HISTORY OF DERRYFIELD. 45 



eter. The supporting side-walls are from fifteen to thirty-two 

 feet vertical height. Still lower along the canon, and at varying 

 intervals, are other pools and basins, some of them many feet in 

 depth, and in diameter much larger than those described. At 

 all of these points, and high upon the front of the lateral walls 

 upon either side, is exhibited the same evidence of water-erosion, 

 as distinctly mapped upon the granite leaves as if drawn upon 

 sheets of modern card-board. 



At the extreme left of the upper fall, separated from it by 

 high, protruding masses of rock, and flowing at a little lower 

 level, is the run-brook before referred to, which courses through 

 the entire length of the gorge, entering the sunken valley below. 

 Tills brook has at first a winding and steep descent, and goes 

 trickling along the bed of the canon, broken in its course by a 

 series of beautiful cascades and miniature waterfalls, with many 

 fine pools and basins, some of them quite large and symmetri- 

 cal, with carved rock channels intervening. The brook itself, 

 however, as we know it to-day, is utterly incompetent to produce 

 even these minor but attractive features, the volume of water 

 being insufficient to account for them. The stream ran down 

 for a considerable distance independently, until it coalesqued 

 with the main current from the upper right hand fall. 



But this brook affords another and striking feature to which 

 we are impelled to direct attention. Just above the point of its 

 entrance, upon a level ledge, ten or twelve feet higher than any 

 conceivable stage of water within modern times, is a well-defined 

 and undoubted pot-hole, whose age must certainly be referred 

 to the same period as that of the gorge itself. As will appear 

 hereafter, it is important to remember that after a course of sev- 

 eral miles the water of this brook finds a way to the Souhegan, 

 through the extension of the valley southward. 



There is, almost of course, the inevitable Devil's Oven, the 

 interior blackened with smoke, the most reasonable and obvious 

 inference being that His Bedford Majesty united in his person 

 the functions of preacher, sculptor and cook. 



