THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
181 
edge. I noticed some conchoidal hollows more than a 
foot in diameter. I picked up a small thin piece which 
had so sharp an edge that I used it as a dull knife, and 
to see what I could do, fairly cut off an aspen one inch 
thick with it, by bending it and making many cuts; 
though I cut my fingers badly with the back of it in the 
meanwhile. 
From the summit of the precipice which forms the 
southern and eastern sides of this mountain peninsula, 
and is its most remarkable feature, being described as five 
or six hundred feet high, we looked, and probably might 
have jumped down to the water, or to the seemingly 
dwarfish trees on the narrow neck of land which connects 
it with the main. It is a dangerous place to try the 
steadiness of your nerves. Hodge says that these cliffs 
descend “ perpendicularly ninety feet ” below the surface 
of the water. 
The plants which chiefly attracted our attention on this 
mountain were the mountain cinquefoil ( Potent ilia tri - 
dentato ), abundant and in bloom still at the very base, by 
the water-side, though it is usually confined to the sum¬ 
mits of mountains in our latitude; very beautiful hare¬ 
bells overhanging the precipice; bear-berry; the Can¬ 
ada blueberry ( Vaccinium Canadense ), similar to (the V 
Pennsylvanicum ) our earliest one, but entire leaved and 
with a downy stem and leaf; I have not seen it in Mas¬ 
sachusetts ; Diervilla trijida; Microstylis ophioglossoides , 
an orchidaceous plant new to us; wild holly ( Nemopan - 
thes Canadensis ) ; the great round-leaved orchis ( Platan - 
thera orbiculata ), not long in bloom; Spiranthes cernua , 
at the top; bunch-berry, reddening as we ascended, 
green at the base of the mountain, red at the top; and 
the small fern, Woodsia ilvensis , growing in tufts, now in 
