The Nevada or Yowiye Fall is six hundred and thirty-nine feet high, and it is rather a slide or chute than a fall, for the water runs down a rock which has a slope of eighty-five degrees for about half its hight, and seventy-five degrees the other half. The friction of the rock breaks the stream into a white froth, and hence the name of Nevada or Snowy. At some time, the Merced ran to the east of Yowiye, and cut a deep cañon there in the cliff, so that the fall was not more than four hundred feet. The old channel was choked up by a raft or accumulation of trees and dirt, and so the river was turned into its present course, The view was taken within a short distance.

Mr. Bowles says of the Nevada:

“This is the fall of falls; there is no rival to it here in exquisite, various, and fascinating beauty; and Switzerland, which abounds in waterfalls of like type, holds none of such peculiar charms. Not a drop of the rich stream of water but is white in its whole passage ; it is one sheet—rather one grand lace-work of spray—from beginning to end. As it sweeps down its plane of rock, every drop all distinct, all alive, there is nothing of hit- man art that you can compare it with but innumerable and snow-white point-lace collars and capes ; as much more delicate, and beautiful, and perfect, however, as nature ever is than art.”