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The cliffs are water-worn, presenting distinct indications of more than one level at which the water has rested in former times. At the season of the inundation this lake is liable to be confounded with the extensive floods and marshes which extend continuously from the country west of the Birs Nimrud to Samava.
The guide being anxious that we should not fail to see the Niagara Room, we now turned toward a low, broad opening in the wall, a short distance to the right of the entrance, where the rising floor and descending ceiling, failing to meet, had overlapped; so we made our way up a steep, smooth bank, and then down on the other side over a broken, rocky surface for a distance of about twenty feet, when the roof at last joined the floor and two small water-worn holes at the point of junction revealed an untempting passage within.
After following it about a mile up, it grew much more shallow and narrow, and had a rocky bottom. On the opposite side were patches of open forest ground, but they did not extend to any distance. After skirting the river about three miles, we crossed it in a shallow place, the bed of it being composed of blocks of water-worn granite.
The stranger, good-humouredly, acquiesced in the remark, and we sat down together on the dry, water-worn pebbles, mixed with fragments of broken shells and minute pieces of wreck, that strewed the opening of the cave. "Was there ever a lovelier evening!" he exclaimed; "the waters above the firmament seem all of a piece with the waters below. And never surely was there a scene of wilder beauty.
Except for a narrow beach the sides of this island are almost perpendicular, and the cliffs are honeycombed with dozens of water-worn caves. Many of these caves are of great beauty, resembling the interiors of stone churches; some extend far back into the dark interior of the island, others are lighted by openings at the top.
What we had hitherto seen of this pudding-stone was but a few fragments of the schistus in the lower beds of sand-stone; here a mountain of water-worn schisti, imbedded in a red earth and consolidated, presented itself to our view.
Scoriac rubble filled it in to a very great depth; and in the interstices of this rubble were embedded here and there rude blocks of greenstone, containing almond-shaped chalcedonies and agate and milk-quartz, with now and then a tiny water-worn spec which an experienced eye would have detected at once as the finest "riverstones." Here indeed was a prize!
Wait here while I try to climb round those boulders; there might be a branch that would float us, or a log of driftwood in a lower eddy," and leaving her I managed with much difficulty to scale a few great water-worn masses that had fallen from above and shut out the view of the lower river.
Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if that suit thee better: 'Whoso can look on Death will start at no shadows. "From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outwards; for now the Valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback.
The river above Keadom is again crossed, by a plank bridge, at a place where the contracted streams flow between banks forty feet high, composed of obscurely stratified gravel, sand, and water-worn boulders. Above this the path ascends lofty flat-topped spurs, which overhang the river, and command some of the most beautiful scenery in Sikkim.
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