Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,—
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep!"
TRENTON FALLS.
In the hills north of Utica, the West Canada Creek cuts its remarkable gorge at Trenton Falls. It is a vigorous stream, rising in the western slopes of the Adirondacks and flowing to the Mohawk. In getting down through the limestone rocks from the highlands to the plain adjacent to the river, it passes into the ravine, giving a magnificent display of chasms, cascades and rapids, in a gorge of such amazing construction that it is regarded as a wonder second only to Niagara. During the ages, the torrent has cut through over four hundred layers of the stratified limestone, exposing the geological formation to full view, with the fossil organic remains deposited there as the world was built. In descending the ravine, there are five prominent cataracts, besides rapids, all compressed within two miles distance, the aggregate descent being three hundred and twelve feet. This wonderful gorge was the Indian Kauy-a-hoo-ra, or the "Leaping Water," and from its color they called the stream Kahnata, the "amber water," a name readily corrupted into Canada Creek. The Dutch called the place after the Grand Pensioner of Holland, Oldenbarneveld, he having sent out the first colonists under a grant known as the "Holland Patent." It was in this region Grover Cleveland spent his early life. A grandson of Roger Sherman, who had charge of the Unitarian church here, is regarded as the discoverer of the ravine in 1805, and he did much to make it known to the world. His grave is within sound of the Sherman Fall.
Entering the chasm at the lower end, where the stream passes out from the rock terrace to the plain, the ravine is found to be about one hundred feet deep, the almost perpendicular rocky walls built up in level layers as if by hands, the well-defined separate strata being from one inch to a foot in thickness, and narrowest at the bottom. Hemlocks and cedars crown the blackened rocks, their branches hanging over the abyss, while far below, the boisterous torrent rushes across the pavement of broad flagstones forming its bed. Descending to the bottom, the impression is like being in a deep vault, this subterranean world disclosing operations lasting through ages, during which the rocks have slowly yielded to the resistless power of the water and frost that has gradually cut the chasm. Fossils and petrifactions found in the deepest strata are trod upon, and each thin layer of the walls, one imposed upon the other, shows the deposit of a supervening flood happening successively, yet eternity only knows how long ago. And ages afterwards the torrent came, and during more successive ages carved out the gorge, until it has penetrated to the bottom of the limestone.
The torrent flows briskly out of the long and narrow vault, while some distance above is the lowest of the series of cataracts—the Sherman Fall—where the water plunges over a parapet of rock forty feet high into a huge basin it has worked out. The amber-colored waters boil furiously in this cauldron. Above the Sherman Fall the stream flows through rapids, the chasm broadening and the lofty walls rising higher as the hill-tops are more elevated, mounting to two hundred feet above the torrent at a lofty point called the Pinnacle. The floor of the ravine is level, and becomes quite wide, with massive slabs, weighing tons, resting upon it, showing the power of freshets which bring them down from above, and will ultimately carry them completely through the gorge to its outlet, so resistless is the sweep of the raging flood at such times, when every bound these huge stones make over the rocky floor causes the neighboring hills to vibrate, the stifled thunder of their progress being heard above the roar of waters. At the head of this widened gorge is the High Falls, in a grand amphitheatre, the cataract broken into parts and combining all the varieties of cascade and waterfall, being one hundred feet high, and the walls of the chasm rising eighty feet higher to the surface of the land above, which keeps on rising as the ends of the limestone strata are surmounted. The top of this High Fall is another perpendicular wall stretching diagonally across the chasm, and below it the protruding layers of rock form a sort of huge stairway. Down this the waters fall in varying fashion, finally condensing as a mass of whirling, shifting foam into a dark pool beneath. This splendid cataract is fringed about with evergreens and shrubbery, for between the dark thin slabs of limestone are inserted thinner strata of crumbling shale, and these give root-hold to the cedars and other nodding branches clinging to the walls of the ravine. The waterfall begins at the top with the color of melted topaz, and is unlike anything elsewhere seen, for the hemlocks and spruces of the mountain regions impart the amber hue to the torrent. Descending, the changing tints become steadily lighter, until the brown turns to a creamy white, which is finally lost under the cloud of spray at the foot of the lower stairway slide, while beyond, the water rushes away black in hue and driving forward almost as if shot from a cannon.
Above is another great amphitheatre, floored with rocky layers, upon which the stream flows in gentler course. In this is the Milldam Fall, a ledge about fourteen feet high, over which the waters make a uniform flow all across the ravine. This has above it an expanded platform of level slabs almost a hundred feet wide, fringed on each side with cedars, the attractive place being called the Alhambra. At the upper end a naked rock protrudes about sixty feet high, from which a stream falls as a perpetual shower-bath. The creek rushes down another complex stairway in the Alhambra Cascade. The ravine above suddenly contracts, and the walls beyond change their forms into shapes of curves and projections. Another cascade of whirling, foaming waters is passed, and a new amphitheatre entered, where great slabs of rock have fallen from the walls and lie on the floor, ready to be driven down the ravine by freshets. The torrent here develops another curious formation, known as the Rocky Heart. Curved holes are being rounded out by whirling boulders of granite, which are kept constantly revolving by the running water, and thus readily act upon the softer limestones. The chasm goes still farther up to the Prospect Falls, a cataract twenty feet high, near the beginning of the ravine.
Canada Creek passes out of the lower end of the gorge, where the limestone layers are exhausted, and their edges fall off in terraces sharply to the lower level, and almost down to the surface of the stream. All about the broadened channel, as it flows away towards the Mohawk, lie the huge slabs and boulders driven down through the chasm by repeated freshets, with the amber waters foaming among them. This wonderful ravine is a geological mine, disclosing the transition rocks, the first containing fossil organic remains. In the lower part of the chasm they are compact carbonate of lime, extremely hard and brittle, and a dark blue, almost black, in color. At the High Fall, and above to the Rocky Heart, the upper strata are from twelve to eighteen inches thick, and composed of the crystallized fragments of the vertebræ of crinoidea and the shells of terebratulæ. These fossils of the Silurian period are numerous. The strata throughout the chasm are remarkably horizontal, varying, as they ascend, from one inch to eighteen inches in thickness. They are very distinct, and separated by a fine shaly substance which disintegrates upon exposure to the air or moisture. From the top to the bottom of the ravine small cracks extend down perpendicularly, and run in a straight line through the whole mass across the stream. These divide the pavements into rhomboidal slabs. The most interesting fossils are found, among them the large trilobite, a crustacean that could both swim and crawl upon the bottom of the sea. This extraordinary place is in reality a Titanic fissure, cracked through the crust of mother earth, down which roars and dashes a tremendous torrent.