380 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



ridge, and leaving our horses there, we ascended the side 

 next to the east (for the ridge runs nearly north and south), 

 and, with much labor and fatigue, reached the spot where 

 the water had descended. It was near the top of the ridge, 

 in the midst of an exceedingly dense woods, especially of 

 undergrowth, so thick that it was very difficult to walk 

 through it. 



We found here a basin scooped out clean to the solid 

 rock, about five and one half feet deep, and thirty-nine feet 

 in diameter. The water, in cutting to this depth, had not 

 spent all its force, and it rebounded and did not touch the 

 ground again until it passed twenty-one feet down the slope 

 of the ridge. When it struck the ground again, it cut out, in 

 the earth which was very hard, mingled with stones, a space 

 about forty feet long, three feet deep and fifteen feet wide, 

 on the south side of its path, down the side of the ridge. 

 This path was about as wide as the basin, but as the 

 ground was very hard it was not torn out many inches 

 deep, except in places where deep gullies and holes were 

 formed quite down to the base of the mountain, which was 

 probably about half a mile. 



The few large trees which grew in the range of its path, 

 were nearly all left standing; but all the small growth, of 

 only a few inches in diameter, was either entirely torn out, 

 or prostrated down the hill, and the leaves torn off, so as to 

 cause the path to appear at a distance quite naked, and as 

 if fresh ploughed. 



As we returned to town by a different road, we discov- 

 ered, in a field near the road, on the side of a hill facing 

 the south east, seven small basins only a few inches deep, 

 and ten or twelve feet in diameter, in- a space of perhaps 

 fifty or sixty yards in diameter. These basins were not 

 in a row, as they were in all other places where more than 

 two were near together. Nor were they nearly at the same 

 distance apart, as the others were. Three of them were 

 almost touching each other, and the other four were more 



