BOUND POND. 175 



may be reckoned within less than three miles. A ledge 

 of rocks forms the lower boundary of the lake, through 

 which the water, at some remote period, broke its way, and 

 it goes roaring down rapids for three-quarters of a mile, then 

 moves in a sluggish current across a plain of several miles 

 in extent ; then plunges down a steep descent for over a 

 mile and a half to subside again into quiet, and move on 

 with a sluggish current to plunge down the ledges again 

 into Tupper's Lake. There are no perpendicular falls of 

 more than twenty feet, but the water goes plunging, and 

 boiling, and foaming down shelving rocks, and eddying, 

 and whirling around immense boulders, rushing and roaring 

 through the gorges with a voice like thunder. These falls 

 are all useless here, and probably will be for centuries 

 to come ; but were they out in the " living world," in the 

 midst of civilization, with . a fertile and populous region 

 about them, they would soon be harnessed to great wheels, 

 and made utilitarian ; the clank of machinery would soon 

 be heard above the roar of their waters. They would do 

 an immensity of labor on their retnrnless journey to the 

 ocean. But 'here, they are utterly valueless, wasting their 

 mighty power upon desolate rocks, rushing in mad and 

 impotent fury forever through a region of barrenness and 

 sterility, so far as the uses of civilization are concerned, 

 a region where the manufacturer or the agriculturist will 

 never tarry, until the world shall be so full of people that 

 necessity will drive them to the mountains, to build up the 

 waste places of the earth. 



