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Here in place of soulless melodies issuing from automatic players we have the heavenly notes of the woodthrush, the clear call of the crested titmouse, and the wild ringing notes of the cardinal. A matchless trio, accompanied by the vagrant breezes played upon the tree-harps, seconded by the singing of distant waterfalls.
I did cross, not thinking much about it, but with some idea of looking at this new little stream, which went at a very quick pace and seemed to promise small rapids and waterfalls a little higher up. Now when I got to the edge of it, there was no mistake: it was saying "Trickle-up," or even "Track-up," much plainer than the old one. I stepped across it and went a few yards up the old stream.
The smaller waterfalls do not check its onward rush; as the boat approaches a fall, several men near the bow stand up to see if there is sufficient water; then, as they resume their seats, all paddle with might and main until the boat takes the leap.
When this house was intended to sustain a siege, a well was made in the court, by boring the rock downwards, till water was found, which though so near to the sea, I have not heard mentioned as brackish, though it has some hardness, or other qualities, which make it less fit for use; and the family is now better supplied from a stream, which runs by the rock, from two pleasing waterfalls.
We passed between two steep, rocky cliffs the whole way, and they were densely clothed with tree-ferns and other rank tropical vegetation, the large white sweet-scented datura being very plentiful. The scenery was very beautiful, and numerous waterfalls dashed over the rocky walls with a sullen roar. Ducks were plentiful, but my ammunition being limited, I shot only enough to supply us with food.
Throughout the extent of the island run many little streams, sometimes between high banks of rock, covered with moss and magnificent fern, with great pools of clear, deep water at the base of high waterfalls, and in those places where the stream cuts its way through the level plains double rows of the royal palm mark its course.
Our camp was pitched at the junction of a torrent, which, flowing from the higher ground, joined the river Salaam in a succession of waterfalls. At this season, a gentle stream, as clear as glass, rippled over a rocky bed about twenty yards wide, and the holes in the flat surface above the fall formed natural basins of the purest water.
Darker green, the mountains towered above them, and far on the higher slopes we saw wild goats leaping from crag to crag and wild horses running in the upper valleys. A score or more of white ribbons depended from the lofty heights, and through the binoculars I saw them to be waterfalls.
Days of delicious dreaming were these, days of roaming on the emerald green turf under the stately and odorous pines, listening to the dash of the waterfalls, or watching the crimson sunset burning redly through the darkness of the branches, and in the moonlit evenings sitting under the trees to hear the entrancing music of a Hungarian string-band, which played divine and voluptuous melodies of the land, "lieder" and "walzer" that swung the heart away on a golden thread of sound to a paradise too sweet to name!
She cannot read all day, and, if she could, what is the use of reading? Poets and philosophers do not touch her case; descriptions of moonlit seas, mountains, moors, and waterfalls darken by contrast the view of the tiles and chimneys from her own window. Ideas do not animate or interest her, for she never has a chance of expressing them and, lacking expression, they are indistinct.
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