ng and foaming down, as if a magic wand had touched the
rocks, and at each touch a springing fountain had gushed forth.

On our way back to the 'Flats,' we went a mile off the main road, to
visit another fall on Roaring Brook. The precipice here is some 250 feet
in height. A great slide has bared the rock for many yards on either
side of the fall, which has worn deep grooves for its passage, and
clings to the face of the mountain, as if it feared to lose itself amid
the savagery of the surrounding desolation. Here, as in all the
neighboring region, are plainly visible the terrible effects of the
great freshet of October 1st, 1856. We were told that, in the vicinity
of this fall, neither the heavy rain nor the rushing waters could for a
time be heard, only the rattling and battering of stones, as if the
Titans had again taken to pelting the poor earth with whatever of rock
and bowlder they could lay their hands upon. The State dam at the outlet
of the lower Au Sable broke down, and the freed lake rushed out through
the valley, over the meadows, carrying away bridges, dams, mills,
houses, and whole fields of earth, with their crops. The Au Sable River
rose three feet in fifteen minutes, and many persons perished before aid
could reach them. Bowlders, rocks, trees, stumps, and timber were
whirled along by the boiling flood. Bowlders of six feet in diameter
were afterward found lying twenty feet above the bed of a brook where
trout had been caught before the freshet. They had been brought down
stream some forty rods, and piled one above another. The effects of the
rise were felt all the way to the mouth of the river, the high stone
bridge at Keeseville being the only one on the whole course left
standing, and that, to this day, bearing a stone inscription marking the
almost incredible height to which the water rose on that eventful first
of October. The inhabitants of the region sued the State for damages;
but as the dam had been constructed in consequence of a petition of
sundry of those inhabitants, for the purpose of running logs down the
river at all seasons, the court decided that the State was not
responsible for the consequences. John's Brook, which flows into the Au
Sable near the farmhouse at which we stayed, bears wild marks of this
desolating freshet; indeed, one can scarcely credit the fact that the
pretty little stream and smoothly purling river could ever have met in
such desperate conflict as is evidenced by t