Year: 1860

The following description of the Gairsoppa
Falls in India, is takeu from the correspondence
of the London Times


An amphitheatre Of woods, and river of
about 500 yards wide, rushing and boiling to a
certain point, where it is lost in perpetual mist,
and in an unceasing deafening roar, must first
be imagined. Leaving the Bungalow on the
Madras side of the river and descending to a
position below the river level, you work your
way up carefully and tediously over slippery
rocks, until you reach point where a rock
about twice the size of a mans body, juts out
over precipice. Resting fiat upon this rock,
and looking over it, you see directly before you
two of the four principal falls these two are
called the Great FALL and the Rocket. The
one contains large body of water, the main
body of the river, perhaps fifty yards across,
which falls massively and apparently sluggishly
into the chasm below, and the other contains
smaller body of water, which shoots out in sue
cessive sprays over successive points of rocks,
till it falls into the same chasm. The chasm is
at least 900 feet in depth, six times the depth of
the Niagara Falls, which are about 80 feet and
perhaps a quarter of mile in width These
are the first two falls to be visited. Then move
little below your first position, and you will
observe first a turgd boiling body of water of
greater volume than the Rocket Fall, rushing
and steaming down into the same chasm, this
is the third fall, the Roarer; and then carry
ing your eye little further down, you will
observe another fall, the loyeliest, softest, and
most graceful of all, being broad expanse OF
shallow water falling like transparent silver lace
over smooth surface of polished rock into this
chasm; this is La Dame Blanche and the
| White Lady of Avenel could not have been more
graceful and ethereal. But do not confne your
selfto any one place in order to view these falls
scramble everywhere you can, and get as many
views as you can of them, and you will be un-
able to decide upon which is the most beautiful.
And do you want te have a faint idea of the
depth of the chasm into which these glorious
waters fall? Take out your watch and drop as
| large piece of rock as you can hold, from your
viewing place, it will be several seconds before
you even lose sight Of the piece of rock, and
then even it will not have reached the water at
the foot of the chasm, it will only have been
lost to human sight or, watch the blue pigeons,
wheeling and circing in and cut the Great Fall
within the chasm, and looking like sparrows in
size in the depths beneath you. But you have
not yet only seen one and that perhaps not the
lovelest, and at least not the most comprehen-
sive view of the falls. You must proceed two
miles up the river above the falls, and cross
over at ferry, where the waters are still and
smooth as glass, and sluggish as a Hollander,
and proceed to the Mysore side of the falls, walk
1 ing first to point where you will see them all
at glance, and then descending as near as you
| can to the foot of these, to be drenched by the
spray, deafened by the noise, and awe struck by
| the grandeur of the scene, and by the visible
presence of the Creator of it, in the perpetual
rainbow, of many and brilliant hues which span
| the foot of the chasm.