The drought that still prevailed over northern Xew York and Xew England had so diminished the volume of the Opalescent Kiver, that we walked more than four miles in the bed of the stream upon boulders which fill it. We crossed it a hundred times or more, picking our way, and sometimes compelled to go into the woods in passing a cascade. The stream is broken into falls and swift rapids the whole distance that we followed it, and, when full, it must present a grand spectacle. At one place the river had assumed the bed of a displaced trap dyke, by which the rock has been intersected. The walls are perpendicular, and only a few feet apart -- so near that the branches of the trees on the summits interlace. Through this the water rushes for several rods, and then leaps into a dark chasm, full fifty feet perpendicular, and emerges among a mass of immense boulders. The Indians called this cascade She-gwi-en-daivhwe, or the Hanging Spear. A short distance above is a wild rapid, which they called Kas-kongshadi, or Broken Water.

The stones in this river vary in size, from tiny pebbles to boulders

THE HUDSON.

of a thousand tons ; the smaller ones made smooth by rolling, the larger ones, yet angular and massive, persistently defying the rushing torrent in its maddest career. They are composed chiefly of the beautiful labradorite, or opalescent feldspar, which form the great mass of the A(/anus-chion, or Black Mountain

range, as the Indians called this i^ ^ ^^^ ^g-^^^" ,