The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c36.s1.2

c36.s1.2

Eighteen miles, by road, up the *ghāt*, brings one to the famous Falls near the village of Jog. They are a sight never to be forgotten. The river Shiravatī here throws itself over a perpendicular precipice with a fall of 830 feet. As the river approaches the face of the cliffs, it splits up into four separate channels forming four different falls, but, during flood time, in the monsoon, it hurls itself over in one mighty mass, clear of the rock face until it reaches the boiling waters away down in the depths below. At the bungalow above the Falls are kept two old visitors' books which are curious reading. One of the very earliest entries is by the Bishop of Madras, who stayed a week here in December, 1843. He wrote: “The Bishop of Madras passed a week in the neighbourhood of the Gersappa Falls and is thankful to Providence for having been permitted to visit the most glorious work of Nature's God that he has ever seen or ever hopes to see.” Captain Newbold, in August, 1845, wrote “I lay on this shelf [a mass of rock projecting out over the Falls with a drop of 830 feet beneath it] and drew myself to its edge, and as I stretched my head over the brink, a sight burst on me which I shall never forget. I have since looked down the fuming and sulphurous craters of Etna and Vesuvius, but have never experienced the feelings which overwhelmed me in the first downward gaze into the abyss at Gersappa. One might gaze for ever into that seething chasm where the mighty mass of the Shiravati's waters ceaselessly buries itself in a mist-shrouded grave." It is in the lower reaches of the river, just below the Falls, in the bosom of the well-nigh impenetrable and silent forests that the old site of the city lies.