To The Right Lay The Distant View Of The Low Country, Stretching Into An Undefined Distance, Until The Land And Sky Appeared To Melt Together.

Below, at a depth of about three thousand feet, the river boiled through the rocky gorge until it reached the village of Peréwellé at the base of the line of mountains, whose cultivated paddy-fields looked no larger than the squares upon a chess-board.

On the opposite side of the river rose a precipitous and impassable mountain, even to a greater altitude than the facing ridge upon which I stood, forming as grand a foreground as the eye could desire. Above, below, around, there was the bellowing sound of heavy cataracts echoed upon all sides.

Certainly this country is very magnificent, but it is an awful locality for hunting, as the elk has too great an advantage over both hounds and hunters. Mountainous patinas of the steepest inclination, broken here and there by abrupt precipices, and with occasional level platforms of waving grass, descend to the river's bed. These patina mountains are crowned by extensive forests, and narrow belts of jungle descend from the summit to the base, clothing the numerous ravines which furrow the mountain's side. Thus the entire surface of the mountains forms a series of rugged grasslands, so steep as to be ascended with the greatest difficulty, and the elk lie in the forests on the summits and also in the narrow belts which cover the ravines.

The whole country forms a gorge, like a gigantic letter V. At the bottom roars the dreaded torrent, Fort M'Donald river, in a succession of foaming cataracts, all of which, however grand individually, are completely eclipsed by its last great plunge of three hundred feet perpendicular depth into a dark and narrow chasm of wall-bound cliffs.

The bed of the river is the most frightful place that can be conceived, being choked by enormous fragments of rock, amidst which the irresistible torrent howls with a fury that it is impossible to describe.

The river is confined on either side by rugged cliffs of gneiss rock, from which these fragments have from time to time become detached, and have accordingly fallen into the torrent, choking the bed and throwing the obstructed waters into frightful commotion. Here they lie piled one upon the other, like so many inverted cottages; here and there forming dripping caverns; now forming walls of slippery rock, over which the water falls in thundering volumes into pools black from their mysterious depth, and from which there is no visible means of exit. These dark and dangerous pools are walled in by hoary-looking rocks, beneath which the pent-up water dives and boils in subterranean caverns, until it at length escapes through secret channels, and reappears on the opposite side of its prison-walls; lashing itself into foam in its mad frenzy, it forms rapids of giddy velocity through the rocky bounds; now flying through a narrowed gorge, and leaping, striving and wrestling with unnumbered obstructions, it at length meets with the mighty fall, like death in a madman's course.

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