Adventure, August 1917 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Robert Pinkerton </f, " ¢ Z A Ven a ON en | ; y a c | a s OAT, : - = oa ff a f > es /, ‘ Th s » \ Fan\ : Ne e A Re wOm y ‘ \' Authors of “The Iron Factor,” “Guiding Clementine,” etc. CHAPTER I THE LEDGE ACH evening when Wallace Searles returned to his seat at the top of the gorge the emotions which had characterized his first visit to the spot returned with undiminished force. Silently, without movement, he sat on a boulder and, elbows on knees, chin in hand, stared at the scene before him. No one could escape the first sense of awe that was engendered by the spectacle. There are waterfalls far higher, there are volumes of crashing water far more stupen- dous, there are settings more beautiful. But this sheer, unbroken, perfect cataract gliding so easily and yet so irresistibly out and down, inspired with its invincible power through the view of the great lake behind it. From Wallace’s seat he could see the great stretch of water with its distant shore. it lay there quietly, seemingly immovable, and yet always it pushed and forced itself out and down to crash and boil upon the rocks so far below. That expanse of lake behind that great drop for which it seemed ‘to wait so patiently, gave to the waterfall a background of reserve force, of invincibility, of permanence, which no single stream, rushing through a narrow gorge to tumble with greater volume from a greater height, could possibly possess. It was to this fact, after the first awe had begun to diminish, that Wallace Searles’s technical mind always turned, to this and the natural advantages for power which the falls afforded. “If the greatest engineer in the world had been given the opportunity to regulate Nature exactly as he wished, he could not have done better,” he always thought, some- times muttered, as he made his evening study of each detail of the site. ‘“‘“A better dam than man could build, a high, dry, safe, ample site for the power- house, a head of water, and a volume, that Copyright, 1917, by The Ridgway Company in the United States and Great Britain. All rights reserved. 3 CoOnniclooolkxs.corn