278 CLIMBING THE FALLS A SLIDE. 



torrent. In following this stream into ' the gulf,' yon 

 walked on a level plain between walls of rock, rising two or 

 three hundred feet on either hand, and a dozen or more rods 

 apart, until you came to ' the falls,' down which the stream 

 rushed with a plunge and a roar, when its back was up, or 

 over which, in the dry season, it quietly rippled. These 

 ' falls ' were not perpendicular, but steep as the roof of a 

 Dutch barn, and it was a great feat to climb them when the 

 stream was low. Ascending about fifty feet, you came to a 

 broad flat rock, large and smooth as a parlor floor, and 

 which in the summer season was dry. Well, one day, in 

 company with a boy who was visiting me, I went up to the 

 ' falls/ and we concluded to climb the shelving rocks to the 

 ' table ;' and taking off our shoes and stockings, entered upon 

 the perilous ascent for such to some extent it was. Hands 

 and feet, fingers and toes, were all put in requisition. My 

 friend began the ascent before I did, and was half way%p 

 when I started. I ought to have said, that at the foot of 

 the ' falls/ was a basin, worn away by the torrent, and in 

 which the water, clear and cold, then stood to the depth of 

 three or four feet. We were toiling painfully up, when I 

 heard a rush above, and in an instant my friend came like 

 an arrow past me, sliding down the shelving rocks on his 

 back, or rather in a half-sitting posture, his rear to the 

 rocks. I won't undertake to say that the fire flew as he 

 went by me, for the rocks were slate, and therefore such a 

 phenomenon was not likely to occur, but the entire absence 

 of the seat of my friend's pantaloons, and the blood that 



