648 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



ney falls. There are two streams and two falls, but they are so near that 

 they are known only as Champney falls. The stream on which they are 

 found is the second stream that flows into Swift river from the south 

 below Allen's saw-mill, and they are a mile and three quarters from the 

 road. Following a logging-road that leaves the wagon-road at the first 

 bridge below the mill, we cross the stream on which the falls are situated 

 just above where they begin. A person who goes without a guide, and 

 follows down the stream, will be at first disappointed, for all that is seen 

 is a small stream, with a few massive blocks of a granitoid rock. It is 

 true that even here there are immense caverns, and here the stream runs 

 between two blocks, and then over another, when it falls on the great 

 sloping ledge, and goes bounding along until it tumbles over a precipitous 

 ledge, and is lost to view. We see where the water takes its last leap, 

 yet nowhere does there seem to be anything very remarkable. But a 

 person ought to see all there is to be seen before judging. We climb 

 along the ledges, and, by following a rough path, get to the base of the 

 falls, yet there is nothing striking, nothing to see, certainly, that could 

 tempt a person to travel nearly two miles through the woods alone. We 

 are about to turn away sadly disappointed, when the eye catches a sun- 

 beam reflected from the water, that seems to be struggling through the 

 leafy foliage. Then, just there, not a dozen rods away, but almost hidden 

 by the trees, we discover one of the most beautiful falls in New Hamp- 

 shire. We stand just at the foot of the fall, on the stream we followed 

 down. The sunbeams fall aslant through the trees ; the eye follows the 

 high perpendicular ledge that runs at right angles to the stream, and 

 through the leaves of the trees we can see a small stream where it comes 

 over the ledge, then falls down, striking the rock that projects just enough 

 to throw the water in spray, and break, for an instant only, the continuity 

 of the stream. In the entire fall there are three of these projections, 

 where the water is thrown in spray, and, after the last continuous fall, it 

 rests in a quiet basin, where it flows out and runs into the stream we had 

 followed down. The entire fall may be sixty feet; and opposite, thirty 

 feet distant, there is a ledge as high as that from which the water falls, 

 so that probably where this gorge now is there was once an immense 

 trap dyke, that has been disintegrated and carried away, and now we 

 have the beautiful falls. 



