinate, or amuse,but always astonish, the beholder. Among the most interesting
. The falls of Niagara . of greatsatisfaction to the lover of nature that this famous andfavored territory, so studded with grandeur and frettedwith beauty, has wisely been set apart by Governmentalauthority to minister to the higher needs and betterinstincts of man. The valley of the Yellowstone east of the RockyMountains in the north, like that of the Yosemite westof the sierras of the Pacific slope, is another wonder-land, presenting a bewildering variety of land and waterformations which, in turn, awe, charm, fascinate, or amuse,but always astonish, the beholder. Among the most interesting objects in the Yellow-stone Valley are the upper and lower falls of theYellowstone River. No language, says ProfessorHayden, can do justice to the wonderful grandeurand beauty of these scenes, and it is only through theeye that the mind can gather anything like an ade-quate conception of them. The two falls are not morethan a fourth of a mile apart. Above the upper fallthe Yellowstone flows through a grassy, meadow-like. Opposite page 168. Vernal Falls. OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 169 valley with a calm, steady current, giving no warninguntil v<=^ry near the fall that it is about to rush overa precipice 140 feet high, and then, within a quarterof a mile, again leap down a distance of 350 the waters roll over the upper descent they flowwith great rapidity along the upper flat, rocky bottomwhich spreads out to near double the width above thefalls, and continues thus until near the fall, when thechannel again contracts and the waters seem, as it were,to gather into a compact mass and plunge over thedescent of 350 feet in detached drops of foam as white assnow. On the Snake or Lewis River, the largest tributary ofthe Columbia River, are three falls, the greatest of whichis the Shoshone in Idaho, where the river, with a width ofsix hundred yards, is said to be of so great a depth thatit discharges nearly as much water as the Niagara, over aprecipice about two hundred feet
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