It is the view from this point--“one of the prettiest and most comprehensive” that can be obtained of the Falls, says Chapman--that is represented in the preceding woodcut; in the foreground are seen the gliding waters flowing through the escape-channel, the spray of the falling cataract rising up beyond; whilst on the horizon, above that section of the Falls which is visible from here, extends the distant outline of one of the river’s banks. “This point,” writes Baines, “is the only spot, with the exception of the west end in calm weather, that is free enough from spray to allow the use of water-colours.” And this brings us to our second illustration of the Falls, the coloured one, which is taken from the other point here mentioned--the west end of the cataract. In this picture is represented the first portion of the Falls, at the western extremity of the abyss, where the flow of the water over the edge is more broken than it is in many places further on (in at least one of which it continues, says Chapman, with “very little interruption” for a distance of a quarter of a mile or more), and apparently before the water in the bottom of the channel has commenced that tumultuous course which it afterwards pursues as it gathers volume further eastward. In the foreground and on the high land to the right is seen some of that brilliant tropical vegetation, the absence of which, except the evergreen part of it, was so regretted by Chapman at the time of his visit. “We see the scenery,” he wrote in July 1862, “at a great disadvantage just now, as this is the time of the ‘sere and yellow leaf.’” In January, when Frank Oates was there, the vegetation of course was at its best. The trees on the right in this picture, though looking little larger than bushes when viewed from this side, rise in reality--again to quote the authority of Chapman, who penetrated their shade--to a majestic height of from eighty to ninety feet, and constitute a dense forest, always moistened by the spray from the Falls.