168 BOOK OF A HUNDRED BEARS 



From the main road above, you descend a flight 

 of steps to a little platform on the brink, where 

 you may reach out your hand and touch the very 

 lip of the fall, and from which you may follow its 

 descent to the bottom — 360 feet they call it, but no 

 one has truly plumbed it, and no one knows 

 exactly how far it is. But you forget its height 

 when you see it. There is nothing in nature as 

 beautiful as falling water, and here is its ultimate 

 expression, its finest picture, its very climax. 



Those iron cliffs force the stream to a narrow 

 bed as it rushes over the edge. Where it breaks 

 it is a deep dark green, smooth as velvet. The lip 

 is slightl}^ convex, over hanging, so that the water 

 falls clear, in one long leap, and, by its conforma- 

 tion, separates the fall very slightly into three half 

 cylindrical volutes. The nearer one is a pale rose, 

 on the outside of the corrugations — a rose that 

 lightens, then changes to opal, and finally, in its 

 very heart, to lightest green. The second is a 

 paler rose, while the third carries on its surface 

 a lace work of black. At first I thought that 

 black lace work was debris, but it is not; it must be 



