You can go round it in your boat; or, on foot, you can
tread its narrow beach, resting, at times, beneath the lofty walls of
stone, richly wooded, which rise from it in various architectural forms.
In this stone, caves are continually forming, from the action of the
atmosphere; one of these is quite deep, and with a fragment left at its
mouth, wreathed with little creeping plants, that looks, as you sit
within, like a ruined pillar.
[Illustration: ARCHED ROCK FROM THE WATER]
The arched rock surprised me, much as I had heard of it, from the
perfection of the arch. It is perfect whether you look up through it
from the lake, or down through it to the transparent waters. We both
ascended and descended, no very easy matter, the steep and crumbling
path, and rested at the summit, beneath the trees, and at the foot upon
the cool mossy stones beside the lapsing wave. Nature has carefully
decorated all this architecture with shrubs that take root within the
crevices, and small creeping vines. These natural rains may vie for
beautiful effect with the remains of European grandeur, and have,
beside, a charm as of a playful mood in nature.
The sugar-loaf rock is a fragment in the same kind as the pine rock we
saw in Illinois. It has the same air of a helmet, as seen from an
eminence at the side, which you descend by a long and steep path. The
rock itself may be ascended by the bold and agile. Halfway up is a
niche, to which those, who are neither, can climb by a ladder.
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