2-752-683 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Yosemite Fall', 1872. Waterfall in Yosemite National Park, California, USA. 'Yosemite Fall is described as grand beyond all power of expression. The summit of the upper fall is a little over two thousand six hundred feet above the valley; for fifteen hundred feet the descent is absolutely vertical, and the rock is like a wall of masonry. Before this, the fall of water sways and sweeps, yielding to the force of the fitful wind with a marvellous grace and endless variety of motion. For a moment it descends with continuous roar; in another instant it is caught, and, reversing its flight, rises upward in wreathing, eddying mists, finally fading out like a summer cloud. The full-page illustration is taken from a clump of pine-trees so near that, by the rapid foreshortening, the entire fall appears in very different proportions from those seen from the opposite side of the valley'. 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]