Having thus taken a general view of the situation, I then returned to the bungalow for breakfast, and in the afternoon at about two o’clock returned to Watkin’s platform by the route of the ferry across the pool, and, with my companion, set out for the foot of the falls, first of all by a steep winding path, and then by a flight of very rough and uneven steps which had been formed by placing stones in places on and between the rocks.  When descending, we often paused to view the constantly changing scene, for, as we got lower and lower, the rainbow hues across each fall, which were at first widely broken by the masses of cliff stretching between the falls, came closer and closer, till at last, when we reached the region where the spray of all the falls was mingled, the iris hues stretched across the gorge in an unbroken band of colour.  At length, as we neared the foot of the fall, we reached a small open-sided shed, which had recently been erected on the occasion of the Maharajah of Mysore’s visit.  From this, which was probably fifty feet from the bottom of the gorge and about 100 yards from the falls, an admirable view was obtained of the entire situation, and we began to realize how impossible it is to form any adequate conception of the falls from the top, or from the higher sides of the gorge.  We next descended to the bottom of the gorge, where the ground is strewn with vast boulders of rock, which had evidently fallen from the cliff as it had been eaten back by waters toiling through countless bygone ages.  Many of these masses of rock lie at some distance from the foot of the falls, and on the partially decayed surfaces of some of them vegetation had evidently been flourishing for an indefinite period of time.  Huge masses of rocks and boulders, as you look down the river, seem almost to block up its route towards the western sea, and indeed so completely seem to fill up the pass, that one seemed to be standing at the bottom of a rock-bound hollow which had been excavated by the agency of Nature, after a toil through periods of time far beyond the calculations of man.

As I found that the rocks at the foot of the falls were covered with a slimy mud, and as I was suffering slightly from a damaged foot, I presently returned to the shed, while my companion proceeded to explore the bed of the gorge further down the river.  The floor of the shed had been strewed with straw, and I lay down at full length, partly to rest and partly to examine the situation more minutely, for the height is so great that it is impossible adequately to survey the scene in any other position.  And then, when you have stillness and solitude, and when the body is in complete repose, there pour in on eye and ear floods of impressions so quickly varying that the mind feels quite unable to record them, and there is finally nothing left behind but a vague and indescribable sensation of all that is grand and beautiful and melodious in nature.  For there are vast heights and gloomy