Mineralogy and Geology of the White Mountains. 123 
furrowed and rounded for a great distance in a very remarkable 
manner, into troughs bounded by large salient and re-entering 
curves, and presenting also many subordinate basins of consider- 
able size. 
The basin is of the same class with the pot-holes at the foot of 
cataracts, and owing to similar causes; but from the smallness of 
the stream, and the nature of the rock, a remarkably hard and 
compact granite, it is one of the most extraordinary cavities of 
the kind that has been described. 
In beauty it may justly rival the Castalian fountain; but as a 
chronometer it is most interesting to the geologist. 
Science has not yet discovered, by experiment and observation, 
the law of attrition of granite by running water; and the 
that flows here seems utterly inadequate to the production of the 
effect within the historical period, and would seem to carry back 
the antiquity of the world to a remote era. 
Granite Veins in Granite. 
These are very numerous, and on a large scale. There is a 
remarkable one of this character, on the right hand of the road, 
just north of the basin. The granite is fine grained, and dark, 
with mica or hornblende. The vein, on the contrary, is feld- 
