THE CATARACT. 



239 



were aroused by the guide, and after various de- 

 lays \Ye found ourselves ' on the tramp ' at 7 a.m. 

 This country traversed was the reflection of what 

 we had passed through. Hills girt the river on 

 both sides, .with black soil in the lower and red 

 clay in the upper levels, whilst the path was a 

 mere line foot-worn over rolling ground and 

 thicketty torrent - beds, and through thorny 

 jungle and tall succulent tiger-grass. 



At 9 A. M. we stood upon a distant eminence 

 to view the Palls of the Panga-ni, of which we 

 had read a hearsay description in the pages of Lt 

 Boteler. It somewhat suggested the Tore Cascade 

 of guide-books. The stream, swiftly emerging 

 from a dense dark growth of tropical jungle, hurls 

 itself in three separate sheets, fringed with flashing 

 foam, down a rugged wall of brown rock. The 

 fall is broken by a midway ledge, whence a second 

 leap precipitates the waters into a lower basin of 

 mist-veiled stone, arched over by a fog-rainbow, 

 the segment of a circle painted with faint pris- 

 matic hues. The spectacle must be grander 

 during the wet season, when the river, forming a 

 single horseshoe, acquires volume and momentum 

 enough to clear the step that splits the now 

 shrunken supply ; in fact, 



' When copious rains have magnified the stream 

 Into a loud and white-robed waterfall.' 



