In the hills north of Utica, the West Canada Creek cuts its remarkable gorge at Trenton Falls. It is a vigorous stream, rising in the western slopes of the Adirondacks and flowing to the Mohawk. In getting down through the limestone rocks from the highlands to the plain adjacent to the river, it passes into the ravine, giving a magnificent display of chasms, cascades and rapids, in a gorge of such amazing construction that it is regarded as a wonder second only to Niagara. During the ages, the torrent has cut through over four hundred layers of the stratified limestone, exposing the geological formation to full view, with the fossil organic remains deposited there as the world was built. In descending the ravine, there are five prominent cataracts, besides rapids, all compressed within two miles distance, the aggregate descent being three hundred and twelve feet. This wonderful gorge was the Indian Kauy-a-hoo-ra, or the "Leaping Water," and from its color they called the stream Kahnata, the "amber water," a name readily corrupted into Canada Creek. The Dutch called the place after the Grand Pensioner of Holland, Oldenbarneveld, he having sent out the first colonists under a grant known as the "Holland Patent." It was in this region Grover Cleveland spent his early life. A grandson of Roger Sherman, who had charge of the Unitarian church here, is regarded as the discoverer of the ravine in 1805, and he did much to make it known to the world. His grave is within sound of the Sherman Fall. Entering the chasm at the lower end, where the stream passes out from the rock terrace to the plain, the ravine is found to be about one hundred feet deep, the almost perpendicular rocky walls built up in level layers as if by hands, the well-defined separate strata being from one inch to a foot in thickness, and narrowest at the bottom. Hemlocks and cedars crown the blackened rocks, their branches hanging over the abyss, while far below, the boisterous torrent rushes across the pavement of broad flagstones forming its bed. Descending to the bottom, the impression is like being in a deep vault, this subterranean world disclosing operations lasting through ages, during which the rocks have slowly yielded to the resistless power of the water and frost that has gradually cut the chasm. Fossils and petrifactions found in the deepest strata are trod upon, and each thin layer of the walls, one imposed upon the other, shows the deposit of a supervening flood happening successively, yet eternity only knows how long ago. And ages afterwards the torrent came, and during more successive ages carved out the gorge, until it has penetrated to the bottom of the limestone.