We are leaning against a rugged mass of the gray ledge--your head is resting upon your right hand, and you are gazing intently down at the circle and whirl of the romping waters. Only a few yards above, a cool spring gushes up, quick and bright, dimpling and laughing in the arrowy sunshine, then flashing and foaming over the dark rocks, and twisting in and out among the bare roots of the majestic oak that cools us with its shadows, falls in a golden shower to the mossy basin at your feet, and leaping over the steep precipice, mingles in foam with the seething river below. We are turned toward the west, and as you raise your eyes to a level with the horizon, one of the most stupendous views of the Blue Mountains that ever caused man to stop in breathless awe, now presents itself to your astonished gaze. Mountain towers behind mountain, and peak behind peak in wild sublimity, like giant waves heaved along the blue sky, almost seeming as if they were the ramparts of the world. Their sloping sides are dark with forests, save here and there, where the axe has penetrated their recesses, and blocked out spaces which, having been touched with the magic of the plough, now smile with fertility. And yonder, a little to your right, lifting his narrow pinnance above all the rest, stands time-honored Currahee, with his red cap on--for thus we are accustomed to designate the barren soil which crowns his lofty summit. Now, for a moment, permit me to call your attention farther up the river. Did you ever see a more entrancing and exquisitely beautiful cascade, steeped as it is in the softness, and glowing with the brightness of a cloudless spring morning? See how the wreathes of foam come bounding along, like a pack of ravenous wolves chasing each other, and stop suddenly in their mad career, for an instant equipoising upon the very brink, as if they had shrunk back and feared to take the awful leap, then, pushed on by the rush of the waters behind, descend like a shower of diamonds, and come whirling and dashing through the narrow gorge at our feet. And is not that deep basin at the base of the falls glorious? What an angry aspect its surface puts on, plunging and surging like a mass of living snow, while the flashing sunlight is perpetually endeavoring to paint a rainbow in the ever-mounting spray, and yet never quite succeeds. And those massive rocks, too, piling themselves up so quaintly on either side of the falls, just where they take the final plunge--are they not magnificent? How verdant and mossy, and superb in their ruggedness! Oh! if we were only upon one of those ledges--that one that seems ready to bow itself into the foaming torrent; if we only stood there, by that wide-spreading, gnarled old oak, twisting its dark roots in and out amongst the deep crevices like a knot of huge serpents, what a glorious prospect would burst upon your sight! There are _so_ many entrancing scenes about my birth-place, but, among them all, none as