70 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



way with so much exertion and care, that the 

 strongest soon began to be exhausted. Caverns opened 

 on every side ; and a more hideous, toilsome, break- 

 neck tramp I never took. Leaping a chasm at one 

 time, we paused upon the brow of an overhanging 

 cliff, while Cheney, pointing below, said, "There, 

 I've scared panthers from those caverns many times ; 

 we may meet one yet : if so, I think he'll remember 

 us as long as lie lives /" I thought the probabilities 

 were, that we should remember him much longer than 

 he would us. At least I had no desire to task his 

 memory, being perfectly willing to leave the matter 

 undecided. There was a stream somewhere ; but no 

 foot could follow it, for it was a succession of cascades, 

 with perpendicular walls each side hemming it in. 

 It was more like climbing a broken and shattered 

 mountain, than entering a gorge. At length, how- 

 ever, we came where the fallen rocks had mad,e an 

 open space around, and spread a fearful ruin in their 

 place. On many of these, trees were growing fifty 

 feet high, while a hundred men could find shelter in 

 their sides. As the eye sweeps over these fragments 

 of a former earthquake, the imagination is busy with 

 the past — the period when an interlocking range of 



