direction a quarter of a mile below. Here the shore was bold
and beautiful. The sheer rock sprang up two hundred feet from
the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall;
sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in
other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away
into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this
variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar's
length. Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for
in this place was the strength of the channel. The down tides
rushed by here furiously; but it was still water now, and the
little boat went smoothly and quietly on, the sound of the
oars echoing back in sharp quick return from the rock. It was
all that was heard; the silence had made those in the boat
silent; nothing but the dip of the oars and that quick mockery
of the rowlocks from the wall said that anything was moving.

But as they crept thus along the foot of the precipice, the
other shore was unfolding itself. One huge mountain had been
all along in sight, over against them, raising its towering
head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water's
edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer's clothing,
except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred
feet shewed the solid stone. Now the fellow mountain, close
beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point of the
promontory was gained, the whole broad north scene opened upon
the eye. Two hills of equal height on the east shore looked
over the river at their neighbours. Above them, on both
shores, the land fell, and at the distance of about eight
miles curved round to the east in an amphitheatre of low
hills. There the river formed a sort of inland sea, and from
thence swept down queen-like between its royal handmaids on
the right hand and on the left, till it reached the promontory
point. This low distant shore and water was now masked with
blue, and only the nearer highlands shewed under the mask
their fine outlines, and the Shatemuc its smooth face.

At the point of the promontory the rocky wall broke down to a
low easy shore, which stretched off easterly in a straight
line for half a mile, to the bottom of what was called the
north bay. Just beyond the point, a rounded mass of granite
pushed itself into the water out of reach of the trees and
shewed itself summer and winter barefacedly. This rock was
known at certain states of the tide to be in the way of