Connecticut western news., 1877-11-30
NO. 2l.
A CatskiIl Stream.

If there ever was a stream cradled in the rocks, detained lovingly by them, held and fondled in rocky lap or tossed in rocky arms, that stream IS the Rondout. It's course for several miles from it's head is over the stratified rock, and into this it has worn a channel that presents most striking and peculiar features. Now it comes silently along on the top of the rock, spread out and flowing over that thick, dark-green moss that is found only in the coldest streams; then drawn into narrow canal only four. or five feet wide, through which 1t shoots black and rigid, to be presently caught in deep basin with shelving, overhangingrocks,. beneath which the Phobe-bird builds in security and upon which the fisher man stands and casts his twenty or thirty feet of line without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages, or else into deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ..4t
 The surface rock is coarse sandstone superincumbent upon lighter colored conglomerate that looked like Shawan- gunk grits, and when this latter is reached by the water it seems to be rapidly disintegrated by it, thus form ein the deep excavations alluded to.
 My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in a mountain stream. The water was almost as transparent as the air-was, indeed. like liquid air; and as it lay in these wells and pits envel- oped in shadow, or lit up by a chance ray of the vertical sun, it was perpet- ual feast to the eye,-so cool, so deep, so pure; every reach and pool like a vast spring. You lay down and drank or dipped the water up in your cup and found it just the rightdegree ofrefresh- ing coldness. One is never prepared for the clearness of the water in these streams. It is always surprise, See them every year for a dozen years, and yet, when you first come upon one, you will utter an exclamation; saw noth- ing like it in the Adirondacks, nor have I in any other part of the country l have ever visited. Absolutely without stain or hint of inpurity, it seems to magnify like lens, so that the bed of the stream and the fish in it appear deceptively near. It is rare to find even trout-stream that is not little 'soff color," as they say of diamonds, but the waters in the section of which am writing have the genuine ray; it is the undimmed and untarnished diamond.
 If were a trout, I should ascend every stream til found the Rondout. It is the ideal brook. What homes these fish have, what retreats under the rocks, what paved or Jagged courts and areas, what crysral depths where no net or snare can reach them !-no mud, no sediment, but here and there in the clefts and seams of the rock patches of white gravel,-spawning-beds ready made. ,1r '
 The finishing touch is given by the moss with which the rock is everywhere carpeted. Even in the narrow grooves or channels where the water runs the the swiftest, the green lining is unbrok- en. It sweeps down under the stream and up again on the other side like some firmly woven texture. It sOftens every outline and cushions every stone, Al certain depth in the great basins and wells it of course ceases, and only the smooth swept Tagging of the place rock is visible.-Scribner's Monthly.