sure-footed ponies were provided for all who chose to ride. Some of the
gentlemen preferred walking. From this house we had to ascend about
2,500 feet.
As we gradually worked uphill through the coniferous belts, the trees
seemed gradually to increase in size, so that the eye got accustomed
by degrees; and when at length we actually reached the Big-Tree grove
we scarcely realized that we were in the presence of the race of
giants. Only when we occasionally halted at the base of a colossal
pillar, somewhere about eighty feet in circumference, and about 250
in height, and compared it with its neighbours, and, above all, with
ourselves--poor, insignificant pigmies--could we bring home to our
minds a sense of its gigantic proportions.
With all the reverence due to antiquity, we gazed on these Methuselahs
of the forest, to whom a few centuries more or less in the record
of their long lives are a trifle scarcely worth mentioning. But our
admiration was more freely bestowed on the rising generation, the
beautiful young trees, only about five or six hundred years of age, and
averaging thirty feet in circumference; while still younger trees, the
mere children of about a hundred years old, still retain the graceful
habits of early youth, and are very elegant in their growth--though, of
course, none but mere babies bear the slightest resemblance to the tree
as we know it on English lawns.
It really is heartbreaking to see the havoc that has been done by
careless fires. Very few of the older trees have escaped scathless.
Most of this damage has been done by Indians, who burn the scrub to
scare the game, and the fire spreads to the trees, and there smoulders
unheeded for weeks, till happily some chance extinguishes it. Many
lords of the forest have thus been burnt out, and have at last fallen,
and lie on the ground partly embedded, forming great tunnels, hollow
from end to end, so that in several cases two horsemen can ride abreast
inside the tree from (what was once) its base to its summit.
We halted at the base of the Grizzly Giant, which well deserves its
name; for it measures ninety-three feet in circumference, and looks so
battered and weather-worn that it probably is about the most venerable
tree in the forest. It is one of the most picturesque Sequoias I have
seen, just because it has broken through all the rules of symmetry,
so rigidly observed by its well conditioned, well-grown brethren; and
instead of being a vast cinnamon-coloured column, with small boughs
near the summit, it has taken a line of its own, and thrown out several
great branches, each about six feet in diameter--in other words, about
as large as a fine old English beech-tree!
This poor old tree has a great hollow burnt in it (I think the Indians
must have used it as a kitchen), and our half dozen ponies and mules
were stabled in the hollow--a most picturesque group. It seems strange
to see trees thus scorched and charred, with their insides clean burnt
out, yet, on looking far, far overhead, to perceive them crowned with
fresh blue-green, as if nothing ailed them, so great is their vitality.
Benjamin Taylor says of such a one, “It did not know that it ought to
be dead. The tides of life flowed so mightily up that majestic column!”
The Indians say that all other trees grow, but that the Big Trees are
the special creation of the Great Spirit. So here too, you see, we
have, not tree-worship, but something of the reverence accorded to the
cedar in all lands. The Hebrew poet sang of “the trees of the Lord,
even the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted.” And the Hill tribes
of Northern India build a rudely carved temple beneath each specially
magnificent clump of Deodar, to mark that they are “God’s trees”;
while in the sacred Sanskrit poems they are called Deva dara or Deva
daru, meaning the gift, the spouse, the word of God, but in any case,
denoting the sanctity of the tree.
Whether these Californian Indians had any similar title for their Big
Trees, I have failed to learn; but the name by which they are known to
the civilized world is that of Sequoyah, a half-caste Cherokee Indian,
who distinguished himself by inventing an alphabet and a written
language for his tribe. It was a most ingenious alphabet, consisting of
eighty-six characters, each representing a syllable, and was so well
adapted to its purpose that it was extensively used by the Indians
before the white man had ever heard of it. Afterwards it was adopted
by the missionaries, who started a printing-press, with types of this
character, and issued a newspaper for the Cherokee tribe, by whom this
singular alphabet is still used.
When the learned botanist, Endlicher, had to find a suitable name for
the lovely redwood cedars, he did honour to Sequoyah, by linking his
memory forever with that of the evergreen forests of the Coast Range.
And when afterwards these Big Trees of the same race were discovered on
the Sierras, they of course were included under the same family name.
