Valley of the Black River. 35 



mouth of the river and adjacent plains on both 

 sides, then went up river again to a distance of 

 something over a hundred miles. 



The valley, in this space, does not vary much in 

 appearance ; it may be described as the level bed of 

 an ancient river, five or six miles wide, cut out in 

 the plateau, with the existing river a swift, deep 

 stream, two hundred to three hundred yards broad 

 serpentining along its middle. But it does not 

 keep to the middle ; in its windings it approaches 

 now the north, now the south, plateau, and at some 

 points touches the extreme limits of the valley, and 

 even cuts into the bank-like front of the high land, 

 which forms a sheer cliff above the current, in some 

 spots a hundred feet high. 



The river was certainly miscalled Cusar-leofu, or 

 Black River, by the aborigines, unless the epithet 

 referred only to its swiftness and dangerous charac- 

 ter ; for it is not black at all in appearance, like its 

 Amazonian namesake. The water, which flows from 

 the Andes across a continent of stone and gravel, is 

 wonderfully pure, in colour a clear sea-green. So 

 green does it look to the eye in some lights that 

 when dipped up in a glass vessel one marvels to see 

 it changed, no longer green, but crystal as dew or 

 rain drop. Doubtless man is naturally scientific, 

 and finds out why things are not what they seem, 

 and gets to the bottom of all mysteries ; but his 

 older, deeper, primitive, still persistent nature is 

 non-scientific and mythical, and, in spite of reason, 

 he wonders at the change ; it is a miracle, a mani- 



D 2 



