It could now be very plainly seen that the Falls fell behind the Cone into a boiling turbulent basin, which fretted the edge of the ice and repelled its advances. Although much diminished in volume the body of water, which makes a leap of 250 feet down a sheer rock face into the caldron, was sufficiently large to present all the finest characteristics of a waterfall, but it was at times enveloped in a mist of snow, or rather of frozen spray, which blew into eyes, mouth, ears, and clothes, and penetrated to the very marrow of one’s bones. And it is of this ever-falling frozen rain the Cone is built, and as the winter lengthens on the Cone grows higher and higher, till in favourable seasons it reaches an altitude of 120 feet. It is as regular as the work of an architect, and, I need not say, much more beautiful. At present it had not attained its full growth, and was only 80 feet in height--but its symmetry was of Nature’s own handiwork. The Falls are in a narrow concave cup of rock crested with pine forests, and its sides now forbid the ascent, which is practicable in summer time by a series of natural steps in the strata. The waters cover this young cone with wings of spray and foam, and flittering, tremulous, and unsubstantial as they are, it is nevertheless from their aerial vapours that the solid and sturdy ice mountain grows up. Of its substantial nature we had an excellent proof--of a human, practical kind: for, obeying many invitations, we walked along a snow path which led to a portal cut in the solid oxide of hydrogen, and entering found ourselves in a hot and stuffy apartment excavated from the body of the Cone, in which there was an Americanised bar, with drinks suited to the locality, and as much want of air as one would find in a house in the Fifth Avenue of New York. It was full of people, who drank whiskey and other strong waters.