And besides the effects we have noticed, there is the motion of colour constantly, though gradually, shifting and altering, for, as the sun declines, the rainbow hues move steadily upwards on the face of the falls, and the colours of the rocks, which are of varying shades of purple and yellow, continually alter in character with the sinking day.  But the finest combined effects of beauty and grandeur are, perhaps, most fully felt when, late in the afternoon, the eye wanders delighted over the vast combination of lofty cliffs and falling waters to rest finally far above on the iris tints of the Rajah and Roarer Falls, through the colours of which myriads of swallows incessantly wheel on lightsome wing, mingled with the quick, darting movement of the Alpine swifts, and the gentle flight of the blue rock pigeons, which occasionally wing their way through the mazy throng.  For there the eye is ever delighted with the charm of colour and of those endless variations of graceful movement which continuously convey pleasurable sensations to the mind.  But how could eye or ear ever tire of those rare combinations of form, colour, motion and rhythmic sounds which fill the mind with an exalted sense of feeling and of pleasure, and the conscious heart with exquisite sensations far beyond the power of language to describe?

Presently my companion returned and aroused me from my state of dreamy pleasure, and I turned reluctantly away from the scene as the rainbow colours were, with the sinking sun, beginning to disappear from the topmost heights of the falls.

Delightful indeed were the brilliant and varied scenes I have been attempting to describe, and after them the remainder was by comparison tame, but still I found that, as I took a canoe the following evening and rowed up the forest-margined pool from which the rapids emerge, that the minor scenes at the falls have exquisite charms of their own.  And then it was that I realized that, varying though the scale may be, there is everywhere about the falls the same beauty of detail and beauty of combined effect, and that, too, unaccompanied by a single jarring note.  For nowhere can you say, as you can often say in viewing scenes elsewhere, “leave out this, or alter that, and the scene would be perfect,” and in none of the scenes about the falls does anything poor, or base, or mean, or uninteresting strike the eye, and as I rowed slowly up the pool I felt that the mind was both charmed and soothed by the exquisite repose of the scene, which is only broken, if indeed it can be said to be broken, by the beautiful birds and gaily painted kingfishers which occasionally wing their way across the water, or flit along the margin of the forest-clad shore.  As you look towards the West the eye wanders over the wild assemblage of water-worn rocks and boulders which intervene between the pool and the head of the falls, to rest finally on the distant hills, covered mostly to their tips with the evergreen forest, while on looking up the river you see that it is flanked by woods on either hand, and as you lose sight of the water as it bends towards the south, the eye glances upwards to hills of moderate height, wooded in the hollows, and showing on the ridges grassy vistas dotted with occasional trees.