United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But when the stream was swollen high enough the logs would clear this obstacle at a bound, like chargers leaping a fence, and plunge into the whirling eddies below. When the "R & P" drive, the name by which it was commonly known, reached Giant Gorge, it was confidently believed that there was enough water to carry it safely through. But such reckoning was wrong.
And while they rested in the afternoon, Muata came out of the gorge chanting his song of triumph at the head of the picked warriors who had gone down into the forest to hang on the trail of the wild men.
The river was closely shut in by mountains on both sides, and between them the raft seemed to be drifting slowly down into a dark and gloomy gorge, which, though it might have seemed simply sublime to a pleasant party viewing it together from the cheerful deck of a steamer, or from a comfortable carriage on the banks, was well fitted to awaken an emotion of awe and terror in the mind of a boy like Rollo, floating down into it helplessly on an enormous raft, with a hundred men, looking more like brigands than any thing else, marching solemnly to and fro at either end of it, working prodigious oars, with incessant toil, to prevent its being carried upon the rocks and dashed to pieces.
The rebels thrown out in advance of the gorge, on outlying hills, rocks and cliffs, were swept backward and into the gap by the resistless wave of blue rolling forward, fiery and thundering, gathering force and vehemence as it converged into a shortening semi-circle about the rugged stronghold.
I was near enough to bring him down; and, should the rifle prove to have been properly loaded, I was likely to have for my breakfast the choicest viand of the mountain region of America. I had raised my piece, sighted the noble game, and was about to pull trigger, when, to my astonishment, the animal sprang off from the cliff; and, turning back downward, fell heavily into the gorge!
"They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats, Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes, Array their backs in fine black coats, Then seize their negroes by their throats, And choke, for heavenly union. "They'll church you if you sip a dram, And damn you if you steal a lamb; Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam, Of human rights, and bread and ham; Kidnapper's heavenly union.
Steel towers were built on either side of the gorge, and on them was laid the platform of the bridge from the towers nearest to the water around and under the old structure. The upper works were carried to the solid ground on a level with the rim of the gorge and there securely anchored with steel rods and chains held in masonry.
However, a great natural effect holds its own against no little vulgarization, and Watkins Glen soon made us forget the trippers and the concrete footpaths and iron railings of the United States government, in the fantasies of its weirdly channelled gorge and mysterious busy water.
The stream led us, as we had expected, right to the mouth of the gorge that is, to where the rocks, which had heretofore been only a gentle slope clothed with abundant vegetation, suddenly contracted, became precipitous, and broken up into patches of rich fertility and sterile grandeur.
So straight into the timber that filled the mouth of the gorge we rode at a run, riding a few paces apart to avoid the possible potting of our little bunch, and a hundred yards within the outer fringe of timber we reached the water our animals so badly needed.
Word Of The Day