Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-01-16
wonders Of the West.

/ The diadem for scenic grandeur has
heretofore been won by Yosemite, but
late explorations IN the Sierra Nevada
have revealed some half dozen contest
ants for that honor Among these may
be mentioned Mount Shasta, the canon
of the South Fork of Kings river (in the
shadow of Mount Whitney,, and the
great TuOlumme river canon. John
/ Muir, the lonely adventurous explorer
and geologist of the Yosemite Valley.
and Galen Clark. State Guardian of that
valley, last month penetrated and eX-
plored the last mentioned canon, which
Professor Whitney and Clarence King
did not enter, the former expressing
doubt, in his State geological report.
whether it was possible to get into il at
all. Mr.. Muir reports that this canon
lies about eighteen miles in an almost
due northerly direction from Yosemite
Valley Its beginning or mouth is be-
low HetCh-Hetchy Valley. and the main
Tuolumne river runs between it. 1t
curves in an unbroken line for over for
ty miles, and runs up to and ends in the
very heart of the SUBMITS of the upper
Sierra Nevada. The uneuphoniOusly
named Hetch-Hetchy Valley constitutes
an expanded portion of the great Tuol-
umne canon, which properly begins at
the eastern end of Hetch-Hetchy, and
has. from thence to its head, length of
twenty miles of continuous, unbroken.
vertical walls of granite, similar to, but
more clear cut, and with much greater
depth than those of Yosemite Valley.
Yosemite Valley has an average width
of half mile, and is in one place a mile
wide, but the Tuolumne canon has no.
where a width exceeding quarter of a
mile, and is in some places much mar
rover than that. The Tuolumne river
which runs through it has twice the
width of the Merced. The falls of the
Merced- Yosemite surpasS those of Tuo-
lumne canon in unbroRen volumes of de-
sCending water; but, in endless variety
of cascades and watersheds. the TuO-
lumne canon is far superior. The great
walls of the canon are scanned by water
worn fiassures, down which rivers leap,
churn. thunder, brawl and sing with all
possible varieties and expression of
sound. There is one water-leap 1900
feet high in the upper TuOlumne canon,
but it is not unbroken like the upper
Yosemite, and is in that respect inferior
to the latter. The upper Yosemite falls
are 1900 feet high. In the Spring, when
-
its great water-worn, rocky bowl with
sound resembling the fall from the sky
of gigantic cannon balls on massive and
tightly-stretched drums. This sound
closely resembles, vet hardly rises to the
noisy dignity of the loudest peals of
thunder; but the noise produced by the
Tuoumne waterfalls is as deafenfng as
the loudest thunder-a thunder which is
brought directly home to the ears by the
narrowness and vast depth OF the great
ice-covercd fies,1I1 and the unsurpassed
FACILITIES 1t affords forponderous echoes.
One of the waterfalls spreads out at
first like a great tilmy fan of silvery-
threaded water; but after descent in
this shape of about two hundred feet it
is whirled over, closed up with lightning
like rapidity, changed in color, shot
down a narrow groove of rocks like an
arrow of steam. The great sculpture
marks of glacial action are much newer
and more easily read in the Tuolumne
than in the canon, for, though called a
valley, it is a canon of the Yosemite.
The glacial alphabet by which the his
tory of the glacial action can be read is
very much blurred in Yosemite by the
subsequent action of rain, snow, sun,
winds and earthquakes but in the TuO-
lOmne canon the page is fresh from the
glacial workshop on the SUBMITS of
mounts Lyell, Dana, Gibbs and Ritter
The glacier on the latter has length
and width of about half mile, and
depth of about eight hundred feet The
glaciers from these mountains, Mr.. Muir
thinks, at one time not only filled the
great Tuolumne canon, but lavishly
overtlowed it as a river overflows its
banks in spring time.
Messrs. Muir and Clark had rough
task in exploring this great canon and
its surroundings. They were forced to
wade rushing icy torrents, the sides of
which brushed the foot of perpendicular
rocks of granite. They camped one
PEERLESS to bed. One of the walls men
toned is four thousand feet high.
Those who have come out of Yosemite
by Coultervilla trai! will remember what
a magnificent view of the Bridal Veil
Falls is had from it. Those falls are by
no means the largest, but they are the
most beautiful and appropriately named
of all the many falls of the great valley.
| The wind swings them and disarranges
their falling folds and silver threads,
| Just as it would veil of the most gauzy
| texture. There are many of these bridal
\ veil falls in Hetch-Hetchy Valley and
the Tuolomne canon. There is greater
display and variety of water-shapes,
hues, tints, motions and expressions In
the latter canon than in Yosemite. One
imagines he has seen and heard all the
possible combinations into which water