Page:Ling-Nam; or, Interior views of southern China, including explorations in the hitherto untraversed island of Hainan (IA cu31924023225307).pdf/219

 At the Headwaters. 215

exquisite shapes the jets of falling water assume! How bewitching the changes they undergo from the brink to the deep green lake! As if flung by fairy hands, the water comes down like falling snow, or like the finest lace, or strings of pearls, or shining beads, but all the graceful images we can call up fail to express the endless variations and forms of beauty exhibited.

Breaking the spell of the fair charmer at last, we arise, and begin to ascend a path up the steep side of the southern wall, which has just attracted our attention. Climbing about two hundred feet up the slippery path, we reach an open space for observation, when a spectacle of wondrous beauty and grandeur combined bursts upon us. The sensations of that moment are not easily described, but are still less easily forgotten. The dis- appointment at sight of the lower fall only redoubles the joy now felt as the great main fall we had watehed from the distance and lost as we dre; near, flashes upon us in all its splendour, as it dashes with thundering echoes inte the narrow gorge. The lower fall could not be seen from a distance because of intervening hills, and, owing to the peculiar shape of the hills through which the water pours, the main fall was invisible from the base, hence the illusion, From this point, where the glory of the great fall dazzles our eyes, it is still a quarter of a mile to its foot, and the question is, how to reach it.

Descending with difficulty the steep slope to the bed of the stream, which flows from the main to the lower falls down a most remarkable gorge in one succession of rapids, we start to pick our way toward the fall. The