Description of the Falls of Gersuppah. 131 



the thicket in our approach to it threw a lambent gloom on the 

 mind ; the noise, however, of the waterfall, bursting suddenly 

 on the ear, soon enlivened our anticipations ; but here again a 

 momentary disappointment supersedes these eager expectations, 

 for, standing on the bed of the rocks, not thirty feet distant, 

 the eye can discover nothing to awaken amazement : a few steps, 

 however, nearer, the stranger is so overwhelmed with the im- 

 mensity of the dread abyss, that he requires some seconds to 

 collect himself before he gets sufficient courage to make the 

 attempt to examine the awfully grand view that presents itself 

 beneath him — he feels as if he were looking into the brink of 

 eternity ! nor is the situation in which he is compelled to be 

 seated to enjoy the sight less strikingly perilous ; he has also to 

 lie down horizontally and look perpendicularly over a project- 

 ing rock at the very edge of the immense basin, into a descent 

 that the eye can scarcely fathom from its profundity, and be- 

 holds a dreadful chasm hollowed out by the weight of the dash- 

 ing torrents, which cause to ascend from the white spray that 

 they form below, volumes of vapour which, rising into the at- 

 mosphere, mingle with the clouds above the highest mountains 

 in the neighbourhood, and bouyant upwards borne, would ra- 

 ther seem to be the smoke of ^Etna's fiery bowl, than the subtle 

 extricated particles from the whirlpool of an equally dangerous 

 element. The spectator sees the heavenly bow with all its 

 prismatic colouring and splendour, reflected downwards through 

 the salient aqueous globules athwart the surface of the un- 

 fathomed gulf, in the perfectness of the mundane semi-arch. 



" 1 should imagine the circumference of the crater, which 

 is shaped like a horse-shoe, to be about a quarter of a mile. In 

 front of its open end, a descending forest majestically slopes down 

 from the mountains, making the effect of the whole truly sub- 

 lime ; and some fields at the top, to the left, give a singular 

 and pleasing combination to the aspect. Five separate bodies 

 of water are hurled down this stupendous pool, the largest, at 

 the N. E. angle, tumbles perpendicularly with its foaming cur- 

 rent from the edge of the river, already described, clear to the 

 bottom, in two distinct columns. At the next curve, and fa- 

 cing the position where we had a birdVeye view of the whole, 

 another large mass is seen to be propelled headlong; then 



