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flood-time form the bottom of an immense lake. There
can, indeed, be few more magnificent episodes in the life
of a river than this. For when, swollen with melting
snow and heavy rain, it rushes turbulently seaward
in obedience to the first law of its being, it is here
suddenly checked, in its course by the iron hand
of the mountains. Signs of its terrible recoil are
evident on every side. The spectator standing under
the barbed frieze of the military outpost near Senbo,
and, looking down, first on the now quiet river, and
then across a yawning interval to the opposite heights,
realises something of its greater life. Far above the
present limit of its waters, to a height of eighty feet,
marking the woods with an even line in testimony to
its domination, the river climbs in its session of wrath.
In a single night it rises fifty teet, as though it sought
to sweep the mountains before it, and at such times
the defile within is a raging inferno of waters in which
no boat can live.
For thirty-five miles the river flows through the
mountains of the First Defile, whose rocky sides, torn
and lacerated, lie bare in winter, the embodiment ot
savagery. This is more especially the case at one
point, the most dangerous in the entire defile, where
the black rocks rise sheer out of the river’s bed,
threatening destruction. Through them there has been
cut a passage, now high above water-level, for the slow
country boats, which formerly performed the perilous
duty of carrying the mails in the flood season. From
May to October the defile is entirely closed to steamers,
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