When, after an hour's fighting we arrived in
sight of the cascade, but not of the basin into which it falls, our
pretty guide declined to go further, saying that the wind was
rising, and that stones would fall and kill us, but being
incredulous on this point, I left them, and with great difficulty
and many bruises, got up the river to its exit from the basin, and
there, being unable to climb the rocks on either side, stood up to
my throat in the still tepid water till the scene became real to me.
I do not care for any waterfall but Niagara, nor do I care in itself
for this one, for though its first leap is 200 feet and its second
1,600, it is so frittered away and dissipated in spray, owing to the
very magnitude of its descent, that there is no volume of water
within sight to create mass or sound. But no words can paint the
majesty of the surroundings, the caverned, precipitous walls of rock
coming down in one black plunge from the blue sky above to the dark
abyss of water below, the sullen shuddering sound with which pieces
of rock came hurtling down among the trees, the thin tinkle of the
water as it falls, the full rush of the river, the feathery growth
of ferns, gigantic below, but so diminished by the height above, as
only to show their presence by the green tinge upon the rocks, while
in addition to the gloom produced by the stupendous height of the
cliffs, there is a cool, green darkness of dense forest, and mighty
trees of strange tropical forms glass themselves in the black mirror
of the basin.
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