The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 582, December 22, 1832Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 582, December 22, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
Suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the waterfall increased, and
grew rough and loud, and the undefinable rushing noise that precedes a
heavy fall of rain in the tropics, the voice of the wilderness, moaned
through the high woods, until at length the clouds sank upon the valley
in boiling mists, rolling halfway down the surrounding hills; and the
water of the stream, whose scanty rill but an instant before hissed over
the precipice in a small, transparent ribbon of clear grass-green,
sprinkled with white foam, and then threaded its way round the large
rocks in its capacious channel, like a silver eel twisting through a
desert, now changed in a moment to a dark turgid chocolate colour; and
even as we stood and looked, lo! a column of water from the mountains,
pitched in thunder over the face of the precipice, making the earth
tremble, and driving up from the rugged face of the everlasting rocks in
smoke, and forcing the air into eddies and sudden blasts which tossed
the branches of the trees that overhung it, as they were dimly seen
through clouds of drizzle, as if they had been shaken by a tempest,
although there was not a breath stirring elsewhere out of heaven; while
little, wavering, spiral wreaths of mist rose up thick from the surface
of the boiling pool at the bottom of the cataract, like miniature
water-spouts, until they were dispersed by the agitation of the air
above.
At length the swollen torrent rolled roaring down the narrow valley,
filling the whole water-course, about fifty yards wide, and advancing
with a solid front a fathom _high_--a fathom _deep_ does not
convey the idea--like a stream of lava, or as one may conceive of the
Red Sea, when, at the stretching forth of the hand of the prophet of the
Lord, its mighty waters rolled back and stood heaped up as a wall to the
host of Israel.
The channel of the stream, which but a minute before I could have leaped
across, was the next instant filled and utterly impassable.
And the rain now began pattering in large drops, like scattering shots
preceding an engagement, on the wooden shingles with which the house was
roofed, gradually increasing to a loud rushing noise, which, as the
rooms were not ceiled, prevented a word being heard.
At length the weather cleared, and the shutters having been opened, and
with a suddenness which no one can comprehend who has not lived in these
climates, the sun now shone brightly on the flowers and garden plants
which grew in a range of pots on the balcony.
* * * * *
THE DUCHESSE DE BERRI.
(_From the New Monthly Magazine_.)
We have much pleasure in inserting these very curious anecdotes of an
unfortunate Princess, though they come to us from one devoted to her
cause, as well as sympathizing with her misfortunes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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