I set out at noon. All the way up the storm
notes were so loud about me that the voice of the fall was almost
drowned by them. Notwithstanding the rocks and bushes everywhere were
drenched by the wind-driven spray, I approached the brink of the
precipice overlooking the mouth of the ice cone, but I was almost
suffocated by the drenching, gusty spray, and was compelled to seek
shelter. I searched for some hiding-place in the wall from whence I
might run out at some opportune moment when the fall with its whirling
spray and torn shreds of comet tails and trailing, tattered skirts was
borne westward, as I had seen it carried several times before, leaving
the cliffs on the east side and the ice hill bare in the sunlight. I had
not long to wait, for, as if ordered so for my special accommodation,
the mighty downrush of comets with their whirling drapery swung westward
and remained aslant for nearly half an hour. The cone was admirably
lighted and deserted by the water, which fell most of the time on the
rocky western slopes mostly outside of the cone. The mouth into which
the fall pours was, as near as I could guess, about one hundred feet in
diameter north and south and about two hundred feet east and west, which
is about the shape and size of the fall at its best in its normal
condition at this season.
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