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, uow 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-leoft, 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- 
n 2 