_Granite Crags_ (Edinburgh and London, 1884).
GERSOPPA FALLS
(_INDIA_)
W. M. YOOL
These, the most famous falls in India, are situated on the Siruvatti
(or _Sharavati_) river, which at that part of its course forms the
boundary between the north-west corner of the native state of Mysore
and the Bombay Presidency. The source of the river is in Mysore,
half-way up Koda Chadri, a hill about five thousand feet high, near the
famous old town of Nuggur, once the seat of the Rajahs of Mysore, where
are still to be seen the ruins of an old fort and palace, and the walls
of the town, eight miles in circumference.
The natives have a legend that the god Rama shot an arrow from his bow
on to Koda Chadri, and that the river sprang from the spot where the
arrow fell, and hence the name Siruvatti or “arrow-born.” From its
source the river flows north for nearly thirty miles through the heart
of the Western Ghauts, and then turns west and flows down through the
jungles of North Canara to the Indian Ocean--another thirty miles.
Shortly after taking the bend westwards there comes the fall, which,
on account of its height, is worthy of being reckoned amongst the
great waterfalls of the world. Here, at one leap, the river falls
eight hundred and thirty feet; and as, at the brink, it is about four
hundred yards wide, there are few, if any, falls in the world to
match it.
[Illustration: GERSOPPA FALLS.]
During the dry weather the river comes over in four separate falls,
but in the height of the monsoon these become one, and as at that time
the water is nearly thirty feet deep, the sight must be truly one of
the world’s wonders. It has been calculated that in flood-time more
horse-power is developed by the Gersoppa Falls than by Niagara. This
of course is from the much greater height of Gersoppa, eight hundred
and thirty feet against about one hundred and sixty feet of Niagara,
although the Niagara Falls are much wider and vaster in volume. The
Kaieteur Falls of the Essequibo in British Guiana are seven hundred and
forty-one feet sheer and eighty-eight more of sloping cataract, but the
river there is only one hundred yards wide. At the Victoria Falls, the
Zambesi, one thousand yards wide, falls into an abyss four hundred feet
deep.
My friend and I visited the falls in the end of September, about a
month after the close of the monsoon, when there were four falls
with plenty of water in them. The dry weather is the best for the
sight-seer, as, during the monsoon, the rain is so heavy and continuous
that there would not be much pleasure in going there, although
doubtless the sight would be grander and more awe-inspiring. The
drainage area above the falls is seven hundred and fifty square miles,
and the average yearly rainfall over this tract is two hundred and
twenty inches, nearly the whole of which falls in the three monsoon
months, June, July, August; so it can be imagined what an enormous body
of water comes down the river in these months. There is a bungalow for
the use of visitors on the Bombay side of the river, about a hundred
yards away from the falls, built on the very brink of the precipice
overhanging the gorge through which the river flows after taking the
leap. So close to the edge is it that one could jump from the veranda
sheer into the bed of the river nearly a thousand feet below.
The four falls are called _The Rajah_, _The Roarer_, _The Rocket_,
and _La Dame Blanche_. The _Rajah_ and _Roarer_ fall into a
horseshoe-shaped cavern, while the _Rocket_ and _La Dame Blanche_ come
over where the precipice is at right angles to the flow of the river,
and are very beautiful falls. The _Rajah_ comes over with a rush,
shoots clear out from the rock, and falls one unbroken column of water
the whole eight hundred and thirty feet. The _Roarer_ comes rushing
at an angle of sixty degrees down a huge furrow in the rock for one
hundred and fifty feet, making a tremendous noise, then shoots right
out into the middle of the horseshoe, and mingles its waters with
those of the _Rajah_ about half-way down. The _Rocket_ falls about
two hundred feet in sheer descent on to a huge knob of rock, where it
is dashed into spray, which falls in beautiful smoky rings, supposed
to resemble the rings formed by the bursting of rockets. _La Dame
Blanche_, which my friend and I thought the most beautiful, resembles
a snow-white muslin veil falling in graceful folds, and clothing the
black precipice from head to foot.
