Soon Afterwards We Came To The General's Hut, So Called Because It
Was The Temporary Abode Of Wade, While He Superintended The Works
Upon The Road.
It is now a house of entertainment for passengers,
and we found it not ill stocked with provisions.
FALL OF FIERS
Towards evening we crossed, by a bridge, the river which makes the
celebrated fall of Fiers. The country at the bridge strikes the
imagination with all the gloom and grandeur of Siberian solitude.
The way makes a flexure, and the mountains, covered with trees,
rise at once on the left hand and in the front. We desired our
guides to shew us the fall, and dismounting, clambered over very
rugged crags, till I began to wish that our curiosity might have
been gratified with less trouble and danger. We came at last to a
place where we could overlook the river, and saw a channel torn, as
it seems, through black piles of stone, by which the stream is
obstructed and broken, till it comes to a very steep descent, of
such dreadful depth, that we were naturally inclined to turn aside
our eyes.
But we visited the place at an unseasonable time, and found it
divested of its dignity and terror. Nature never gives every thing
at once. A long continuance of dry weather, which made the rest of
the way easy and delightful, deprived us of the pleasure expected
from the fall of Fiers. The river having now no water but what the
springs supply, showed us only a swift current, clear and shallow,
fretting over the asperities of the rocky bottom, and we were left
to exercise our thoughts, by endeavouring to conceive the effect of
a thousand streams poured from the mountains into one channel,
struggling for expansion in a narrow passage, exasperated by rocks
rising in their way, and at last discharging all their violence of
waters by a sudden fall through the horrid chasm.
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