84 IN AND OUT OF ITHACA. 



ular fall of twenty feet, whose full rich tones are re- 

 echoed and varied by the sounding boards of rock. 

 From this place at low water, the entire length of the 

 creek may be traversed along its bed. Standing on the 

 top of the last- mentioned fall, and looking up the 

 stream, an exquisite series of six picturesque cascades, 

 one above the other, is seen splashing in the sunlight. 

 Their aggregate height is sixty feet. Two others of 

 eight feet each, are just out of sight around a little turn. 

 Pot-holes and water worn rocks abound in profusion in 

 the sides and floors, all of them curious, many of them 

 beautiful. 



Above these the banks are low, and the few exposed 

 rocks look like decayed masonry. The woods come 

 down to the water's edge, and the stream ripples se- 

 renely along under a leafy tunnel, over a pavement of 

 level plates of stone. After an abrupt bend the banks 

 suddenly rise more than a hundred feet above, and a 

 rare cascade of twenty-five feet blocks the way, while 

 the creek broadens until it nearly fills the bottom of the 

 ravine. Just above the fall there towers a curiously 

 bent, tapering column of stone, gray with lichens, and 

 draped with graceful clinging vines and festooned about 

 its base with ferns. The horizontal layers projecting 

 here and there furnish foot-holds for a daring and skill- 

 ful climber. This is known variously, as the ' ' Chim- 

 ney," the "Steeple," or as "Monument Rock." On 

 the opposite side an incomplete companion column rises 

 a few yards. Above these pillars are several pretty cas- 

 cades, all of them accompanied by the inevitable pot- 

 holes, of all sizes, and in all stages of formation. 



