limestone,
and often presents a wall of unbroken surface. Near the hotel a
flight of very alarming steps leads down to the bed of the
stream, and on reaching it you find yourself enclosed in a deep
abyss of solid rock, with no visible opening but that above your
head. The torrent dashes by with inconceivable rapidity; its
colour is black as night, and the dark ledge of rock on which you
stand, is so treacherously level with it, that nothing warns you
of danger. Within the last three years two young people, though
surrounded by their friends, have stepped an inch too far, and
disappeared from among them, as if by magic, never to revisit
earth again. This broad flat ledge reached but a short distance,
and then the perpendicular wall appears to stop your farther
progress; but there is a spirit of defiance in the mind of man;
he will not be stayed either by rocks or waves. By the aid of
gunpowder a sufficient quantity of the rock has been removed to
afford a fearful footing round a point, which, when doubled,
discloses a world of cataracts, all leaping forward together in
most magnificent confusion. I suffered considerably before I
reached the spot where this grand scene is visible; a chain
firmly fastened to the rock serves to hang by, as you creep along
the giddy verge, and this enabled me to proceed so far; but here
the chain failed, and my courage with it, though the rest of the
party continued for some way farther, and reported largely of
still increasing sublimity. But my knees tottered, and my head
swam, so while the rest crept onward, I sat down to wait their
return on the floor of rock which had received us on quitting
the steps.

A hundred and fifty feet of bare black rock on one side, an equal
height covered with solemn cedars on the other, an unfathomed
torrent roaring between them, the fresh remembrance of the
ghastly legend belonging to the spot, and the idea of my children
clinging to the dizzy path I had left, was altogether sombre
enough; but I had not sat long before a tremendous burst of
thunder shook the air; the deep chasm answered from either side,
again, again, and again; I thought the rock I sat upon trembled:
but the whole effect was so exceedingly grand, that I had no
longer leisure to think of fear; my children immediately
returned, and we enjoyed together the darkening shadows cast over
the abyss, the rival clamour of the torrent and the storm, and
that delightful exaltation of the sp