and I believe that on that day I was gazing at the most perfectly beautiful spectacle of all this beautiful world. It was the lovely tenderness of the rich colouring, bathed in that translucent atmosphere of thin pearly haze, rather than the awful majesty of the scene, that impressed one. At our feet, far below, the raging flood thundered away down the cañon to the exit in the misty distance. On our left the line of the cataract, plunging into the swirling spray beneath, was clearly visible for some way out with its white avalanches and coruscating spray, and then gradually became less distinct in the thin haze until at last, far off, beyond Livingstone Island, it disappeared from our vision in the luminous pearl-like mist that formed the background to all the landscape. On our right, facing the cataract, loomed the 500-feet high wall of the cañon topped by the lush green Rain Forest, with its ever-dripping branches.

And as we looked new wonders became gradually revealed to our wondering gaze. I began to perceive in nooks of the black precipices, half way down, strange plants growing as in happy confidence, their fragile rainbow-hued blossoms ever shaking in the wind and driving spray, but safe and unharmed amid this eternal storm. And down the black cliff wall on my right I saw hundreds of tiny white streamlets pouring, formed by the returning spray from the Rain Forest. And as I watched them I discovered a strange thing. These falling streams never reached the bottom of the chasm ; they dropped in little cascades to about a third of the way down, and then, as if defying all the laws of gravity, they literally turned round and came back again, mounting vertically. It was curious to see these cascades, after breaking into spray, appear to hesitate and

falter, and then begin to rise, first slowly, but soon rapidly, shooting upwards in whirling foam columns and feathery fountains, being carried up by the fitful blasts of cold air that the dropping cataract forced out of the narrow chasm into which it thundered.

It was indeed a wonderful scene, and, as the spray mist is not so dense at this end of the Falls as it is further east, where the Boiling Pot sends its huge cloud into the heavens, one could distinguish the details of the scene for a much greater distance up the cañon than is possible from the left bank. And as the sun's rays fell on that kaleidoscopic, ever-moving, changing scene, made up of rock, water, mist, and shivering foliage, the colouring of it all was gorgeous yet of sweetly tender tints under that luminous pearly atmosphere formed by the spray mist. Below, where one caught glimpses of the rushing water, it was in turn brown and golden, blue, and rich dark green. The cliff, sparkling with dripping water, was of shining black and in places of glowing bronze. The foliage in the Rain Forest and on Cataract Island was of the green of an eternal spring, and a myriad jewels of twinkling light were made by the water drops on the trembling leaves. A glorious rainbow spanned the chasm, and other rainbows flitted in the haze. As for the tender pale beauty of the cataract and of the luminous pearly mist, no words could convey it to the imagination.

And now we set out to explore the mysterious Rain Forest that, covering the cliff top, fronts the cataract along all its length. We worked our way through the dense bush, round the corner of the cañon, till we faced the Devil's Cataract, and saw that the huge volume of water fell so sheer that half way down it broke into detached masses which burst as they darted through

the spray cloud into the invisible depths of that awful chasm. Then we plunged into the Rain Forest itself, and here, though there were some open savannahs of grass and fern, the growth of trees and bush was generally so dense that we could only progress by following the many intersecting hippopotamus tracks, tunnels which these animals had forced through the vegetation, down which we had to crawl, wading through deep mud and rank sodden grass, and crossing many streams of running water made by the falling spray-streams that dropped over the cliff to form the little cataracts I have described as falling so far down only to be whirled up again by the wind gusts. And as we went through the jungle the rain ever poured down on us from the tree branches, with the volume but not the force of a heavy tropical shower, for the drops fell gently. And all the trees were moving and shaking off the rain, for, though it was a windless day on the surrounding plains, the gusts ever swept up from the cañon, now blowing in one direction now in another, perpendicularly, horizontally, and obliquely in turn, carrying with them the rapidly whirling spray columns.

It was a forest of eternal driving wind and rain; and yet, despite this, it was no dark, cheerless, stormy scene that surrounded us. We walked through an atmosphere that was bright and luminous and even dazzling to our eyes. For, from the cloudless blue above us, which we could not see, the fierce rays of the sun pierced the spray cloud, filling the air with a diffused watery ever-shifting light. It was as if the sunshine were pouring on us through a veil of thin white silk. In this light the raindrops on all the leaves sparkled like jewels. As we walked on there was always on the right hand of each of us a bright rainbow following him

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