From the bungalow a fine view is got of the _Rocket_ and _La Dame
Blanche_, and when the setting sun lights up these falls and forms
numerous rainbows in the spray, it makes an indescribably beautiful
scene. Here one is alone with Nature, not a house or patch of
cultivation anywhere. In front is the river, and all around are
mountains and primeval forests, while the ceaseless roar of the
waterfall adds a grandeur and a solemnity not easily described.
Near where the _Rajah_ goes over is a projecting rock called the
_Rajah’s Rock_, so named because one of the Rajahs of Nuggur tried to
build a small pagoda on it, but before being finished, it was washed
away. The cutting in the rock for the foundation is still visible. To
any one who has a good head, a fine view of the horseshoe cavern can be
had from this rock. The plan is to lie down on your stomach, crawl to
the edge, and look over, when you can see straight down into the pool
where the waters are boiling and seething nearly a thousand feet below.
I took a few large stones to the edge and dropped them over, but they
were lost to view long before they reached the bottom. It was quite an
appreciable time after my losing sight of them before I observed the
faint splash they made near the edge of the pool.
In order to get to the foot of the falls it is necessary to cross the
river to the Mysore side, as there is no possibility of getting down to
the Bombay side. About half a mile above the falls there is a canoe,
dug out of the trunk of a tree, which belongs to the native who looks
after the bungalow, and ferries people across. A path has been made to
enable visitors to get to the foot of the falls, and many fine views
of all four are got while descending. The first half of the way down
is fairly easy, but after that the track is a succession of steps down
great boulders and across slabs of rock, rendered as slippery as ice
by the constant spray. Ere my friend and I reached the bottom we were
soaking wet, and realized when too late that we should have left the
greater part of our clothes behind us. By going to the bottom a much
better idea of the immense height of the falls is got, and the climb up
again helps still more to make one realize it. From the bungalow the
largest rocks in the bed of the river looked like sheep; but we found
them to be huge boulders, ten and twelve feet high and about twenty
feet across.
The falls seem to have become known to Europeans about 1840, but were
very seldom visited in those days. Even now the number of visitors is
small, as the nearest railway is eighty miles off, and there is no way
of procuring supplies with the exception of a little milk and a chicken
to be had from the above-mentioned native.
For a good many years there was great uncertainty about the height
of the falls, but the question was finally set at rest by two naval
lieutenants who plumbed them in 1857. The _modus operandi_ was as
follows: Their ship being off the coast near the mouth of the river,
they got a cable transported to the falls, and stretched it across the
horseshoe--a distance of seventy-four yards. Having seen that the cable
was properly secured at both ends, they got a cage fixed on, and one of
them got into it and was hauled out until he was in the centre. From
the cage he let down a sounding line with a buoy attached to the end
of it, and found the depth to the surface of the water to be eight
hundred and thirty feet. After satisfactorily accomplishing this feat,
they proceeded to the foot of the falls, and constructed a raft so
as to plumb the pools, which they did, and found the greatest depth
to be one hundred and thirty-two feet. This was done near the end of
the dry weather, when there was very little water in the river, and
they were able to temporarily divert the _Rajah_ and _Roarer_ into the
_Rocket_, without doing which it would have been impossible to plumb
the horseshoe pool--the deepest one--satisfactorily.
About a mile from the bungalow is a hill called Nishani Goodda or Cairn
Hill, from the top of which a magnificent view of the surrounding
country is got. To the east lie the table-lands of the Deccan and
Mysore, the flat expanse broken here and there by an occasional hill.
North and south stretches the chain of the Ghauts, rising peak after
peak as far as the eye can see (Koda Chadri, where the Siruvatti rises,
being very conspicuous); while to the west one looks down on the
lowlands of jungle-covered Canara, with glimpses of the river here and
there, and beyond them gleams the Indian Ocean.
The bungalow book in which visitors inscribe their names is very
interesting reading. The records go back to 1840, and many travellers
have written a record of what they did when there; while a few,
inspired by the scene, have expressed their feelings in poetry, some of
it well worth copying and preserving by any one who has seen the falls.
_Chambers’ Journal_ (London, 1896).
