The unique description of the Kaaterskill Falls by Cooper's Leather Stocking is interesting. He says, "The water comes crooking and winding among the rocks, first so slow that a trout might swim in it, and then starting and running just like any creature that wanted to make a far spring, till it gets to where the mountain divides like the cleft hoof of a deer, leaving a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet, and the water looks like flakes of driven snow afore it touches the bottom; and then the stream gathers itself together again for a new start, and may be flutters over fifty feet of flat rock before it falls for another hundred, where it jumps about from shelf to shelf, first turning this a-way, and then turning that a-way, striving to get out of the hollow, till it finally comes to the plain. To my judgment, it's the best piece of work I've met with in the woods, and none know how often the hand of God is seen in the wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life." William Cullen Bryant thus sings the praises of the Kaaterskill Falls: "'Midst greens and shades the Kaaterskill leaps From cliffs where the wood-flower clings; All summer he moistens his verdant steeps With the sweet, light spray of the mountain springs; And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, When they drip with the rains of autumn tide. "But when in the forest bare and old, The blast of December calls, He builds, in the star-light clear and cold, A palace of ice where his torrent falls, With turret, and arch, and fret-work fair, And pillars blue as the summer air."