by the position of some rocks that here rose to the
surface, and through which the little river found its passage. The part
which might be termed the key-stone of the dam, was only twenty yards
wide, and immediately below it, the rocks fell away rapidly, quite
sixty feet, carrying down the waste water in a sort of fall. Here the
mill-wright announced his determination to commence operations at
once, putting in a protest against destroying the works of the beavers.
A pond of four hundred acres being too great a luxury for the region,
the man was overruled, and the labour commenced.

The first blow was struck against the dam about nine o'clock, on the 2d
day of May, 1765, and, by evening, the little sylvan-looking lake,
which had lain embedded in the forest, glittering in the morning sun,
unruffled by a breath of air, had entirely disappeared! In its place,
there remained an open expanse of wet mud, thickly covered with pools
and the remains of beaver-houses, with a small river winding its way
slowly through the slime. The change to the eye was melancholy indeed;
though the prospect was cheering to the agriculturist. No sooner did
the water obtain a little passage, than it began to clear the way for
itself, gushing out in a torrent, through the pass already mentioned.

The following morning, Captain Willoughby almost mourned over the works
of his hands. The scene was so very different from that it had
presented when the flats were covered with water, that it was
impossible not to feel the change. For quite a month, it had an
influence on the whole party. Nick, in particular, denounced it, as
unwise and uncalled for, though he had made his price out of the very
circumstance in prospective; and even Sergeant Joyce was compelled to
admit that the knoll, an island no longer, had lost quite half its
security as a military position. The next month, however, brought other
changes. Half the pools had vanished by drainings and evaporation; the
mud had begun to crack, and, in some places to pulverize; while the
upper margin of the old pond had become sufficiently firm to permit the
oxen to walk over it, without miring. Fences of trees, brush, and even
rails, enclosed, on this portion of the flats, quite fifty acres of
land; and Indian corn, oats, pumpkins, peas, potatoes, flax, and
several other sorts of seed, were already in the ground. The spring
proved dry, and the sun of the forty-third degree of latitude was doing
its work,