tisfy the eye beyond what one
would have expected from their height. That severe and even forbidding
quality which is perceptible in the aspect of the South African
mountains, as it is in those of some other hot countries, seems to be
due to the sense of their aridity and bareness. One feels no longing to
climb them, as one would long to climb a picturesque mountain in Europe,
because one knows that upon their scorching sides there is no verdure
and no fountain breaks from beneath their crags. Beautiful as they are,
they are repellent; they invite no familiarity; they speak of the
hardness, the grimness, the silent aloofness of nature. It is only when
they form the distant background of a view, and especially when the
waning light of evening clothes their stern forms with tender hues, that
they become elements of pure delight in the landscape.

Some fifteen miles east of this range we came upon a natural object we
had given up hoping to see in South Africa, a country where the element
necessary to it is so markedly deficient. This was the waterfall on the
Oudzi River, one of the tributaries of the great Sabi River, which falls
into the Indian Ocean. The Oudzi is not very large in the dry season,
nor so full as the Garry at Killiecrankie or the stream which flows
through the Yosemite Valley. But even this represents a considerable
volume of water for tropical East Africa; and the rapid--it is really
rather a rapid than a cascade--must be a grand sight after heavy rain,
as it is a picturesque sight even in October. The stream rushes over a
ridge of very hard granite rock, intersected by veins of finer-grained
granite and of greenstone. It has cut for itself several deep channels
in the rock, and has scooped out many hollows, not, as usually,
circular, but elliptical in their shape, polished smooth, like the
little pockets or basins which loose stones polish smooth as they are
driven round and round by the current in the rocky bed of a Scotch
torrent. The brightness of the clear green water and the softness of the
surrounding woods, clothing each side of the long valley down which the
eye pursues the stream till the vista is closed by distant mountains,
make these falls one of the most novel and charming bits of scenery even
in this romantic land. Another pleasant surprise was in store for us
before we reached Mtali. We had descried from some way off a mass of
brilliant crimson on a steep hillside. Coming close under, we sa