On returning, I went lower down in the pool than the point I had started at, and passed a number of rocks worn into all sorts of curious shapes, and one of these leaned, like some gigantic Saurian, over the flood.  As we neared the rapids, one felt that one would by no means like to run any risk of being drawn into one of them, and I was by no means anxious to go nearer to them than the boatmen, wished.  One of them told me that the natives sometimes descended the cliffs between the Roarer and the Rocket Falls in order to carry off the fledglings from the nests of the blue rock pigeons, and said that several lives had thus been lost.  He said that there was no way of reaching the bottom of the cliff, and rather quaintly added, “Those who came up again came up, and those who did not, died.”  He said that some European had once put what was evidently dynamite into the pool.  A great explosion followed, which killed a large number of fish, many of which were washed over the falls.

In the evening I sat for a long time in the bungalow veranda smoking my cigar, and looking dreamily out at the moonlit falls, and observing from time to time the scenic changes that were produced by the great masses of mist which drifted up the gorge below me to be dispersed as they touched the cliffs, and presenting, as they did so, most charming pictures.  In the morning, too, beautiful effects were to be seen, as masses of mist arose from the chasm of the Rajah to flit in fleecy fragments across the face of the falls.  But the scenes about this spot are of endless variety, and I must allow myself to mention only one more, which my companion saw one morning from Watkin’s platform when the iris hues were on the pool below the falls, which, as the spray fell into it, seemed like a mass of golden water dotted all over, as if yellow tinted rain were falling into it.  On some occasions visitors have illuminated the falls with fireworks, and by floating over the falls ignited bundles of straw soaked in paraffin, and I regret that I had not thought of following their example.

Next morning I set out on a drive of about 150 miles to my plantations in Manjarabad.  As we left the falls, we passed, and close to the river pool above them, a tree covered with fruit which was being eaten by green pigeons and other birds, and on looking up into it I was surprised, as it is an animal of nocturnal habits, to see a large and beautiful flying squirrel peering at me with a quiet but by no means apprehensive eye.  I was strongly tempted to shoot it for the sake of its skin, but my companion, who had been much affected by the beauties of the falls, said that it would be a sacrilege to shoot anything so near them.  So I spared his feelings and the poor squirrel, and am now very glad to think that I did so.  I may here mention that the traveller, though he sets out early in the morning and late in the afternoon, very rarely sees anything in the shape of big game, even