File:Sights and scenes in Idaho and Montana for tourists (1892) (14572002307).jpg

Identifier: sightsscenesini00unio (find matches)
Title: Sights and scenes in Idaho and Montana for tourists ..
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Union Pacific railroad company. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: (Chicago, Press of Knight, Leonard & co.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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d mules. By mid-day wewere comfortably camped on the margin of the leftbank, just above the brink of the falls. My tent waspitched upon the edge of the cliff directly overhangingthe rapids. From my door, I looked over the cata-ract, and, whenever the veil of mist was blown aside,could see for a mile down the river. The lower half of the canon is excavated in avolcanic formation of red and gray rock. It is overthis material that the Snake falls. Above the brink, thewhole breadth of the river is broken by a dozen smallvolcanic islands, which the water has carved into fan-tastic forms; rounding some into low domes, sharpen-ing others into mere pillars, and now and then wear-ing into deep caves. At the very brink of the fall, afew twisted evergreens cling with their roots to therock, and lean over the abyss of foam with somethingof that air of fatal fascination which is apt to take pos-session of men. Under the influence of the coolshadow of cliffs and pine, and constant percolating of 13
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surface waters, a rare fertility is developed in the ravines opening upon the canon shore. A luxurianceof ferns and mosses, an almost tropical wealth of green leaves and velvety carpeting line the banks. Thereare no rocks at the base of the fall. The sheet offoam plunges almost vertically into a dark beryl-greenlake-like expanse of river. Immense volumes of foam roll up from the cata-ract base, and whirling about in eddying winds, riseoften a thousand feet in the air. When the windblows down the cafion, a gray mist obscures the riverfor half a mile, and when, as is usually the case inthe afternoon, the breezes blow eastward, the foamcloud curls over the brink of the fall and hangs likea veil over the upper river. On what condition de-pends the height to which the foam cloud rises fromthe base of the fall, it is apparently impossible to de-termine. Without the slightest wind, the cloud ofspray often rises several hundred feet above the canonwall, and again, with apparently the same con

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