The Great Bore
A Souvenir Of The Hoosac Tunnel

55 long distance below. Night had come on, making it too dark and dangerous to search for the lost creature, so Hudson went home empty-handed, but the next day he returned to the spot and after a long hunt found the carcass of the deer at the bottom of a deep ravine, which served as the channel of a brook. To the brook and the cave he gave his name. The brook stills bears the name of Hudson’s brook, but the cave has long been known as the Natural Bridge. The Natural Bridge is one of the wildest and most perfect pieces of nature’s work in all Berkshire. It is probable that long before the clays of the white man, the water ran over the rock which now forms its roof, falling as a cascade into the gorge below, but that gradually, finding some small opening in the limestone rocks, it worked its channel to its present depth and dimensions. The fissure through which the water rushes is white marble, but so dis- colored by time and the action of the waters*that the stones are gray. The upper end of the fissure is very narrow, but widens after the descent of the water so as to form a spacious chamber between the crags. The bridge spans a chasm 300 feet long and 60 feet in depth. In times of low water it is possible to walk through this chasm under the bridge, but the passage made by the stream is very crooked and interrupted by fallen wrecks and deep pools of water.