[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
You ascend along a crumbling pathway, clinging to the stems of box and to the edges of rocks; frightened lizards start off like an arrow, and cower in the clefts of slaty slabs. A leaden sun inflames the bluish rocks; the reflected rays make the air like a furnace. In this parched chaos the only life is that of the water, which glides, murmuring, beneath the stones. At the bottom of the ravine the mountain abruptly lifts its vertical wall to the height of two hundred feet; the water drops in long white threads along this polished wall, and turns its reddish tint to brown; during the whole fall it does not quit the cliff, but clings to it like silvery tresses, or a pendent garland of convolvulus. A fine broad basin stays it for an instant at the foot of the mountain, and then discharges it in a streamlet into the bog.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
These mountain streams are unlike those of the plains; nothing sullies them; they never have any other bed than sand or naked stone. However deep they may be, you may count their blue pebbles; they are transparent as the air. Rivers have no other diversity than that of their banks; their regular course, their mass always gives the same sensation; the Gave, on the other hand, is a forever-changing spectacle; the human face has not more marked, more diverse expressions. When the water, green and profound, sleeps beneath the rocks, its emerald eyes wear the treacherous look of a naiad who would charm the passer-by only to drown him; then, wanton that it is, leaps blindly between the rocks, turns its bed topsy-turvy, rises aloft in a tempest of foam, dashes itself impotently and furiously into spray against the bowlder that has vanquished it. Three steps further on, it subsides and goes frisking capriciously alongside the bank in changing eddies, braided with bands of light and shade, twisting voluptuously like an adder. When the rock of its bed is broad and smooth, it spreads out, veined with rose and azure, smilingly offering its level glass to the whole mass of the sunlight. Over the bending plants, it threads its silent way in lines straight and tense as in a bundle of rushes, and with the spring and swiftness of a flying trout. When it falls opposite the sun, the hues of the rainbow may be seen trembling in its crystal threads, vanishing, reappearing, an aerial work, a sylph of light, alongside which a bee’s wine would seem coarse, and which fairy fingers would in vain strive to equal.