majesty and beauty of it, apart from the general sublimities of Yosemite gorge, would repay a journey of a thousand miles. There was no deficiency of water. It was a powerful stream, thirty-five feet broad, fresh from the Nevada, that made the plunge from the brow of the awful precipice.

At the first leap it clears fourteen hundred and ninety-seven feet; then it tumbles down a series of steep stairways four hundred and two feet, and then makes a jump to the meadows, five hundred and eighteen feet more. But it is the upper and highest cataract that is most wonderful to the eye, as well as most musical. The cliff is so sheer that there is no break in the body of the water during the whole of its descent of more than a quarter of a mile. It pours in a curve from the summit, fifteen hundred feet, to the basin that hoards it but a moment for the cascades that follow.

And what endless complexities and opulence of beauty in the forms and motions of the cataract! It is comparatively narrow at the top of the precipice, although, as we said, the tide that pours over is thirty-five feet broad. But it widens as it descends, and curves a little on one side as it widens, so that it shapes itself, before it reaches its first bowl of granite, into the figure of a comet. More beautiful than the comet, however, we can see the substance of this watery loveliness ever renew itself and ever pour itself away.

"It mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald; —how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs."

The cataract seems to shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus the most charming fretwork of watery nodules, each trailing its vapory train for a hundred feet or more, is woven all over the cascade, which swings, now and then, thirty feet each way, on the mountain side, as if it were a pendulum of watery lace. Once in a while, too, the wind manages to get back of the fall, between it and the cliff, and then it will whirl it round and round for two or three hundred feet, as if to try the experiment of twisting it to wring it dry.

Of course I visited the foot of the lowest fall of the Yosemite, and looked up through the spray, five hundred feet, to its crown. And I tried to climb to the base of the first or highest cataract, but lost my way among the steep, sharp rocks, for

there is only one line by which the cliff can be scaled. But no nearer view that I found or heard described is comparable with the picture, from the hotel, of the comet-curve of the upper cataract, fifteen hundred feet high, and the two falls immediately beneath it, in which the same water leaps to the level of the quiet Merced.

-THOMAS STARR KING.

8.

DESCRIPTION OF A THUNDER-STORM.

It was the latter part of a calm, sultry day, that we floated gently with the tide between those stern mountains, the Highlands of the Hudson. There was that perfect quiet which prevails over nature in the languor of summer heat; the turning of a plank, or the accidental falling of an oar on deck, was echoed from the mountain side, and reverberated along the shore; and if by chance the captain gave a shout of command, there were airy tongues that mocked it from every cliff.

I gazed about me, in mute delight and wonder, at these scenes of nature's magnificence. To the left, the Dunderberg reared its woody precipices, height over height, forest over forest, away in the deep summer sky. To the right, strutted forth the bold promontory of Antony's Nose, with a solitary eagle wheeling about it; while beyond, moun

tain succeeded to mountain, until they seemed to lock their arms together, and confine this mighty river in their en braces.

There was a feeling of quiet luxury in gazing at the broad, green bosoms, here and there scooped out among the precipices, or at woodlands high in air, nodding over the edge of some beetling bluff, and their foliage all transparent in the yellow sunshine.

In the midst of my admiration I remarked a pile of bright, snowy clouds, peering above the western heights. It was succeeded by another, and another, each seemingly pushing onward its predecessor, and towering with dazzling brilliancy, in the deep blue atmosphere; and now, muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard, rolling behind the mountains.

up it.

The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping The fish-hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high, dry trees; the crows flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks; and all nature seemed conscious of the approaching thunder-gust.

The clouds now rolled in volumes over the mountain tops, the summits still bright and snowy, but the lower parts of an inky blackness. The rain. began to patter down in broad and scattered drops:

the wind freshened, and curled up the waves: at length, it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came rattling down.

The lightning leaped from cloud to cloud, and streamed quivering against the rock, splitting and rending the stoutest forest-trees. The thunder burst in tremendous explosions: the peals were echoed from mountain to mountain: they crashed upon Dunderberg, and rolled up the long defile of the highlands, each headland making a new echo, until old Bull Hill seemed to bellow back the storm.

For a time, the scudding rack and mist, and the sheeted rain, almost hid the landscape from sight. There was a fearful gloom, illuminated still more fearfully by the streams of lightning, which glittered among the rain-drops. Never had I beheld such an absolute warring of the elements; it seemed as if the storm was tearing and rending its way through this mountain defile, and had brought all the artillery of heaven into action.

-WASHINGTON IRVING.

He that in venturous barks hath been

A wanderer on the deep,
Can tell of many an awful scene,

Where storms forever sweep.

-MRS. HEMANS.