ders piled mason fashion one upon another, as though the Titans of
some dead age had employed themselves in building them up, overcoming
their tendency to fall by the mere crushing weight above, that kept them
steady even when the wild breath of the storms came howling down the
gorge and tried its strength against them. About a hundred paces from
the near end of the chasm, some ninety or more feet in height, rose
the most remarkable of these giant pillars, to which the remains at
Stonehenge are but as toys. It was formed of seven huge boulders, the
largest, that at the bottom, about the size of a moderate cottage,
and the smallest, that at the top, perhaps some eight or ten feet in
diameter. These boulders were rounded like a cricket-ball--evidently
through the action of water--and yet the hand of Nature had contrived
to balance them, each one smaller than that beneath, the one upon
the other, and to keep them so. But this was not always the case. For
instance, a very similar mass which once stood on the near side of the
perfect pillar had fallen, all except its two foundation stones, and
the rocks that formed it lay scattered about like monstrous petrified
cannon-balls. One of these had split in two, and seated on it, looking
very small and far off at the bottom of that vast gulf, John discovered
Jess Croft, apparently engaged in sketching.

He dismounted from his shooting pony, and looking about him perceived
that it was possible to descend by following the course of the stream
and clambering down the natural steps it had cut in its rocky bed.
Throwing the reins over the pony's head, and leaving him with the dog
Pontac to stand and stare about him as South African shooting ponies
are accustomed to do, he laid down his gun and game and proceeded to
descend, pausing every now and again to admire the wild beauty of the
scene and examine the hundred varieties of moss and ferns, the last
mostly of the maiden-hair (_Capillus Veneris_) genus, that clothed every
cranny and every rock where they could find foothold and win refreshment
from the water or the spray of the cascades. As he drew near the bottom
of the gorge he saw that on the borders of the stream, wherever the soil
was moist, grew thousands upon thousands of white arums, "pig lilies" as
they call them in Africa, which were now in full bloom. He had noticed
these lilies from above, but thence, owing to the distance, they seemed
so small that he took them for everlast