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At the further part of this walk is that plentiful, though artificial cascade, which rolls down a very steep declivity, and over the marble steps and basins, with an astonishing noise and fury; each basin hath a jetto in it, flowing like sheets of transparent glass, especially that which rises over the great shell of lead, from whence it glides silently down a channel through the middle of a spacious gravel walk, terminating in a grotto. Here are also fountains that cast water to a great height, and large ponds, two of which have islands for harbor of fowls, of which there is store. One of these islands has a receptacle for them built of vast pieces of rock, near fifty feet high, grown over with moss, ivy, etc., shaded at a competent distance with tall trees: in this rupellary nidary do the fowl lay eggs, and breed. We then saw a large and very rare grotto of shell-work, in the shape of Satyrs, and other wild fancies: in the middle stands a marble table, on which a fountain plays in divers forms of glasses, cups, crosses, fans, crowns, etc. Then the fountaineer represented a shower of rain from the top, met by small jets from below. At going out, two extravagant musketeers shot us with a stream of water from their musket barrels. Before this grotto is a long pool onto which ran divers spouts of water from leaden excalop basins.
The Diary of John Evelyn, Vol. 1, William Bray, ed. London, M. Walter Dunne, 1901, p. 52.
PLACE: Versailles
TIME: Feb. 27, 1644.
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