Thomas Starr King, 1824-1863, was born in New York City. His father was a
Universalist minister; and, in 1834, he settled in Charlestown,
Massachusetts. The son was preparing to enter Harvard University, when the
death of his father devolved upon him the support of his mother, and his
collegiate course had to be given up. He spent several years as clerk and
teacher, improving meanwhile all possible opportunities for study. In 1846
he was settled over the church to which his father had preached in
Charlestown. Two years later, he was called to the Hollis Street Unitarian
Church in Boston. Here his eloquence and active public spirit soon made
him well known. He also gained much reputation as a public lecturer. In
1860 he left the East to take charge of the Unitarian church in San
Francisco. During the remaining years of his life, he exercised much
influence in the public affairs of California. He died suddenly, of
diphtheria, in the midst of his brilliant career.
Mr. King was a great lover of nature. His "White Hills," describing the
mountain scenery of New Hampshire, is the most complete book ever written
concerning that interesting region.
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The Yosemite valley, in California, is a pass about ten miles long. At its
eastern extremity it leads into three narrower passes, each of which
extends several miles, winding by the wildest paths into the heart of the
Sierra Nevada chain of mountains. For seven miles of the main valley,
which varies in width from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half,
the walls on either side are from two thousand to nearly five thousand
feet above the road, and are nearly perpendicular. From these walls, rocky
splinters a thousand feet in height start up, and every winter drop a few
hundred tons of granite, to adorn the base of the rampart with picturesque
ruin.
The valley is of such irregular width, and bends so much and often so
abruptly, that there is a great variety and frequent surprise in the forms
and combinations of the overhanging rocks as one rides along the bank of
the stream. The patches of luxuriant meadow, with their dazzling green,
and the grouping of the superb firs, two hundred feet high, that skirt
them, and that shoot above the stout and graceful oaks and sycamores
through which the horse path winds, are delightful rests of sweetness and
beauty amid the threatening awfulness.
The Merced, which flows through the same pass, is a noble stream, a
hundred feet wide and ten feet deep. It is formed chiefly of the streams
that leap and rush through the narrower passes, and it is swollen, also,
by the bounty of the marvelous waterfalls that pour down from the ramparts
of the wider valley. The sublime poetry of Habakkuk is needed to describe
the impression, and, perhaps, the geology, of these mighty fissures: "Thou
didst cleave the earth with rivers."
At the foot of the breakneck declivity of nearly three thousand feet by
which we reach the banks of the Merced, we are six miles from the hotel,
and every rod of the ride awakens wonder, awe, and a solemn joy. As we
approach the hotel, and turn toward the opposite bank of the river, what
is that
"Which ever sounds and shines,
A pillar of white light upon the wall
Of purple cliffs aloof descried"?
That, reader, is the highest waterfall in the world--the Yosemite
cataract, nearly twenty-five hundred feet in its plunge, dashing from a
break or depression in a cliff thirty-two hundred feet sheer.
A writer who visited this valley in September, calls the cataract a mere
tape line of water dropped from the sky. Perhaps it is so, toward the
close of the dry season; but as we saw it, the blended majesty and beauty
of it, apart from the general sublimities of Yosemite gorge, would repay a
journey of a thousand miles. There was no deficiency of water. It was a
powerful stream, thirty-five feet broad, fresh from the Nevada, that made
the plunge from the brow of the awful precipice.
At the first leap it clears fourteen hundred and ninety-seven feet; then
it tumbles down a series of steep stairways four hundred and two feet, and
then makes a jump to the meadows five hundred and eighteen feet more. But
it is the upper and highest cataract that is most wonderful to the eye, as
well as most musical. The cliff is so sheer that there is no break in the
body of the water during the whole of its descent of more than a quarter
of a mile. It pours in a curve from the summit, fifteen hundred feet, to
the basin that hoards it but a moment for the cascades that follow.
And what endless complexities and opulence of beauty in the forms and
motions of the cataract! It is comparatively narrow at the top of the
precipice, although, as we said, the tide that pours over is thirty-five
feet broad. But it widens as it descends, and curves a little on one side
as it widens, so that it shapes itself, before it reaches its first bowl
of granite, into the figure of a comet. More beautiful than the comet,
however, we can see the substance of this watery loveliness ever renew
itself and ever pour itself away.
"It mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald;--how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs."
The cataract seems to shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of
water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend
themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst
from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the
remaining distance; and thus the most charming fretwork of watery nodules,
each trailing its vapory train for a hundred feet or more, is woven all
over the cascade, which swings, now and then, thirty feet each way, on the
mountain side, as if it were a pendulum of watery lace. Once in a while,
too, the wind manages to get back of the fall, between it and the cliff,
and then it will whirl it round and round for two or three hundred feet,
as if to try the experiment of twisting it to wring it dry.
Of course I visited the foot of the lowest fall of the Yosemite, and
looked up through the spray, five hundred feet, to its crown. And I tried
to climb to the base of the first or highest cataract, but lost my way
among the steep, sharp rocks, for there is only one line by which the
cliff can be scaled. But no nearer view that I found or heard described,
is comparable with the picture, from the hotel, of the comet curve of the
upper cataract, fifteen hundred feet high, and the two falls immediately
beneath it, in which the same water leaps to the level of the quiet
Merced.