ur houses and a
saw-mill. The dam of the latter was filled with such clear water that
it seemed very shallow, and not ten or twelve feet deep, as it really
was. The fish were as conspicuous as if they had been in a pail.

Two miles farther up we suited ourselves and went into camp.

If there ever was a stream cradled in the rocks, detained lovingly by
them, held and fondled in a rocky lap or tossed in rocky arms, that
stream is the Rondout. Its course for several miles from its head is
over the stratified rock, and into this it has worn a channel that
presents most striking and peculiar features. Now it comes silently
along on the top of the rock, spread out and flowing over that thick,
dark green moss that is found only in the coldest streams; then drawn
into a narrow canal only four or five feet wide, through which it
shoots, black and rigid, to be presently caught in a deep basin with
shelving, overhanging rocks, beneath which the phoebe-bird builds in
security, and upon which the fisherman stands and casts his twenty or
thirty feet of line without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then
into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth,
circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages;
or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the
water glides without a ripple.

The surface rock is a coarse sandstone superincumbent upon a
lighter-colored conglomerate that looks like Shawangunk grits, and
when this latter is reached by the water it seems to be rapidly
disintegrated by it, thus forming the deep excavations alluded to.

My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in a mountain stream. The
water was almost as transparent as the air,--was, indeed, like liquid
air; and as it lay in these wells and pits enveloped in shadow, or lit
up by a chance ray of the vertical sun, it was a perpetual feast to the
eye,--so cool, so deep, so pure; every reach and pool like a vast
spring. You lay down and drank or dipped the water up in your cup, and
found it just the right degree of refreshing coldness. One is never
prepared for the clearness of the water in these streams. It is always
a surprise. See them every year for a dozen years, and yet, when you
first come upon one, you will utter an exclamation. I saw nothing like
it in the Adirondacks, nor in Canada. Absolutely without stain or hint
of impurity, it seems to magnify like a lens, so that the bed of the
stream a