THE ORANGE RIVER. 
35 
“ But,” “ I’ll-vatch-it ” said, “ de vatter vill tree, four 
days take before it sail be run down vonce more.” 
This was a pleasant prospect ! Three or four days 
and nights on a bare rock, surrounded by a raging 
flood. 
“ How grand the Hercules Falls look now !” said 
Lulu. “ If only I had my camera here ! ” 
Grand, indeed, they were ; a vast sheet of water was 
pouring over the precipice on all sides. Not one of the 
huge boulders could be seen now : great granite blocks 
that had stood in the middle and sides of the falls were 
drowned in the flood. What the falls must be like 
at full high water it is impossible to describe or even to 
imagine. We could see by the water-marks on the 
rocks, and by the wisps of straw and rubbish still hang- 
ing in the tree-tops, that the flood was a comparatively 
small one — a mere freshet — and Frith told us that at 
Upington, in the rainy season, he had seen the river rise 
fifty feet in twelve hours, covering the highest trees 
that grew on the islands. What must these falls be 
like at such a time, when a rise of three or four feet 
added so much to their grandeur ! Lulu, while bewail- 
ing the absence of his camera, made several sketches, 
from which the annexed engraving is taken. 
On every side fresh cascades sprang out, as if by 
magic, from the rocks. In fact, whether at high water 
or at low water, one of the peculiar charms of the place 
is the extraordinary number of distinct waterfalls which 
exist here. At Niagara there are two gigantic cataracts, 
falling side by side at one bound into the head of a 
gorge seven miles in length. Here there is a succession 
of cascades and falls — probably a hundred in number — 
extending along the whole length of a gorge no less 
than sixteen miles long, into which they plunge one 
after the other, sometimes at a single bound, sometimes 
in a series of leaps. During the dry weather many of 
' these cataracts are of great volume, but at wet seasons, 
when they are magnified a hundred-fold, their mass 
must be immense. At Niagara the gorge is nowhere 
deeper than 200 feet. Here the chasm is half as deep 
d 2 
