9. MAJESTIC YOSEMITE POINT, AND WIND-SPRAYED YOSEMITE FALLS (1,600 FOOT LEAP), LOOKING N. N. E., YOSEMITE VALLEY

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The first and natural question which comes to the tongue in looking up the stupendous height at the mighty flood speeding downward sixteen hundred feet, as from the sky (half a million cubic feet an hour, as the statisticians tell us), is, " Where does it all come from ?" There is no visible source, […] It creeps drop by drop, and rill by rill, from underneath the snow banks of the distant Mount Hoffman. This snow coverlet does not dissolve with the Chinook wind, as do the snows further north, and disappear in a spring freshet, sweeping disastrously down; but, gradually, day by day, each day's sun distilling its quota, and each night freezing up the source, preserving by this peculiar dispensation of nature the hoarded supply which seldom fails. […]

From: Charles Quincy Turner, Yosemite Valley Through the Stereoscope, Underwood & Underwood, New York, 1902, pp. 37-38.

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