Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/40

36 In the immediate vicinity of the Falls, several large manufacturing establishments, and a thriving village have sprung up. Much of the water has been diverted from the main stream for their utilitarian purposes. This greatly detracts from the beauty of the place, which in its original state was strikingly bold and romantic. The good taste of the proprietors has endeavored to prevent any material change in the natural features of the scenery, and it is still a beautiful and interesting spot. At the time of the spring floods, the waters fill the whole channel, and for a few days pour through the chasm with great clamor and velocity. And during the dry weather of summer, when the channel is laid bare to view, a new gratification is afforded to the curious visitor, in the various fantastic figures and forms, into which the rocks have been wrought by the attrition of the eddying waters. How long they must have kept up this ceaseless flow, to have wrought the rough granite into such smooth and circular excavations from the depth of a finger, to the capacity of a cauldron, it is impossible to say. Those who prefer the wildness of nature to her more luxuriant scenes of cultivation, would be gratified with the pictures of Yantic Falls, painted many years since, by the venerable artist. Col. Trumbull, and now in the possession of G. J. W. Trumbull, Esq. of Norwich.

Tradition has added another point of interest to this spot, by associating it with the history of Indian warfare. In one of the sanguinary conflicts which