against the wilderness, by draining the pond, and coming at once into
the possession of a noble farm, cleared of trees and stumps, as it
might be by a _coup de main_. This would be compressing the
results of ordinary years of toil, into those of a single season, and
everybody was agreed as to the expediency of the course, provided it
were feasible.

The feasibility was soon ascertained. The stream which ran through the
valley, was far from swift, until it reached a pass where the hills
approached each other in low promontories; there the land fell rapidly
away to what might be termed a lower terrace. Across this gorge, or
defile, a distance of about five hundred feet, the dam had been thrown,
a good deal aided by the position of some rocks that here rose to the
surface, and through which the little river found its passage. The part
which might be termed the key-stone of the dam, was only twenty yards
wide, and immediately below it, the rocks fell away rapidly, quite
sixty feet, carrying down the waste water in a sort of fall. Here the
mill-wright announced his determination to commence operations at
once, putting in a protest against destroying the works of the beavers.
A pond of four hundred acres being too great a luxury for the region,
the man was overruled, and the labour commenced.

The first blow was struck against the dam about nine o'clock, on the 2d
day of May, 1765, and, by evening, the little sylvan-looking lake,
which had lain embedded in the forest, glittering in the morning sun,
unruffled by a breath of air, had entirely disappeared! In its place,
there remained an open expanse of wet mud, thickly covered with pools
and the remains of beaver-houses, with a small river winding its way
slowly through the slime. The change to the eye was melancholy indeed;
though the prospect was cheering to the agriculturist. No sooner did