7 BIVERS. 



channel, the soil, moistened and enriched by the sediment deposited 

 from the inundation, is diligently cultivated by the natives ; by such 

 inundations the banks of rivers are usually elevated above the adjacent 

 plains, and when the stream carries down much mud and gravel, the 

 whole bed of the river may become considerably raised above the level of 

 the country, through which it flows. 



When river courses lie amongst mountains, they are subject to sudden 

 breaks, which, according to their depth, give rise either to rapids or 

 to cataracts. There are many picturesque waterfalls in Scotland, as the 

 Cascade of Fyers, and that at Lochleven Head in Inverness-shire, Bruar 

 Cascade, in Athole, the Devon Lynn, in Clackmannonshire, and the 

 magnificent falls of the Clyde, near Lanark. The most stupendous 

 cascade in Great Britain is the fall of Glomach, in the county of Eoss. 

 At the head of a wild and solitary glen, seven miles from the inn of 

 Shealhouse, the river Girsac is precipitated in one unbroken fall of more 

 than 300 feet. At the distance of about fifty feet from the bottom, the 

 water impinges on a shelf, whence it falls into a dark pool, amidst naked 

 perpendicular rocks. When the river is in flood, it descends in one 

 unbroken sheet of above 380 feet in height. Wales and Cumberland can 

 boast of many cascades on a smaller scale. The cataracts of Dahl in 

 Sweden, of the Staubach in the Alps, of Tivoli and Terni in Italy, the 

 less considerable cascades of Mavianeria, the far famed Styx (of Homer), 

 in Arcadia, and the fall of the Rhine at Shauffhausen, are amongst the 

 most celebrated in Europe. A cataract may exist in a comparatively flat 

 country, from a sudden sinking in its level. The stupendous cataract of 

 Niagara, in which a large and rapid river 1650 feet in width, precipitates 

 itself by two channels in one vast leap of 160 feet perpendicular, is an 

 instance of such an occurrence. The celebrated cataract of Tequendama, 

 near Bogota, though found by Humbolt to be far less lofty than had 

 been supposed by Bouguer, is still of stupendous height, and one of the 

 most magnificent in the world ; a river half the depth of the Seine at Paris 

 is precipitated into a rocky gulf, at two bounds, to a depth of 540 feet. 

 The cataract of the river Skirawati, in the Indian province of Canara, 

 exceeds in beauty and sublimity every waterfall which has been hitherto 

 made known in Europe. The country around the village ofHaliali, about 

 three miles north west of the fall, presents the richness of a tropical 

 forest mingled with cultivation. The traveller comes suddenly on the 

 river: a few steps more, over huge blocks of granite, is a fearful chasm, 

 rocky, bare, and black, which is a thousand feet deep ! the bed of the 

 river is a quarter of a mile broad, but the fall is elliptical with a sweep of 



