A NEW SUMMER-RESORT. 



waves of an ancient sea of which this was the coast. Through the openings in 

 the thicket of beautiful young cedars, you get new views of the. amphitheatre, 

 and of its perfectly circular form. The cliff maintains its height until, at the 

 gap, you find yourself on a lofty pinnacle of rock, overlooking the narrow pass, 

 like a sentinel-tower placed to guard the entrance from all intruders. But on 

 glancing to your right, or to the eastward, you find you are on a narrow point 

 of rock, scarcely ten feet in width, with a deep gulf in front and one on either 

 hand. On tracing the eastern margin of this elevated wall of rock, for it is 

 little more, and which we will call Sentinel Point, you find it is a long, very 

 narrow rib of rock, separating Green Lake from another, similar circular de- 

 pression east of it, in which at present there is no water, but which fills up and 

 overflows in the spring of the year. Nothing can exceed the steepness of the 

 slope or rather precipice, and the forest is too dense and dark to see its bottom 

 or extent. The young and vigorous may explore it ; but the most impressive 

 views are from above, and these may all be seen without laborious walking. 



Eeturning past your first point of observation, you now go to the western 

 part of the circular gorge. All around three-fourths of this principal cavity is 

 the same perpendicular precipice of the upper and harder limestone ; and even 

 that of the Water Lime group below, extending to the water, although covered 

 with trees, has a very precipitous slope. The lake itself is absolutely inacces- 

 sible without a staircase of two hundred steps at the lowest point of the rocks, 

 except at its natural gap on the east side, where a gateway would convert it into 

 a prison or Botany Bay. It was the weight, strength and toughness of the 

 Onondaga Limestone, that have preserved it, to become the huge cornice of this 

 roofless temple. Here at the west, just as at the south and north sides, the 

 horizontal strata forming the chasm are unbroken; but there is only a narrow 

 neck of rock, of an irregular form, about sixty feet wide, west of which is a 

 third depression similar to that of Green Lake, also forming a circle, but smaller 

 in size and easy of access, with the Water Lime group exposed at the bottom. 

 It has no water in it, but is covered with pasturage and young cedars. On the 

 west side, the Corniferous limestone rises to a great height, forming the loftiest 

 part of the tract. The rocks are less abrupt than around Green Lake, in fact 

 forming slopes and terraces. The Coliseum of Eome could here be recon- 

 structed, the sloping, rocky walls forming the seats for the audience, and much 

 of it is quite as high as the walls of the original Coliseum, which were 162 feet. 

 The interior, where the bottom fell out, represents the arena. The regular 

 basin-like manner in which the rock has been broken off in a circular form, 

 and sunk directly downward, is quite apparent; and, as the periphery is per- 

 fect, it seems impossible that the material could have been carried away by 

 running water, as it has no gap or outlet, as the parent Green Lake has. It 

 requires no practical or theoretical knowledge of geology to contrast the worn 

 and rounded appearance of the extensive bare pavement, both on the south and 

 north sides of the lake, which was evidently eaten away by the angry waves of 

 an ancient ocean, with the sharp and quarry-like edges of all the rocks exposed 

 in all of these great depressions. The high slender headland of Sentinel Point 

 could not have stood a week exposed to such a sea. The proof is strong that 

 the depressions were not worn out by water, either of a river or of an ocean, 

 or by glacial action, but by the sinking of the material, the broken fragments of 



