But four miles inland the bed becomes rugged and
declivitous, and the mountain walls close in, forming a most
magnificent canon from 1,000 to 2,500 feet deep. Other canons of
nearly equal beauty descend to swell the Hanapepe with their clear,
cool, tributaries, and there are "meetings of the waters" worthier
of verse than those of Avoca. The walls are broken and highly
fantastic, narrowing here, receding there, their strangely-arched
recesses festooned with the feathery trichomanes, their clustering
columns and broken buttresses suggesting some old-world minster, and
their stately tiers of columnar basalt rising one above another in
barren grey into the far-off blue sky. The river in carving out the
gorge so grandly has most energetically removed all rubbish, and
even the tributaries of the lateral canons do not accumulate any
"wash" in the main bed. The walls as a rule rise clear from the
stream, which, besides its lateral tributaries, receives other
contributions in the form of waterfalls, which hurl themselves into
it from the cliffs in one leap.
After ascending it for four miles all further progress was barred by
a pali which curves round from the right, and closes the chasm with
a perpendicular wall, over which the Hanapepe precipitates itself
from a height of 326 feet, forming the Koula Falls.
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