Waterfall

“ And now, the stream, bending round with a broad and sudden swoop, showed at a little distance, ghostly and indistinct through the darkness, the mighty Waterfall, whose roar had been his guide. Only in one streak a-down the giant cataract, the stars were reflected; and this long train of broken light glittered preternaturally forth through the rugged crags and the sombre verdure, that wrapped either side of the waterfall in utter and rayless gloom.
Nothing could exceed the forlorn and terrific grandeur of the spot; the roar of the waters supplied to the ear what the night forbade to the eye. ”

“ Tourists are too apt to speak of the waterfall as something independent, something to be visited as a separate curiosity. There may be some such. But in general, the waterfall should be understood as part of the mountain—as the great fountain which adorns the architecture of its rocks, and the gardens of its pine forests. It belongs to the mountain. Pass through the valley, and look up; you see here and there thin stripes of glittering white, noiseless, motionless. ”

“ And when they left these green recesses, and viewed the extensive landscape opened before them—gently swelling hills, distant mountains, and the boundless ocean—then they wondered that more limited scenery could have given such entire satisfaction. Climbing among the rocks, wild and sublime views, of a rugged grandeur, prepared their souls for nature's masterpiece, the foaming waterfall. ”

“ Waterfall after waterfall came down from a height of two hundred feet, over great, rocky precipices, being spanned by a single arched bridge of Gothic design. On one side of the falls are tasteful grounds, with shaded walks and seats for the convenience of visitors; on the other, all is wild and barren—rock rising above rock, crag above crag, in a morose solitude.
It was toward this solitude that Niall led us, the noise of the waterfalls completely drowning our voices. ”

“ No doubt in past ages, the stream had poured over opposing boulders, making a waterfall beyond: and what was then a waterfall had been since transformed into a swift shoot. Inanimate Nature is very thorough in her mode of work; never getting into a flurry, never stamping aught that she undertakes, but steadily persistent through centuries. ”

“ Above the great shoulders, and under the purple peaks, we see the far-reaching corries opening up, with here and there a white waterfall just visible in the hollows. There is a sense of escape as we draw away from that overshadowing gloom. ”

“ In the windless weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to count, even in this time-worn place, as an image of unalterable rest. ”

“ They rush down through every cleft to the depths below, they burst forth from every gorge, or plunge in mad career from rock to rock, forming waterfall after waterfall, and awakening echoes from the farthest mountain sides. ”

“ In the midst of this landscape appears the house, situated on a gentle slope on the edge of a wood, and surrounded by beautiful flower-gardens. From hence to the great waterfall, a distance of five miles, the road leads through ever varying scenes, which are more like those of beautiful nature than of a park. At length you reach a wood, and the rush of the distant waterfall meets your ear before you catch sight of it. ”

“ Behind the giant curtain of waterfall is a greenish reflection, weird in its intensity and unnaturalness, and to the ears there comes a muffled roar which, while not jarring, yet seems to pervade and penetrate like the dull rumble of an earthquake. ”

“ A scrambling walk through briars and hazel-bushes, sometimes on rocky ledges high among the cliffs, sometimes among the prostrate blocks that dam up the stream, brings us at last full in front of a sparkling waterfall that dashes over a precipitous face of rock some twenty feet high. ”

“ I have seen a “waterfall” of this mist overflow from a dent in the edge of ground that contained a pool. That seems to argue for an origin similar to that of a spring; as if strongly moisture-laden air welled up from underground, condensing its steam as it got chilled. It is these strange phenomena that are familiar, too, in the northern plains of Europe which must have given rise to the belief in elves and other weird creations of the brain—“the earth has bubbles as the water has”—not half as weird, though, as some realities are in the land which I love. ”

“ The little fellow carried him by a wild path to the upper of the Falls, the Boniton Linn, and coming down unexpectedly upon it, he was exceedingly affected by the solemn grandeur of the place. This fall is not much admired or spoken of by travellers; you have never a full, breast view of it; it does not make a complete self-satisfying place, an abode of its own, as a perfect waterfall seems to me to do; but the river, down which you look through a long vista of steep and ruin-like rocks, the roaring of the waterfall, and the solemn evening lights, must have been most impressive. ”

“ Now look back twenty yards, and you will see a waterfall fair as a spirit; the moonlight just touches it, bringing it into relief against a dark background of shadow. A little to the left, and a dozen steps this side of the fall, a flickering light marks my camp--and a precious camp it is. A huge, glacier-polished slab, falling from the smooth, glossy flank of Cloud's Rest, happened to settle on edge against the wall of the gorge. I did not know that this slab was glacier-polished until I lighted my fire. ”

“ Sometimes the bright summer waterfall seemed, in the rays of the sun, like a column of light, and the springs that issued from the sides of the more distant and lofty mountains shone with a steady, dazzling brightness, on which the eye could scarcely rest. ”

“ We turn to the right; a tiny waterfall, which in the season must be quite a sight, trickles down near by; we are now advancing directly upon the serrated ridge of fantastic spires that have long accompanied us. ”

“ At one place there is a most exquisite waterfall, to which neither painter's brush nor writer's pen can do justice. The sunlight falls through flickering leaves into the deep glen, and makes the foam whiter and the brook more golden-brown. ”

“ Other blocks are only waiting for the last moment of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins the trees and the verdant lawn below. All round is the sound of water, the beat of the waves on the shore, the onward flowing of the river, the rush of the torrent, the splash of the waterfall, or the bubbling of some little stream; everywhere the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you. ”

“ We rode above the clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds! and every now and then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search-light to the depths yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater-rim thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall or a dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air, burst upon our vision. At our first night’s camp, in the Keanae Gulch, we counted thirty-two waterfalls from a single viewpoint. The vegetation ran riot over that wild land. ”

