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256 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
jind slopes downwards in a most slippery manner towards
the overhanging precipice. A slater, a chamois hunter,
or a Chamouni guide, might possibly venture to stand
upon the brink, but I could not; so I laid down and let
my face hang over, and shuddered even then. Plumb
down below, a clear thousand feet or more, with no
rock or anything to break the declivity, is the foaming
pool of milky water into which the torrent thunders
with solid, crashing energy. The idea of sliding
forward and pitching down headlong after the manner
of the water is almost suggested, accompanied with a
horrible suicidal fascination—a sort of insane desire to
do so. On the opposite side the perpendicular rocks
rise two or three hundred feet higher.
The other point of view commanding the Avliole of
the fill is rather less horrible. The fall itself is not a
beautiful one seen thus from above: it being so much
fore-shortened that its height, said to be 900 feet of
clear fall, is by no means evident. The deep dreadful
hole it has dug for itself by its everlasting pounding
upon the rock is grander than the fall, and well worth
a long pilgrimage. The cataract is not a graceful sheet
of water, nor a waving mare’s-tail fall, but a
descending-mass, a great lump of water, driving eternally
downwards ; demonstrating the tremendous and never-ceasing
power of gravitation, and seemingly intent upon forcing
a passage to the earth’s centre.
The cutting made by this waterfall is altogether a
very remarkable one; something like the gorge of the
Tamina at the Baths of Pffefers. It must be about two
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