I jot this mem, in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come
to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks, many
of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive,
shaggy--what I call weather-beaten and let-alone--a rich underlay of
ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early
summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle
from the hoarse impetuous copious fall--the greenish-tawny, darkly
transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the rocks, with patches
of milk-white foam--a stream of hurrying amber, thirty feet wide, risen
far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with volume--every hundred
rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in that distance. A primitive
forest, druidical, solitary and savage--not ten visitors a year--broken
rocks everywhere--shade overhead, thick underfoot with leaves--a just
palpable wild and delicate aroma.