The
streamlets of water come by thousands from the highest layer, leap
from step to step, cross their stripes of foam, unite and fall by a
dozen brooks that slide from the last layer in flaky streaks to lose
themselves in the glaciers of the bottom.
The thirteenth cascade on the left is twelve hundred and sixty-six
feet high. It falls slowly, like a dropping cloud, or the unfolding of
a muslin veil; the air softens its fall; the eye follows complacently
the graceful undulation of the beautiful airy veil. It glides the
length of the rock, and seems to float rather than to fall. The sun
shines, through its plume, with the softest and loveliest splendor.
It reaches the bottom like a bouquet of slender waving feathers, and
springs backward in a silver dust; the fresh and transparent mist
swings about the rock it bathes, and its rebounding train mounts
lightly along the courses. No stir in the air; no noise, no living
creature in the solitude. You hear only the monotonous murmur of the
cascades, resembling the rustle of the leaves that the wind stirs in
the forest.
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