Cataracts are also formed by lakes: of this description are the
celebrated Falls of the Niagara; but the most picturesque falls
are those of rapid rivers, bordered by trees and precipitous
rocks. Sometimes we see a body of water, which, before it arrives
at the bottom, is broken and dissipated into showers, like the
Staubbach, (see _Mirror,_ vol. xiv. p. 385.); sometimes it forms
a watery arch, projected from a rampart of rock, under which the
traveller may pass dryshod, as the "falling spring" of Virginia;
in one place, in a granite district, we see the Trolhetta, and the
Rhine not far from its source, urge on their foaming billows
among the pointed rocks; in another, amidst lands of a calcareous
formation, we see the Czettina and the Kerka, rolling down
from terrace to terrace, and presenting sometimes a sheet, and
sometimes a wall, of water. Some magnificent cascades have been
formed, at least in part, by the hands of man: the cascades of
Velino, near Terni, have been attributed to Pope Clement VIII.
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