The rocks now receded, but still showed their grey and shaggy crests
rising among the copse-wood. Still higher rose eminences and peaks, some
bare, some clothed with wood, some round and purple with heath, and
others splintered into rocks and crags. At a short turning the path,
which had for some furlongs lost sight of the brook, suddenly placed
Waverley in front of a romantic waterfall. It was not so remarkable
either for great height or quantity of water as for the beautiful
accompaniments which made the spot interesting. After a broken cataract
of about twenty feet, the stream was received in a large natural basin
filled to the brim with water, which, where the bubbles of the fall
subsided, was so exquisitely clear that, although it was of great depth,
the eye could discern each pebble at the bottom. Eddying round this
reservoir, the brook found its way as if over a broken part of the ledge,
and formed a second fall, which seemed to seek the very abyss; then,
wheeling out beneath from among the smooth dark rocks which it had
polished for ages, it wandered murmuring down the glen, forming the
stream up which Waverley had just ascended.
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