The cavities worn in the rocks about these Falls, afford great matter of speculation to the geologist. The rock is _gneiss_, and these circular pots are worn evidently by the attrition stones kept in agitation by the current of a river. The astonishing part of it is, that these cavities are, some of them, more than a hundred feet above the present level of the Mohawk, proving that river to have been thus much higher in former times, and of course a lake, whose waters must have extended far and wide over the broad interval above. The narrow passage which it makes through the hills just below, shut in by perpendicular precipices on each side, would be sufficient to have made the theory probable without the assistance of these appearances. These cavities are very numerous, and the largest are about eight feet deep, and fifteen in diameter. The rocks exhibit evidences of having been washed by water still higher. There are analogous traces of lakes on the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, which break through the mountains in a similar manner, the first between Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke, and the latter at the Highlands; but the depth and number of these rock-worn cavities are peculiar to Little Falls. In approaching this part of the Mohawk from the east, the stranger is first delighted with the bold abutments on the river of two dark precipices, whose summits are laden with foliage, and which rise so abruptly from the undulating banks of the Mohawk, that they seem designed as barriers to the pass. The river glides between, darkened by their shadow; and close under the face of one precipice shoots the rail-car, while as close under the opposing one glides the silent passage-boat of the canal. Emerging to the sunshine beyond, the river spreads out in its thousand windings, as if rejoicing in the space of which it is so soon to be deprived, and in a moment or two (if you are travelling by steam) your course is arrested amid the foaming and busy scenery of the Falls, the picturesque and the hideous, the wildly beautiful and the merely useful, so huddled together that the artist who would draw either the architecture or the scenery by itself, would scarce find a bit large enough for a vignette. Alluring as the picturesque and fertile valley of the Mohawk must have been, it was not till after the revolution that it was sought by white men with a view to settle. For some years after the war, it was still the beaver country of the aborigines, or the place of their wigwams; and the country round about, now stocked with villages, and without a red-face to be seen, was a hunting-ground, in which ranged bears, foxes, wolves, deer, and other game, the Indians themselves calling it _couxsachraga_, or the dismal wilderness. The town of Mohawk, where the tribe dwelt up to the year 1780, is but thirty-six miles west of Albany.