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Fantasimus Directory 03
The horseshoe-shaped waterfall was about 300 m. across and some 30 ft. high. When the river is full it must be beautiful, for the east side, which was then absolutely dry, is covered entirely by water, which must form a wonderful series of cascades. When the river is in flood, the waterfall, extending from north-west to south-east, has a total width of 1,000 m. There were some picturesque bits of rugged foliated rock over that great staircase, and huge cracks through which the water gurgled and foamed--those fissures formed not by the erosion of water but by volcanic action, perhaps by an earthquake. The large fall to the north-west, over which the water flows in every season, had on one side of it a steep incline, down which we took the canoe until we came to a drop about 15 ft. high.
Sir Isaac Newton says the Feast of the Nativity, and most of the other ecclesiastical anniversaries, were originally fixed at cardinal points of the year, without any reference to the dates of the incidents which they commemorated, dates which, by lapse of time, it was impossible to ascertain. Thus the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary was placed on the 25th of March, or about the time of the vernal equinox; the Feast of St. Michael on the 29th of September, or near the autumnal equinox; and the Birth of Christ at the time of the winter solstice. Christmas was thus fixed at the time of the year when the most celebrated festivals of the ancients were held in honour of the return of the sun which at the winter solstice begins gradually to regain power and to ascend apparently in the horizon. Previously to this (says William Sandys, F.S.A.),[3] the year was drawing to a close, and the world was typically considered to be in the same state.
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