s and boulders, as you look down the river, seem
almost to block up its route towards the western sea, and indeed so
completely seem to fill up the pass, that one seemed to be standing at the
bottom of a rock-bound hollow which had been excavated by the agency of
Nature, after a toil through periods of time far beyond the calculations
of man.

As I found that the rocks at the foot of the falls were covered with a
slimy mud, and as I was suffering slightly from a damaged foot, I
presently returned to the shed, while my companion proceeded to explore
the bed of the gorge further down the river. The floor of the shed had
been strewed with straw, and I lay down at full length, partly to rest
and partly to examine the situation more minutely, for the height is so
great that it is impossible adequately to survey the scene in any other
position. And then, when you have stillness and solitude, and when the
body is in complete repose, there pour in on eye and ear floods of
impressions so quickly varying that the mind feels quite unable to record
them, and there is finally nothing left behind but a vague and
indescribable sensation of all that is grand and beautiful and melodious
in nature. For there are vast heights and gloomy depths and recesses, and
varied forms of falling waters, and in the general surroundings everything
to convey exalted ideas of grandeur to the mind, but grandeur accompanied
by exquisite beauty, in colour, in the graceful movement of animal life,
and in the varying sounds of falling waters--the charm of the iris hues
which ever beautify the falling waters--beauty in the varied colours of
the rocks, and in the plants and ferns growing in the fissures of the
cliff--beauty in exquisite forms of motion--of water varied in countless
ways as it descends from the four separate falls--beauty in the unceasing
movements of countless swallows, mingled here and there with specimens of
the Alpine swift and the pretty blue-hued rock pigeons, which build their
nests on the ledges of the cliffs, and are constantly to be seen flying
across the falls. Then there are the unceasing and ever varying sounds of
falling waters, grand in their totality, grand and melodious in their
separate cadences--the deep bass of the Rajah, sometimes like cannon
thundering in the distance, and sometimes like the regular tolling of some
vast Titanic bell; sounds of most varied and brilliant music from the
Rocket; the jagged note of the Roarer, a