There was no village there then, and the farms
which stretched from hill to hill were greatly less valuable than they
are now; but the woods and pastures, and meadows, lay exactly in the
right places, and had among them partridges, and squirrels, and
pigeons, and cattle, and sheep enough to make things pleasant;
besides, there were plenty of trout in those days, in the stream that
flows along through the valley midway between the hills. On the north
side, coming down through a gorge, or 'the gulf,' as we used to call
it, was a stream which, in the dry season of the year, was a little
brook, trickling over the rocks, but which, in the spring freshets, or
when the clouds emptied themselves on the mountain, was a wild,
foaming, roaring, and resistless torrent. In following this stream
into 'the gulf,' you walked on a level plain between walls of rock,
rising two or three hundred feet on either hand, and a dozen or more
rods apart, until you came to 'the falls,' down which the stream
rushed with a plunge and a roar, when its back was up, or over which,
in the dry season, it quietly rippled. These 'falls' were not
perpendicular, but steep as the roof of a Dutch barn, and it was a
great feat to climb them when the stream was low. Ascending about
fifty feet, you came to a broad flat rock, large and smooth as a
parlor floor, and which in the summer season was dry.
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