The Waters Though So Broken
In Their Descent, Are Deliciously Green.
This color, as seen early
in the morning or just as the sun has set, is so bright as to give
to the place one of its chiefest charms.
This will be best seen from the farther end of the island - Goat
Island as it is called - which, as the reader will understand,
divides the river immediately above the falls. Indeed, the island
is a part of that precipitously-broken ledge over which the river
tumbles, and no doubt in process of time will be worn away and
covered with water. The time, however, will be very long. In the
mean while, it is perhaps a mile round, and is covered thickly with
timber. At the upper end of the island the waters are divided,
and, coming down in two courses each over its own rapids, form two
separate falls. The bridge by which the island is entered is a
hundred yards or more above the smaller fall. The waters here have
been turned by the island, and make their leap into the body of the
river below at a right angle with it - about two hundred yards below
the greater fall. Taken alone, this smaller cataract would, I
imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known; but taken in
conjunction with the other, it is terribly shorn of its majesty.
The waters here are not green as they are at the larger cataract;
and, though the ledge has been hollowed and bowed by them so as to
form a curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss
as it does at the horseshoe up above.
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