in the rocks, which ran at right angles
with the passage they were in, but which, unlike that, was open to the
heavens, and entered another cave, answering to the description of the
first, in every essential particular.

"Such old foxes as Chingachgook and myself are not often caught in a
burrow with one hole," said Hawkeye, laughing; "you can easily see the
cunning of the place--the rock is black limestone, which everybody knows
is soft; it makes no uncomfortable pillow, where brush and pine wood is
scarce; well, the fall was once a few yards below us, and I dare to say
was, in its time, as regular and as handsome a sheet of water as any
along the Hudson. But old age is a great injury to good looks, as these
sweet young ladies have yet to l'arn! The place is sadly changed! These
rocks are full of cracks, and in some places they are softer than at
othersome, and the water has worked out deep hollows for itself, until
it has fallen back, ay, some hundred feet, breaking here and wearing
there, until the falls have neither shape nor consistency."

"In what part of them are we?" asked Heyward.

"Why, we are nigh the spot that Providence first placed them at, but
where, it seems, they were too rebellious to stay. The rock proved
softer on each side of us, and so they left the centre of the river bare
and dry, first working out these two little holes for us to hide in."

"We are then on an island?"

"Ay! there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and
below. If you had daylight, it would be worth the trouble to step up on
the height of this rock, and look at the perversity of the water. It
falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles;
there, it skips; here, it shoots; in one place 'tis white as snow, and
in another 'tis green as grass; hereabouts, it pitches into deep
hollows, that rumble and quake the 'arth; and hereaway, it ripples and
sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gulleys in the old stone,
as it 'twas no harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the river
seems disconcerted. First it runs smoothly, as if meaning to go down the
descent as things were ordered; then it angles about and faces the
shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks backward, as if
unwilling to leave the wilderness, to mingle with the salt! Ay, lady,
the fine cobweb-looking cloth you wear at your throat, is coarse, and
like a fish-net, to little spots I can show you, where the river
f