Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/252

 Between the second and third longer reaches is a short arm, midway in which there rises a huge projection, steep as any of the rocks around, but consisting of enormous blocks piled one above another; on the north, on the south, and on the east it is lashed by the torrent of the stream; on the west it stands detached from the mainland by a deep dry gully. Upon this isolated eminence, rearing itself to an altitude of 300 feet, not a leaf is to be seen; Flora and all her progeny have been utterly banished from its inhospitable soil, but it bids defiance to the flood: for thousands of years the elements have wreaked their fury on its mass; lightnings have burst upon its summit; Æolus and all his crew have spent their efforts upon its sides; floods of water, that deadliest foe to all the strongholds of earth, have done their utmost to sap its foundations; but yet it stands immovable; it holds its dry valley inviolate, and imperiously bids the rushing stream to seek another channel.

Nor can the waters of the torrent itself fail to arrest our attention as they tear along, with the speed of an arrow, through the deep ravine. The channel along which they flow gradually narrows to about a third of its origial width, and the very compression gives intensity to the current, which strikes against one impediment only to gather fresh impetus for dashing against another. The billows roll over the boulders that project above the suface of the flood, or they part asunder as they come in contact with some jutting promontory that impedes their course; but though centuries elapse, they avail not to displace the rocky walls by which they are