“ Fancy, if you can, paddling to keep your way--not to advance--face to face with a waterfall a mile at least in breadth, and probably forty feet in height, divided into three by rocky little islands, pouring in white-brown sheets sheer down over the rock, and falling with a steady roar into the awful cauldrons beneath. ”

“ A thin thread of clear spring water trickled along the bottom of the ravine, now forming a silvery-toned waterfall, then losing itself among the loose rocks, next finding itself again, and sometimes making the mistake which humanity often makes, of spreading itself too much and trying to put on the airs of larger streams. ”

“ Crossing several bright little streams, it climbed to the summit of an eminence which commanded on the one side a prospect of a picturesque waterfall, on the other side of a deep ravine. A river issuing from a narrow cleft in the rock takes but one mad leap from the edge of the precipice into the valley below, a leap of 600 feet. "First one sees the rush of blue water, gradually changing in its descent to a cloud of white spray, which in its turn is lost in a rainbow of mist. ”

“ CHAUDIERE FALLS.
A little more than 100 years ago Heriot wrote thus in his "Travels through Canada": "A waterfall occupies the breadth of the river, and dashing over a rugged and irregular cliff, of about 30 feet in altitude, exhibits to the view of the traveller, in the midst of a territory where dreary solitude prevails, an object at once brilliant, enlivening and picturesque. ”

“ A precarious footpath leads along a perilous ledge high up on the mountain-side, from which the traveller gazes down into the depths of the tremendous ravine, where the deep and rapid river may be seen rushing and foaming along, often plunging in a 389cascade into a dark abyss, but so far below him that even the roar of the waterfall is lost in mid-air before it can reach his ear. ”

“ All pretence of a path now ceases, and henceforward till we reach the foot of the waterfall there is nothing for it but to scramble over rocks and to creep along slopes often so steep and precipitous that to find a foothold or handhold on them is not easy, and stretching away into such depths below that it is best not to look down them but to keep the eyes fixed on the ground at one’s feet. ”

“ And so my eyes wander from this product 96 of nature’s great lapidary over to the waterfall and the mountain gorge, which had been his workshop, how many thousand years ago, who can tell? The beautiful waterfall is all that remains of him, but his handiwork is abundant.
Stretching along the east shore lies a great lateral moraine, even now twenty, and, in places, thirty feet high, made of great rocks, thousands of tons in weight, down to mere grains of sand. How many generations of pines have found precarious foothold there and died, may be conjectured only. ”

“ The creek is very clear and beautiful, gliding through tangles of shrubs and flower beds, gay bee and butterfly pastures, the grove’s own stream, pure Sequoia water, flowing all the year, every drop filtered through moss and leaves and the myriad spongy rootlets of the giant trees. One of the most interesting features of the grove is a small waterfall with a flowery, ferny, clear brimming pool at the foot of it. How cheerily it sings the songs of the wilderness, and how sweet its tones! ”

“ The water of a quiet pool or of a gentle stream cannot do work, but water which is plunging over a precipice or dam, or is flowing down steep slopes, may be made to saw wood, grind our corn, light our streets, run our electric cars, etc. A waterfall, or a rapid stream, is a great asset to any community, and for this reason should be carefully guarded. ”

“ In waterfalls, there is all the beauty of form, and light and graceful motion, and harmonious sound, and cooling freshness, and ever-changing variety that woman always loves; and there are overshadowing trees, and an escape from the noontide sun, and the hum of insect life, and moss-grown stones, and soft grassy banks. ”

“ Waterfalls and rapids of all kinds are evanescent features of a river's youth. Like lakes they are soon destroyed, and if any long time had already elapsed since their formation they would have been obliterated already. ”

“ We then ascended a near hill to the waterfall called Dungeon-Ghyll Force, also a subject touched by Wordsworth's Muse. You wind along a path for a long time, hearing the sound of the falling water, but do not see it till, descending by a ladder the side of the ravine, you come to its very foot. ”

“ Nor is sublimity the only characteristic of this greatest of waterfalls. There are traits of beauty, which seem even to highten the effect of its grandeur. The rainbow, ever playing in sunshine over its awful front, and seeming indifferent to the boiling whirlpool beneath; the tide of many-colored gems, into which the spray often seems converted, as it plunges over the rocks; the heaps of foam, white as wool, dancing on the billows that rush away from the foot of the fall ”

“ Yet tumbling down from that great eminence, where the gray spires of the peaks are dwarfed by distance until they grow thin as needles, is a stream of water, fed by springs that lie in the lap of still taller mountains in the rear, rushing in tumultuous flow until it breaks into seven waterfalls, and then checks its pace as it joins the river that runs on to the sea. ”

“ Near the waterfall is a cave, where the soil is either sunk, or washed away by the water; it is a narrow deep crack in the earth, which you cannot behold without shuddering. When the water is high, there are three falls. The middle one precipitates directly down, the two others cross over the middle one. The drought, however, of the summer of 1825, and a canal, which drains the water from the river to drive saw and other mills, has lessened the quantity of water in the river, so that only one of the three falls has water, and instead of seeing the other two, you perceive the bare rock. ”

“ Even at a good distance away you hear the splash and dash of innumerable waterfalls, caused by the burns leaping the cliffs. If you venture to wander among those wilds you must know your ground well, for however bright the day may be one hour, the next you may be shrouded in mist, or drenched with rain, or battered by hail. The mist, indeed, is rarely absent. You see it clinging round the heights and moving restlessly up and down the hillside like some uneasy and malignant spirit. As you walk you are startled at a huge figure striding along. ”

“ To the right and left are the scarped red rocks and roaring waterfalls, shooting far over the cliff’s, and then arching their necks as they expand in feathery foam, over which rainbows float, forming and dissolving as the wind sways the curtains of spray from side to side. ”