Zbe 2)ome of tbe laconics. 39 



j'ng precipices, sheer and perpendicular and dropping 

 forty or fifty feet, and only the narrow ravine of the 

 brook, and its shrubby, shelving ledges, to offer us a 

 way down. How we got out of the pocket 1 never 

 shall quite realise. But like many another hard 

 thing in life, we got through before we knew it, and 

 landed fully thirty feet below the edge of the fall, in 

 only two '^ drops," with no bones broken and only 

 one big rent in the company. Then the path grew 

 easier, and we had time to observe more apprecia- 

 tively the charming scene. It is a marvel that the 

 place is not better known and more frequently visited 

 by the summer populace of Sheffield and Egremont. 

 If such a wild and romantic glen were :n the White 

 Mountains or the Catskills, so rugged, so moist and 

 cool, so upholstered with moss and fern, it would be 

 sought from afar, and the tourist v/ould scatter the 

 shells of his hard-boiled-egg lunches on every stump 

 and boulder. But it is just as well that the possi- 

 bilities of this great ravine in the Dome should not 

 be sought out. Its beauties will remain the choice 

 possession of the few who have seen and loved them. 

 We sat us down beside the relics of the brook 

 and ate our supper in the forest twilight, to the 

 sweet accompaniment of a tinkling little rill, all that 

 the drought had spared of the sturdy stream. Then, 

 when we had carefully draped and repaired the tall 

 dominie so that he might venture again among his 

 kind, we trudged through the dust and the dusk 

 a tedious five miles to the cottage. 