ETNA
(_SICILY_)
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
The word Etna, according to the _savants_, is a Phœnician word meaning
the _mouth of the furnace_. The Phœnician language, as you see, was
of the order of that one spoken of by Covielle to the _Bourgeois
Gentilhomme_, which expressed many things in a few words. Many poets of
antiquity pretend that it was the spot where Deucalion and Pyrrha took
refuge during the flood. Upon this score, Signor Gemellaro, who was
born at Nicolosì, may certainly claim the honour of having descended
in a direct line from one of the first stones which they threw behind
them. That would leave, as you see, the Montmorencys, the Rohans, and
the Noailles, far behind.
Homer speaks of Etna, but he does not designate it a volcano. Pindar
calls it one of the pillars of the sky. Thucydides mentions three great
explosions, from the epoch of the arrival of the Grecian colonies up
to his own lifetime. Finally, there were two eruptions in the time of
Denys; then they followed so rapidly that only the most violent ones
have been counted.[10]
Since the eruption of 1781, Etna has had some little desire to
overthrow Sicily; but, as these caprices have not had serious results,
Etna may be is permitted to stand upon what it has accomplished--it is
unique in its self-respect--and to maintain its eminence as a volcano.
Of all these eruptions, one of the most terrible was that of 1669. As
the eruption of 1669 started from Monte Rosso, and as Monte Rosso is
only half a mile to the left of Nicolosì, we took our way, Jadin and I,
to visit the crater, after having promised Signor Gemellaro to come to
dinner with him.
It must be understood beforehand that Etna regards itself too far above
ordinary volcanos to proceed in their fashion: Vesuvius, Stromboli, and
even Hekla pour the lava over their craters, just as wine spills over
a too-full glass; Etna does not give itself this trouble. Its crater
is only a crater for show, which is content to play cup and ball with
incandescent rocks large as ordinary houses, which one follows in their
aërial ascension as one would follow a bomb issuing from a mortar; but,
during this time the force of the eruption is really felt elsewhere.
In reality, when Etna is at work, it throws up very simply upon its
shoulders, at one place or another, a kind of boil about the size
of Montmartre; then this boil breaks, and out of it streams a river
of lava which follows the slope, descends, burning, or overturning
everything that it finds before it, and ends by extinguishing itself
in the sea. This method of procedure is the cause of Etna’s being
covered with a number of little craters which are formed like immense
hay-mows; each of these secondary volcanos has its date and its own
name, and all have occasioned in their time, more or less noise and
more or less ravage.
We got astride of our mounts and started on our way upon a night that
seemed to us of terrible darkness as we issued from a well-lighted
room; but, by degrees, we began to distinguish the landscape, thanks
to the light of the myriads of stars that sprinkled the sky. It seemed
from the way in which our mules sank beneath us that we were crossing
sand. Soon we entered the second region, or the forest region, that
is if the few scattered, poor, and crooked trees merit the name of
forest. We marched about two hours, confidently following the road our
guide took us, or rather our mules, a road which, moreover, to judge by
the eternal declivities and ascents, seemed terribly uneven. Already,
we realized the wisdom of Signor Gemellaro’s provisions against the
cold, and we wrapped ourselves in our hooded great-coats a full hour
before we arrived at a kind of roofless hovel where our mules stopped
of themselves. We were at the _Casa del Bosco_ or _della Neve_, that
is to say, the _Forest_ or the _Snow_, names which it merits in either
summer or winter. Our guide told us this was our halting-place. Upon
his invitation, we alighted and entered. We were half-way on the road
to the _Casa Inglese_.
[Illustration: ETNA.]
During our halt the sky was enriched by a crescent, which, although
slender, gave us a little light. We continued to march a quarter of an
hour longer between trees which became scarcer every twenty feet and
finally disappeared altogether. We were about to enter the third
region of Etna, and we knew from the steps of the mules when they
were passing over lava, crossing ashes, or when they trampled a kind
of moss, the only vegetation that creeps up to this point. As for our
eyes, they were of very little use, the sheen appearing to us more or
less coloured, and that was all, for we could not distinguish a single
detail in the midst of this darkness.
