The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864, page 119 by Various Authors
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ing the top, adds to the mystery and the apparent elevation. The campanula, as is usual with this delicate blossom, hangs out its blue bella and slender foliage from every jutting cornice and earth-filled cranny. Below, the water has worn away a series of steep, narrow steps, and comes leaping 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 d