of a mountain storm. We soon reached an inn at
a place called Hardrane, and descending from our vehicles,
after warming ourselves by the cottage fire, we walked
up the brook-side to take a view of a third waterfall.
We had not walked above a few hundred yards between
two winding rocky banks, before we came full upon
the waterfall, which seemed to throw itself in a narrow
line from a lofty wall of rock, the water, which shot
manifestly to some distance from the rock, seeming
to be dispersed into a thin shower scarcely visible
before it reached the bason. We were disappointed
in the cascade itself, though the introductory and
accompanying banks were an exquisite mixture of grandeur
and beauty. We walked up to the fall; and what
would I not give if I could convey to you the feelings
and images which were then communicated to me?
After cautiously sounding our way over stones of all
colours and sizes, encased in the clearest water formed
by the spray of the fall, we found the rock, which
before had appeared like a wall, extending itself over
our heads, like the ceiling of a huge cave, from the
summit of which the waters shot directly over our
heads into a bason, and among fragments wrinkled over
with masses of ice as white as snow, or rather, as
Dorothy says, like congealed froth. The water
fell at least ten yards from us, and we stood directly
behind it, the excavation not so deep in the rock
as to impress any feeling of darkness, but lofty and
magnificent; but in connection with the adjoining
banks excluding as much of the sky as could well be
spared from a scene so exquisitely beautiful.
The spot where we stood was as dry as the chamber
in which I am now sitting, and the incumbent rock,
of which the groundwork was limestone, veined and
dappled with colours which melted into each other with
every possible variety of colour. On the summit
of the cave were three festoons, or rather wrinkles,
in the rock, run up parallel like the folds of a curtain
when it is drawn up. Each of these was hung with
icicles of various length, and nearly in the middle
of the festoon in the deepest valley of the waves
that ran parallel to each other, the stream shot from
the rows of icicles in irregular fits of strength,
and with a body of water that varied every moment.
Sometimes the stream shot into the bason in one continued
current; sometimes it was interrupted almost in the
midst of its fall, and was blown towards part of the
waterfall at no great distance from our feet like
the heaviest thunder-shower. In such a situation
you have at every moment a feeling of the presence
of the sky. Large fleecy clouds drove over our
heads above the rush of the water, and the sky appeared
of a blue more than usually brilliant. The rocks
on each side, which, joining with the side of this
cave, formed the vista of the brook, were chequered
with three diminutive waterfalls, or rather courses
of water. Each of these was a miniature of all
that summer and winter can produce of delicate beauty.