en at Little Falls, on the Mohawk. The great celebrity of the Hot
Wells is chiefly owing to a hot spring, which issues from the rock, and
possesses valuable medical qualities.

This spring had a reputation as early as 1480. It discharges about forty
gallons per minute, and was first brought into notice by sailors, who
found it useful for scorbutic disorders. In 1680 it became famous, and a
wealthy merchant rendered it so by a dream. He was afflicted with
diabetes, and dreamed that he was cured by drinking the water of this
spring. He resorted to the imagined remedy, and soon recovered. Its fame
now spread, and, in 1690, the corporation of Bristol took charge of the
spring. We found the water, fresh from the spring, at the temperature of
Fahrenheit 76 deg.. It contains free carbonic acid gas. Its use is seen
chiefly in cases of pulmonary consumption. I suppose it has wrought
wonders in threatening cases. It is the place for an _invalid_ who
_begins to fear_, but it is not possible to "create a soul under the
ribs of death." Unhappily, people in sickness too seldom repair to such
aid as may here be found till the last chances of recovery are
exhausted. I have never seen a spot where I thought the fragile and
delicate in constitution might pass a winter, sheltered from every
storm, more securely than in this place. Tie houses for accommodation
are without end, both at the Hot Wells and at Clifton. This last place
is on the high ground, ascending up to the summit of the rocks, where
you enter on a noble campus known as Durdham Down. This extends for some
three or four miles, and is skirted by charming villages, which render
the environs of Bristol so far-famed for beauty.

I never wished to have your company more than when we all ascended the
height of St. Vincent's Rocks. The elevation at which we stood was about
three hundred and fifty feet above the winding river which, it is
thought, by some sudden convulsion of nature, turned from the moors _of_
Somersetshire, its old passage to the sea, and forced an abrupt one
between the rocks and the woods; and the corresponding dip of the
strata, the cavities on one side, and projections on the other, make the
supposition very plausible. A suspension bridge over this awful chasm is
in progress.

The celebrated pulpit orator, Robert Hall, always spoke of the scenery
of this region as having done very much in his early days to form his
notions of the beautiful. In one of his most