“Hartleap Well.”  It is wonderful that the dogs escaped the same fate.  We had been also successful in finding a passage nearer to the tent.  About a mile above Beckett’s Cataract, a pass was discovered by which we might descend, and the opposite side appeared equally favourable.  It appears that we have been hitherto deceived respecting the magnitude of the river which runs through the glen, owing to the vast height from which it was viewed, and to our being seldom within a mile of it.  The geologist would here have a most interesting field for research, and would doubtless be enabled to account for those natural phenomena, which, from their defiance of all rule, perplex us so greatly.  These mountains abound with coal and slate.  The dip of the rocks on this side (the north) of the glen, is about twenty degrees to the west.

September 15.—­We first attempted the pass nearest to us, and which was reported to be practicable.  The horses with tolerable ease descended the first ridge, which was about one third down; but it was impossible to proceed a step farther with them:  indeed we had the utmost difficulty to get them back again.  Three of them actually rolled over, and were saved only by the trees from being precipitated to the bottom.  Quitting this place, we proceeded up the glen, into which many small streams fell from the most awful heights, forming so many beautiful cascades.  After travelling five or six miles, we arrived at that part of the river at which, after passing through a beautiful and level though elevated country, it is first received into the glen.  We had seen many fine and magnificent falls, each of which had excited our admiration in no small degree, but the present one so far surpassed any thing which we had previously conceived even to be possible, that we were lost in astonishment at the sight of this wonderful natural sublimity, which perhaps is scarcely to be exceeded in any part of the eastern world.  The river, after passing through an apparently gentle rising and fine country, is here divided into two streams, the whole width of which is about seventy yards.  At this spot, the country seems cleft in twain, and divided to its very foundation:  a ledge of rocks, two or three feet higher than the level on either side, divides the waters in two, which, falling over a perpendicular rock two hundred and thirty-five feet in height, forms this grand cascade.  At a distance of three hundred yards, and an elevation of as many feet, we were wetted with the spray which arose like small rain from the bottom:  the noise was deafening; and if the river had been full, so as to cover its entire bed, it would have been perhaps more awfully grand, but certainly not so beautiful.  After winding through the cleft rocks about four hundred yards, it again falls in one single sheet upwards of one hundred feet, and continues in a succession of smaller falls about a quarter of a mile lower, where the cliffs are of a perpendicular height, on each