Another of my trouting pilgrimages was to a famous place, called Stony Clove, among the mountains of Shaudaken. It is a deep perpendicular cut, or gorge, between two mountains, two thousand feet in depth, from twenty feet to four hundred in width, and completely lined, from base to summit, with luxuriant vegetation. It is watered by a narrow but deep brook, which is so full of trout, that some seven hundred were captured by myself and two others in a single day. When I tell you that this spot is only about one hundred miles from New York, you will be surprised to learn, that in its immediate vicinity we saw no less than two bears, one doe with two fawns, and other valuable game.
In some parts of this Clove the sunshine never enters, and whole tons of the purest ice may be found there throughout the year. It is, indeed, a most lonely and desolate corner of the world, and might be considered a fitting type of the Valley of the Shadow of Death; in single file did we have to pass through it, and in single file do the sons of men pass into the grave. To spend one day there, we had to encamp two nights; and how we generally manage that affair I will mention presently.
In returning from Stony Clove, we took a circuitous route, and visited the Mountain House. We approached it by the way of the celebrated Kauterskill Fall, which I will describe to you in the graphic language of Cooper, as you may not remember the passage in his “Pioneer.” “Why there’s a fall in the hills, where the water of two little ponds, that lie near each other, breaks out of their bounds, and runs over the rocks into the valley. The stream is, may be, such a one as would turn a mill, if so useless a thing was wanted in the wilderness. _But the Hand that made that ‘Leap’ never made a mill!_ There the water comes croaking and winding among the rocks, first so slow that a trout might swim in it, and then starting and running, just like any creature that wanted to make a fair spring, till it gets to where the mountain divides, like the cleft foot of a deer, leaving a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet, and the water looks like flakes of snow afore it touches the bottom, and then gathers itself together again for a new start, and, may be, flutters over fifty feet of flat rock, before it falls for another hundred, where it jumps from shelf to shelf, first running this way and that way, striving to get out of the hollow, till it finally comes to the plain.”