172 A BED OF BOUGHS. 



The surface rock is a coarse sandstone superin- 

 cumbent upon a lighter-colored conglomerate that 

 looked like Shawangunk grits, and when this latter 

 is reached by the water it seems to be rapidly disin- 

 tegrated by it, thus forming the deep excavations al- 

 luded to. 



My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in 

 a mountain stream. The water was almost as trans- 

 parent as the air was, indeed like liquid air ; and 

 as it lay in these wells and pits enveloped in shadow, 

 or lit up by a chance ray of the vertical sun, it was 

 a perpetual feast to the eye, so cool, so deep, so 

 pure ; every reach and pool like a vast spring. You 

 lay down and drank or dipped the water up in your 

 cup and found it just the right degree of refreshing 

 coldness^ One is never prepared for the clearness 

 of the water in these streams. It is always a sur- 

 prise.^See them every year for a dozen years, and 

 yet, when you first come upon one, you will utter an 

 exclamation ; I saw nothing like it in the Adiron- 

 dacks, nor in Canada. ^Absolutely without stain or 

 hint of impurity, it seems to magnify like a lens, so 

 that the bed of the stream and the fish in it appear 

 deceptively near, ylt is rare to find even a trout- 

 stream that is not a little " off color," as they say ol 

 diamonds, but the waters in the section of which I 

 am writing have the genuine ray ; it is the undimmed 

 and untarnished diamond. 



If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream tiL 

 I found the Rondout. It is the ideal brook. Wha> 



