44 TlMEHRI. 
These basins or depressions hold a considerable 
quantity of water, some of this being visible in the 
many small streams and pools described, much more 
being stored in the super-saturated vegetation of the 
marshes. Moreover the very rocks which bound these 
basins are themselves saturated and super-saturated even 
up to their highest points with water, which, constantly 
percolating slowly down into the basins, is constantly 
renewed from atmospheric sources. Even at the time 
of our visit, after so long a dry season, rock and hollow 
alike were almost full of water ; so that but little was 
then flowing from them over the cliff-face to fall below, 
yet each single, not very heavy, shower of rain sufficed to 
swell the water in them to such an extent that the cas- 
cades over the cliff at once became of considerable size. 
It should be added that the edge of the cliff is not, as it 
appears from below, an even line, but is cut at right 
angles by various more or less deep channels, which, 
shielded from observation from below by the fa<5t that 
they often pass, parallel to the cliff behind false faces to 
the cliff, allow an outflow of water from the summit of 
the mountain down the cliff long before the water has 
reached the a6lual average level of the edge of the cliff. 
These circumstances sufficiently explain most of the 
phenomena noticed from below by previous travellers. 
They explain the constant flow of water over the cliff, 
the rapid increase of this flow at certain intervals, and 
the rhythmic, intermittent or wave-like nature of the over- 
flow in dry weather — for this latter phenomenon is evi- 
dently due to the fa6l that the water, which is not at 
those times at a sufficient level to reach the points of 
overflow, is then blown at short intervals from the sur- 
