2-752-671 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Falls of the Willamette', 1872. Waterfall in Oregon, USA: 'The falls of this stream [the Willamette River] are justly celebrated for their beauty. The river, which is generally about a mile wide, narrows suddenly near Oregon City, as if preparing for its tremendous leap. The rocks on each side are of frowning basalt, of a deep black, rendered more intense by the foaming waters. By the action of the stream - the current being strongest in the centre - the falls have been worn into a horseshoe form, the two sides being so close that one can throw a stone to the other shore. The water, rushing with a very swift current, precipitates itself down a sheer fall of seventy feet, rising, in smoke-like mist, from the mysterious depths below, where it issues in great swaths of turbid water, streaked with green, and curved like glass, jostling with the bowlders of basalt, and roaring in rage at the contest'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1872]