41 



of t]io waters to the l)ottom of the chasm in as many serier-i of 

 tumbles. 



The main vohinie flows tlirough the second fissure from the 

 Virginia shore, falling fifty feet in about eight hundred feet 

 of distance^ the last tumble being nearly a perpendicular fall 

 of about fifteen feet, separated f rem this by a wall of rock, a 

 smaller volume rushes between it and the precipice forming 

 the Virginia sliore. Botli of tliesc toi-rents are received in a 

 deep basin and proceed from thence, and following the trans- 

 verse cleft to the Maryland side, where it deflects nearly a 

 right angle, escape by a longitudinal cleft of about the same 

 width, ilowing at a moderate velocity. 



Another of these fissures leading into the transverse chasm 

 marks out the Maryland shore, and formerly conducted 

 another volume of water, and was called the Little Eiver. 

 But since the erection of the dam of the Washington Water 

 Works from an island in the middle of the river to the Mary- 

 land shore, no water flows in this channel except what is let 

 out of the Avaste weir. The space intervening between the 

 currents next to the Virginia shore and Little River, is called 

 Falls Island. During floods the waters find their way over 

 nearly all of its rugged surface, and are, for the most part, 

 precipitated into the chasm below, through another of these 

 parallel fissures near the middle of the lower end. of tiie island. 

 Each of these fissures present at their entrance into the trans- 

 verse chasm nearly the same declivity. 



The waters, at ordinary stages, after being precipitated by 

 any of these channels from the ledge above, all find an exitb}^ 

 the same channel, and which fiows in the same line as that of 

 Little River produced. In its higher stages there are two other 

 out-lets, one following the transverse cleft to its end on the 

 left, where deflecting a right angle to the ?ight, it follows the 

 base of the wall built to sustain the Chesapeake and Ohio 

 Canal. The other runs in a straight line between two rock 

 walls^ with a width of about forty feet, and begins at the 

 transyerse fissure about five hundred feet east of where Little 

 River enters it. Both reach the main channel about eight 

 hundred feet below this point. 



The first place we examined, with a view of providing a 

 G 



