Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1878-08-29
THE YOSEMITE VAI1-Ev
Immense Granite
Niagara Nowhere. -

I
| A correspondent of the Troy P,dora+
gives the following interesting descrip-
ton of the famous valley of the Yosemite:
''The valley contains 1880 acres, about
half of which are meadow land, and the
whole is level as a floor, except at the
side of the mountain walls, where the de-
bris has fallen down. The floor of the
valley is itself 1000 feet above the sea.
could not resist the impression that this
valley was once at an altitude the same
as that of the surrounding mountains,
and that by some eonvulsion of nature, the
underpinRing being taken out, the valley
dropped down or sunk to the distance of
about a mile below its original height.
Imagine strip of land seven miles long
by one and half wide, tapering at the
ends to half mile wide, that has sunk
down bodily, its surface being level, leav-
ing perpendicular walls of granite on all
its sides, that stand up sheer from three
quarters of a mile to a mile high. mile
is $3.50 feet. You can stand on the brink
of Clouds Rest, and looking over its diz-
zy height, drop stone, which will fall in
than mile. The highest structure built
by man in Europe is the famed Strasburg
Cathedral. It is 484 feet high, 16 feet
higher than St. Peters at Rome. Noun
Starr King (old patrons of Y. NJ. A. lee
ture course will remember Starr King) is
$500 feet high from the bottom of the val
ley. Let the reader bear in mind that
this and other heights of the mountains
named each represents the heights of the
perpendicular sides of the granite walls
from the bottom of the valley to the top
of the mountain. The valley has simply
sunk down, leaving walls of granite that
are sheer perpendicular on all sides, and
the upper rim varies its heights from the
bottom of the valley from 5000 to 6034
| feet in height. The Palisades of the Hud-
son river at their highest point are less
| than 600 feet high. In looking at the Pal
isades it will be observed that at the bot
tom the perpendicular of the wall is brok-
en- by a few feet of debris or talus that
has fallen down or been washed over by
the rains and the melting of the SHOWS.
Otherwise the Palisades are perpendicu-
lar stone walls. The Yosemite is sur
rounded on all sides by such walls of gran
ite, and here and there talus or debris has
| fallen, but not to much of an extent-and
| these walls that surround the Yosemite
valley are more than ten times as high as
the walls of the Palisades of the Hudson.
We came right down near the side of one
of the grandest of all the walls that shut
| in the Yosemite. 1t was Ell Captain, and
| it has a sheer granite wall that looks out
grandly on the valley above which rises
$500 feet. Over the sides of the rim OF
the valley, at the depressions, there are
waterfalls at various points-nine noted
| waterfalls in all. The water from these
| several falls mainly form the Merced river,
which runs through. the entire length of
the valley. In the middle of spring,
when the SHOWS are rapidly melting in the
| Sierras, considerable bodies of water are
precipitated over these various falls, and
the Merced then is quite a respectable
stream as to size. When the SHOWS have
| melted away, the rains stopped, and the
dry season has set in these waterfalls have
dwindled to mere white ribbons. Some
of the waterfalls of the Yosemite are won
| derful and marvellous in their grandeur,
sublimity and magnitude. The great fall
of Niagara, one of the wonders of the
world, is only 163 feet high. The
Yosemite fall a half a mile back of our
hotel, which we visited in the early morn
ing, leaps down 1900 feet at a single
bound, where it falls on a rocky platform
perhaps 80 feet wide, then it leaps down
900 feet more on to similar rocky table,
| from which it makes another clean fall of
434 feet on to the rocky debris at the bot
tom of the valley. The Yosemite fall in
its three jumps therefore leaps down 1884
feet, and falls from height more than
sixteen times that Of Niagara. More Won
derfuI still is the leap of the Sentinel Cas-
cade, threequarters of a mile to the front
of our hotel. 1t has fall in single leap
of 347O feet, while the Ribbon fall comes
| down in a perpendicular white line in
single jump $500 feet. 1t has fall Of
more than twenty times the height of the
famed Niagara