OLD SHAG . 
151 
long and about twenty-five feet in perpendicular 
rise. With a stream twice or three times the 
volume of this brook, Paugus Falls would take 
rank as among the most beautiful in New Eng¬ 
land. Even as they are, they deserve a place 
in song instead of obscurity in an almost un¬ 
known corner of a pathless mountain. 
Not far above the twin cascades, the brook 
formerly shot over a polished ledge almost steep 
enough to form a perfect fall. Here a very 
unusual and interesting change had been worked 
in the rock and the course of the water by the 
action of frost. Just at the point where the 
polished rock bed of the stream was steepest, a 
crack had opened at right angles with the cur¬ 
rent. Of course water had filled this fissure 
and deepened it until in some winter night a 
sound of rending must have startled the forest 
and echoed afar down the gorge. The front of 
the ledge, measuring twenty yards or more from 
side to side and nearly half that distance from 
top to bottom, broke from its ancient foundation 
and slipped forward about eighteen inches, thus 
forming a perpendicular crevasse sixty feet long 
and twenty feet deep. Into this the stream 
plunged and vanished from sight. Standing 
just below the crevasse and looking up the 
smooth face of the ledge, I could see the eager 
water coming towards me, hurrying forward its 
