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RIVERS. 



285 



supply these cascades flow from two small lakes in the Catskill Mountains, on the West 

 Bank of the Hudson. The upper cascade falls one hundred and seventy-five feet, and a 

 few rods below the second pours its waters over a precipice eighty feet high, passing 

 into a picturesque ravine, the banks of which rise abruptly on each side to the height of a 

 thousand to fifteen hundred feet. 



In the grandeur of their cataracts, also, the American rivers far surpass those of other 

 countries, though several falls on the ancient continent have a greater perpendicular height, 

 and are magnificent objects. In Sweden, the Gotha falls about 130 feet at Trolhetta, the 



greatest fall in Europe 

 of the same body of 

 water. The river is the only outlet of a lake, 

 a hundred miles in length and fifty in breadth, 

 which receives no fewer than twenty-four 

 rivers; the water glides smoothly on, in- 

 creasing in rapidity, but quite unruffled, until 

 it reaches the verge of the precipice ; it then darts 

 over it in one broad sheet, which is broken by some 

 jutting rocks, after a descent of about forty feet. Here 

 Fails of Trolhetta. begins a spectacle of great grandeur. The moving mass is 



tossed from rock to rock, now heaving itself up in yellow 



foam, now boiling and tossing in huge eddies, growing whiter and whiter in its descent, 

 till, completely fretted into one beautiful sea of snowy froth, the spray, rising in dense 

 clouds, hides the abyss into which the torrent dashes ; but when momentarily cleared 

 away by the wind, a dreadful gulf is revealed, which the eye cannot fathom. Upon the 

 arrival of a visitor at Trolhetta, a log of wood is sent down the fall, by persons who 

 expect a trifle for the exhibition. It displays the resistless power of the element. The 

 log, which is of gigantic dimensions, is tossed like a feather upon the surface of the water, 

 and is borne to the foot almost in an instant. In Scotland, the falls of its rivers are 

 seldom of great size ; but the rocky beds over which they roar and dash in foam and spray 

 the dark precipitous glens into which they rush and the frequent wildness of the 

 whole scenery around, are compensating features. The most remarkable instances are 



