Walking upward, along a narrow strand of bare rock, with the forest pressing on you, as, bent almost double in some places, you stoop beneath the overhanging cliff on which it grows; then for a time closely shouldering the precipice, walk upon a ledge or projecting shelf of from one to three feet wide, the current below boiling and whirling along the while, of dazzling brilliance; I at one moment counted five rainbow arches, perfect and imperfect. What a succession of "Maidens of the Mist" might a lover of romance conjure up from these vexed waters on a fine moonlight night! Proceeding onwards, you, on quitting this point, descend once more into the river's bed; and here the resistless power of the torrent when at its full is made manifest by the ruin which on all sides marks its headlong course. Trees of the largest growth lie twenty feet above its ordinary level; some with their roots uppermost, others sustained athwart the arms of their sturdier fellows, here decay and rot amidst their living leaves. Passing the second fall, we mounted a few steps to a resting-place, named the "Rural Retreat;" and here, from a little box perched on the point of a huge rock which abuts right upon the great abyss, we had a scene before us and about us of great wildness and grandeur; whilst high over all waved the original forest, contemporary with the continent itself,--trees beneath whose shade the sachems of the warlike Mohawks had feasted and legislated. The last fall lies about a quarter of a mile above this point; and immediately below is a dangerous pass, where the vast mass of falling water is hurled in its course against a deeply-serrated rock, over which rock the curious visitor is obliged to tread, making a step across an angle formed by the boiling whirlpool, clinging to a stout chain, and closely shouldering the rock; the river passing below, with a motion anything but composing for a nervous man to cast a sidelong glance upon. At all points of peril, however, lines of chain are securely riveted, affording a dependable holdfast; which after rains is indeed absolutely necessary, where a single _faux pas_ would be fatal. A little to our left the water of the river was collected into a basin of about one hundred yards' diameter; overflowing which, it found a narrow outlet between two rocks, and thence precipitating itself in a flood of the colour of amber, was bridged by rainbows dazzling to look upon, although a person of ordinary nerve has nothing to encounter really dangerous; yet, at this point, a very few years back, an accident of a fatal nature did occur, and under circumstances which give to it a melancholy interest and will ever keep it as a legend of the place.