In the third place, those elevations which cross the Valley, five in number, popularly known as the Beaver Dams, are marvellous matters, transcending even the Natural Bridge; and that they were constructed by beavers, cannot admit of a doubt. But then the mind is lost in amazement at the probable number of the animals that inhabited the valley, and the immensity of their labor. The valley is bounded by high hills, perhaps mountains, and the one that terminates its lower extremity consists of slate, and is separated from the lateral ones by a stream of small magnitude above its junction with the valley branch, which is made up measurably of the mineral waters. The lateral mountains, at their lower extremity are slate; at the other, sandstone; and in the middle, limestone. From the upper spring, or the one now in use, to the junction of its branch with the mountain stream above treated of, is three miles, and the fall in that distance was originally about one hundred and fifty feet. Then there was between these lateral hills no valley or flat land--this has been produced by the Beaver Dams which divided the original declination into five perpendicular _falls_, measuring each from twenty to thirty-eight feet--thus producing out of one mountain gutter, five beautiful tables of the richest soil in the world. And this too, simply by retaining the _debris_ from the surrounding hills, as it was annually washed in, and also the lime from the mineral waters, which, since the production of the fountains has been constantly depositing. It is furthermore evident that no one of these dams was the work of one season, but of many, just as the necessity for elevation was produced by the filling up of the artificial basin. As a description of one of those dams will serve for all, we will take the largest, and the one which bounds the lower extremity of the valley.