The torrent flows briskly out of the long and narrow vault, while some distance above is the lowest of the series of cataracts--the Sherman Fall--where the water plunges over a parapet of rock forty feet high into a huge basin it has worked out. The amber-colored waters boil furiously in this cauldron. Above the Sherman Fall the stream flows through rapids, the chasm broadening and the lofty walls rising higher as the hill-tops are more elevated, mounting to two hundred feet above the torrent at a lofty point called the Pinnacle. The floor of the ravine is level, and becomes quite wide, with massive slabs, weighing tons, resting upon it, showing the power of freshets which bring them down from above, and will ultimately carry them completely through the gorge to its outlet, so resistless is the sweep of the raging flood at such times, when every bound these huge stones make over the rocky floor causes the neighboring hills to vibrate, the stifled thunder of their progress being heard above the roar of waters. At the head of this widened gorge is the High Falls, in a grand amphitheatre, the cataract broken into parts and combining all the varieties of cascade and waterfall, being one hundred feet high, and the walls of the chasm rising eighty feet higher to the surface of the land above, which keeps on rising as the ends of the limestone strata are surmounted. The top of this High Fall is another perpendicular wall stretching diagonally across the chasm, and below it the protruding layers of rock form a sort of huge stairway. Down this the waters fall in varying fashion, finally condensing as a mass of whirling, shifting foam into a dark pool beneath. This splendid cataract is fringed about with evergreens and shrubbery, for between the dark thin slabs of limestone are inserted thinner strata of crumbling shale, and these give root-hold to the cedars and other nodding branches clinging to the walls of the ravine. The waterfall begins at the top with the color of melted topaz, and is unlike anything elsewhere seen, for the hemlocks and spruces of the mountain regions impart the amber hue to the torrent. Descending, the changing tints become steadily lighter, until the brown turns to a creamy white, which is finally lost under the cloud of spray at the foot of the lower stairway slide, while beyond, the water rushes away black in hue and driving forward almost as if shot from a cannon.