However, in proportion as we ascended, the cold became more intense,
and, notwithstanding our cloaks, we were freezing. This change of
temperature had checked conversation, and each of us, occupied in
trying to keep himself warm, advanced in silence. I led the way, and if
I could not see the ground on which we advanced, I could distinguish
perfectly on our right the gigantic escarpments and the immense peaks,
that reared themselves like giants, and whose black silhouettes stood
out boldly upon the deep blue of the sky. The further we advanced, the
stranger and more fantastic shapes did these apparitions assume; we
well understood that Nature had not originally made these mountains as
they are and that it was a long contest that had ravaged them. We were
upon the battle-field of the Titans; we clambered over Pelion piled
upon Ossa.
All this was terrible, sombre, and majestic; I saw and I felt
thoroughly the poetry of this nocturnal trip, and meanwhile I was so
cold that I had not the courage to exchange a word with Jadin to ask
him if all these visions were not the result of the weakness that I
experienced, and if I were not dreaming. From time to time strange
and unfamiliar noises, that did not resemble in the slightest degree
any noises that one is accustomed to hear, started from the bowels
of the earth, and seemed to moan and wail like a living being. These
noises had something so unexpectedly lugubrious and solemn about them
that they made your blood run cold.... We walked about three-quarters
of an hour upon the steep and rough road, then we found ourselves upon
a slightly inclined slope where every now and then we crossed large
patches of snow and in which I was plunged up to my knees, and these
finally became continuous. At length the dark vault of the sky began to
pale and a feeble twilight illumined the ground upon which we walked,
bringing with it air even more icy than we had heretofore breathed.
In this wan and uncertain light we perceived before us something
resembling a house; we approached it, Jadin trotting upon his mule, and
I coming as fast as possible. The guide pushed open the door and we
found ourselves in the _Casa Inglese_, built at the foot of the cone,
for the great relief of travellers.
It was half-past three o’clock in the morning; our guide reminded us
that we had still three-quarters of an hour’s climb at least, and, if
we wished to reach the top of the cone before sunrise, we had not a
moment to lose.
We left the _Casa Inglese_. We began to distinguish objects: all around
us extended a vast field of snow, in the centre of which, making an
angle of about forty-five degrees, the cone of Etna rose. Above us all
was in darkness; towards the east only a light tint of opal coloured
the sky on which the mountains of Calabria were vigorously outlined.
At a hundred feet from the _Casa Inglese_ we encountered the first
waves of the lava plateau whose black hue did not accord with the
snow, in the midst of which it rose like a sombre island. We had to
mount these solid waves, jumping from one to another, as I had done at
Chamouni and the Mer de Glace, with this difference, that the sharp
edges tore the leather of our shoes and cut our feet. This passage,
which lasted a quarter of an hour, was one of the most trying of the
route.
We were now about a third of the way up, and we had only taken about
half an hour to ascend four hundred feet; the east brightened more and
more; the fear of not arriving at the summit of the cone in time to see
the sunrise lent us courage, and we started again with new enthusiasm,
without pausing to look at the immense horizon which widened beneath
our feet at each step; but the further we advanced, the more the
difficulties increased; at each step the slope became more abrupt, the
earth more friable, and the air rarer. Soon, on our right, we began
to hear subterranean roarings that attracted our attention; our guide
walked in front of us and led us to a fissure from which came a great
noise and a thick sulphurous smoke blown out by an interior current of
air. Approaching the edges of this cleft, we saw at an unfathomable
depth a bottom of incandescent and red liquid; and when we stamped our
feet, the ground resounded in the distance like a drum. Happily it was
perfectly calm, for if the wind had blown this smoke over to our side,
we should have been asphyxiated, for it is charged with a terrible
fumes of sulphur.
We found ourselves opposite the crater,--an immense well, eight miles
in circumference and 900 feet deep; the walls of this excavation were
covered with scarified matter of sulphur and alum from top to bottom;
in the bottom as far as we could see at the distance from where we
stood, there was some matter in eruption, and from the abyss there
ascended a tenuous and tortuous smoke, resembling a gigantic serpent
standing on his tail. The edges of the crater were cut out irregularly
at a greater or less height. We were at one of the highest points.
Our guide permitted us to look at this sight for a moment, holding us
back, however, every now and then by our clothing when we approached
too near the precipice, for the rock is so friable that it could easily
give way beneath our feet, and we should repeat the joke of Empedocles;
then he asked us to remove ourselves about twenty feet from the crater
to avoid all accidents, and to look around us.