under-storm, with torrents of rain, prevented my leaving
Utica for Trenton Falls until late in the afternoon. The roads,
ploughed up by the rain, were any thing but democratic; there was no
level in them; and we were jolted and shaken like peas in a rattle,
until we were silent from absolute suffering.

I rose the next morning at four o'clock. There was a heavy fog in the
air, and you could not distinguish more than one hundred yards before
you. I followed the path pointed out to me the night before, through a
forest of majestic trees, and descending a long flight of steps found
myself below the Falls. The scene impressed you with awe--the waters
roared through deep chasms, between two walls of rock, one hundred and
fifty feet high, perpendicular on each side, and the width between the
two varying from forty to fifty feet. The high rocks were of black
carbonate of lime in perfectly horizontal strata, so equally divided
that they appeared like solid masonry. For fifty or sixty feet above
the rushing waters they were smooth and bare; above that line vegetation
commenced with small bushes, until you arrived at their summits, which
were crowned with splendid forest trees, some of them inclining over the
chasm, as if they would peep into the abyss below and witness the wild
tumult of the waters.

From the narrowness of the pass, the height of the rocks, and the
superadded towering of the trees above, but a small portion of the
heavens was to be seen, and this was not blue, but of a misty murky
grey. The first sensation was that of dizziness and confusion, from the
unusual absence of the sky above, and the dashing frantic speed of the
angry boiling waters. The rocks on each side have been blasted so as to
form a path by which you may walk up to the first fall; but this path
was at times very narrow and you have to cling to the chain which is let
into the rock. The heavy storm of the day before had swelled the
torrent so that it rose nearly a foot above this path; and before I had
proceeded far, I found that the flood swept between my legs with a force
which would have taken some people off their feet. The rapids below the
Falls are much grander than the Falls themselves; there was one down in
a chasm between two riven rocks which it was painful to look long upon,
and watch with what a deep plunge--what irresistible force--the waters
dashed down and then returned to their own surface, as if struggling and
out of bre