CATARACTS. 



459 



through rocks, and spreads into a broad smooth 

 stream. 



The Wind Gafi^ and Water Gap^ as they are 

 called, or the openings through the Blue or Kittatinny 

 ridge or mountain, above Easton, are appearances too 

 curious to be omitted in a work of the present nature. 

 The windgafi is about a mile broad,* and the height 

 of the mountain at the gap is about 100 feet above 

 the present bed of the river. Mr. Charles Thomp- 

 son,t supposes, that the place where the Delaware 

 now flows through the mountain, was not its original 

 course, but that it passed through the wind gap. 

 *'To this opinion, however, the heigMof the moun- 

 tain in the gap, compared with the level of the 

 country, on either side, seems to be a decisive ob- 

 jection.^':!: 



" The Water Ga/i is a majestic scene. On either 

 side it is of vast height; the disrupture isnot of greater 

 extent than merely to afford a passage for the river, 

 and the faces of the mountain are abrupt almost to 

 a perpendicular. It is only within a few years, that 

 a very bad road has been cut out of this extreme 

 declivity, through the gap; and there are here indi- 

 cations, which without much aid of fancy, might in- 

 duce a belief, that this aperture was not originally 

 formed by nature, but that the waters collected be- 

 hind the mountain, have forced here a passage for 

 themselves by rending the mountain asunder. But 

 to this opinion there is also a powerful objection, 



• This refers to the top of the mountain, the bottom of the gap or 

 undulation in the mountain, is not a quarter of a mile broad, 



t The venerable secretary of Congress during the whole of the 

 American war. 

 % Si-^muel Sitgreaves, Esq, of Easton. 



