A MOUNTAIN CASCADE 149 



very summit of this same watershed I crossed one 

 stream — I believe a branch of the Muira River— at 

 a spot which was so exquisite in its wild beauty 

 that for several hours I was unable to tear myself 

 away, and must accord it a separate description. 



I stepped down into the rocky bed of a stream 

 perhaps twenty or thirty yards wide. At that 

 time, the height of the dry season, the water 

 filtered down the channels which it had worn in the 

 granite floor ; and you could walk along it stepping 

 over the little runnels as they crossed your path. 

 Every now and then a curious stony cell would be 

 passed several feet in depth, full to the brim of 

 water so brilliantly clear that at certain angles the 

 rocky tank would have appeared empty save for 

 the tiny fish which appeared, against the snowy sand 

 of the bottom, to be almost suspended in a void. 

 Continuing on, a dull increasing roar became more 

 and more noticeable, and at length we reached 

 a spot where the stream gathered itself together 

 and went foaming over such a ledge as I have just 

 described, but only to be caught a few feet lower 

 down by a projecting boulder, and, as it were, turn 

 itself completely over in its downward leap. The 

 fall, some forty feet deep, terminated in an almost 

 perfectly circular basin probably thirty yards 

 across, surrounded for two-thirds of its diameter by 

 a projecting lip of verdant marsh, from which 

 a fringe of falling water trickled over like countless 

 strings of diamonds on to a shelving bank ex- 

 tending to the water's edge, but hidden under one 

 unbroken covering of tenderest green maidenhair- 

 fern. The pool itself was surrounded by magnifi- 



