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The forest flowers, the gray stumps in our fields, and the heaving surface of our wild hill-sides, are not, however, the only waymarks to tell the brief course of cultivation about us. These speak of the fallen forest; but here, as elsewhere, the waters have also left their impression on the face of the earth, and in these new lands the marks of their passage are seen more clearly than in older countries.


They are still, in many places, sharp and distinct, as though fresh from the workman's hand. Our valleys are filled with these traces of water-work; the most careless observer must often be struck with their peculiar features, and it appears remarkable that here, at an elevation so much above the great western lakes, upon this dividing ridge, at the very fountain head of a stream, running several hundred miles to the sea, these lines are as frequent and as boldly marked as though they lay in a low country subject to floods. Large mounds rise like islands from the fields, their banks still sharply cut; in other spots a depressed meadow is found below the level of the surrounding country, looking like a drained lake, enclosed within banks as plainly marked as the works of a fortification; a shrunken brook, perhaps, running to-day where a river flowed at some period of past time. Quite near the village, from the lane where we were walking this evening, one may observe a very bold formation of this kind; the bank of the river is high and abrupt at this spot, and it is scooped out into two adjoining basins, not unlike the amphitheaters of ancient times.

The central horn, as it were, which divides the two semicircles, stretches out quite a distance into a long, sharp point, very abrupt on both sides. The farther basin is the most regular, and it is also marked by successive ledges like the tiers of seats in those ancient theatres. This spot has long been cleared of wood, and used as a wild pasture; but the soil has never yet been broken by the plough, and we have often paused here to note the singular formation, and the surprising sharpness of the lines. Quite recently they have begun to dig here for sand; and if they continue the work, the character of the place must necessarily be changed. But now, as we note the bold outline of the basin, and watch the lines worked by the waters ages and ages since, still as distinct as though made last year, we see with our own eyes fresh proofs that we are in a new country, that the meadows about us, cleared by our fathers, are the first that have lain on the lap of the old earth, at this point, since yonder bank was shaped by the floods.

Rural Hours by Susan Fenimore Cooper was originally published by George P. Putnam in 1850. A new, unabridged edition of Rural Hours was published by Dodo Press in 2008.