Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/15

 to rock, it sends forth from their excavations, deep, hollow sounds; as if thunders were born in those unvisited caverns. Tossing and foaming over the masses that obstruct its channel, it becomes compressed within narrow limits by two lofty precipices. One, rises frowning and perpendicular like the walls of a castle. A few hardy evergreens cling to its crown, and mark the spot whence the hunted Pequots were forced, by their conquerors the Mohegans, to their fatal plunge from time into eternity. Fancy, awakened by tradition, sometimes paints their forms mingling with the dark, slow waters that circle the base of that fearful cliff; or hears their spirits shrieking amid the clamour of the cataract. The opposite rampart presents a chain of rocks, of less towering height, interspersed with lofty trees, displaying the names of many who have visited and admired this wild and picturesque scenery. The enthusiast of Nature, who should conquer its precipitous descent, and stand upon the margin of the flood which creeps in death-like stillness through this guarded defile, might see on his right, the foam, the vapour, the tossing of a tempestuous conflict; on his left, a broad chrystal mirror, studded with emerald islets, and bounded by romantic shores, where peaceful mansions, embosomed in graceful shades, are seen through vistas of green. Beneath, the black and almost motionless waters seem, to him who gazes intensely, like the river of forgetfulness, annihilating the traces of a passing world. Above, the proud cliff rears its waving helmet,