ROARING WATERS. 
63 
could touch the blue from those high cliffs ! 
How far beyond the power of words to paint 
the awful grandeur of these riven rocks ! 
They are too vast and stern to awaken poetic 
inspiration. What is the fiercest human passion 
to the throes that rent earth’s bosom when these 
cliffs were formed! 
Ages of human history must clothe their deep 
recesses with memories of heroic deeds, of bitter 
griefs, and tender loves, before the heart can find, 
like the pine and lichen, soil in which to fasten 
itself and cling about them in poetic familiarity. 
Into what endless variety the canon shapes 
itself! The rocky walls receding with a sudden 
curve one moment, until a garden spot might lie 
between them and one bank of the stream, then 
as suddenly approaching each other, until the 
water alone has room and the road is built almost 
wholly above it. Now we are on one bank, now 
on the other, but always with its deafening thun- 
der in our ears. There the granite rocks rise, 
bare and stern, hundreds of feet without a spray 
of foliage — here they are broken into wild, irreg- 
ular masses, above and among which evergreens 
and the lighter leaves of rock-maples and aspens 
sigh and quiver. There the stream is half hidden 
from our sight by a fringe of clematis and alders 
— here its spray is in our faces and its dashing 
green-tinted waters hold our gaze with a fascina- 
