A Visit to the Kaieteur Fall. 19 
The fall rolls over into its huge basin slightly to one side, and not quite 
in front of the river, which from here can be seen winding along at 
the bottom of the deep V-shaped gorge, looking from the great height 
at which we stood like a little mountain stream flowing quietly on, 
its surface occasionally broken by the pebbles in its bed. But powerful 
field glasses revealed that the breaks were great cataracts and the peb- 
bles huge boulders the size of ahouse. At the foot of the fall the sun 
shining on the spray formed a rainbow, not standing erect, but lying flat down in 
the basin, its semi-circular arc encircling the fall, and adding greatly to the beauty 
of the scene. Behind the fall could be seen the black opening into a great cave, 
in which thousands of swifts find a home, and later in the afternoon we saw 
crowds of them returning, circling for some time over the fall, and then in parties 
of ten or twelve suddenly dropping like stones into the chasm, and then flying up 
behind the fall into the cave. 
One thing struck me particularly, that considerable as is the noise of the fall it 
is nothing like the deafening roar that one would expect. But the explanation 
seems to be that by reason of its great height the water is broken up into spray 
by the time it reaches the bottom. Were the fall only a half or a quarter its 
height, and if the water fell as a solid mass into the basin below it, the roar 
would be much greater. 
On our way to the fall we came across a party of half a dozen aboriginal Indians 
on the plateau. Later in the day they came and visited us at our camp, and 
squatting on the rocks above the fall certainly added to the wildness and 
picturesqueness of the scene. They were quite naked except for a small apron 
ornamented with beads and the women had pins, the points outwards, through a 
hole in the lower lip. As absolutely uncivilized Indians are nowadays rarely 
seen except in the very far interior, and as none live anywhere near Kaieteur we 
were fortunate in coming across them. They had come from a long distance and 
were journeying down the river. 
We slept that night at the fall. It happened to be full moon, but unfortunately 
it was a cloudy night, so we missed the full brilliance of the scene we had hoped for. 
But waking up about 2 a.m. I got out of my hammock and went and sat for 
some time at the edge of the fall. The scene was quite different to what it had 
been by day, and was weird in the extreme. 
The great chasm into which the fall dropped, and into which the moonlight 
scarcely pene rated, now looked black and forbidding, and was filled with mist 
which continually rose high above the fall, and with the ceaseless roar of the 
falling water, involuntarily reminded one of a gigantic seething cauldron, which 
set down as it was in one of the loneliest and wildest spots on earth was such as 
some titanic witches in Macbeth might have used. Occasionally ora few seconds 
at a time the moon emerged from the clouds and shining on the river made a 
scene of indescribable beauty. 
At such moments the contrast between the peaceful moonlit river above the 
fall and the great black boiling chasm into which it fell was striking and almost 
startling. It wasascene of such weird beauty as one can never forget. 
