These Falls are situated on the Saxleby tin claim, seven miles from
George’s Bay, and in the centre of the tin mining district. A stream
which takes its rise in the high granite hills of the district after
flowing through button-grass marshes, and dense thickets of banera,
cutting-grass and ti-tree, suddenly plunges down a deep romantic rocky
gorge. Here it is broken into numerous miniature falls――now eddying
round the walls of a granite basin which it has carved out through
untold ages, and anon babbling among the moss-covered stones which
interrupt its course, till when halfway through the gorge it leaps
over a deep vertical precipice with deafening roar. At the verge of
this precipice the stream is intercepted by a projection of rock which
divides it and causes it to fall in two streams into a depression of
the granite. At the sides of the ravine, huge overhanging masses of
worn granite――some of them thousands of tons in weight, give rise
to numerous recesses of sepulchral gloom. Over their portals hang
festoons of delicate climbing plants and feathery-fronded ferns grow in
profusion, gum-trees, acacia, dogwood and others whose branches meeting
overhead form a canopy which excludes the noontide sunshine. If I might
venture to call to aid metrical composition I would describe it thus:――
Forth from its secret mountain source it flows
Through em’rald swamps and tangled ti-tree dells;
Now making music soft ’mong granite stones,
O’er-mantled with bright moss of green and gold;
Now stealing dreamlike, through deep sunless shades,
Where never ripple ruffled its cool breast.
Thus flowing sea-ward in its chequered course
Till where a deep dark chasm twixt two hills
All unexpected opens to the view.
There at the verge divided into twain
It plunges down into the gloom profound
Where noise and mist and wild confusion reign.