FROM TIMES PAST . 
     
    
   
   
    
     THE DEVIL ' S PUNC HBOWL 
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
     By Jeremiah S. Clark 
     
    
   
   
    
     (Reprinted from the Prince Edward 
     
     Island Magazine, 1903. Vol. 5(2), 
     
     pages 50-53.) 
     
    
   
   
    
     You may locate it, if you will, 
     
     beside the Old Malpeque Road, amid 
     
     the Granville hills, and almost on 
     
     the stage road from Breadalbane to 
     
     the shore. It is no bottomless lake, 
     
     nor horrible hole, hidden far away 
     
     amid untrodden forests, nor is it 
     
     mentioned in guide-books as a centre 
     
     of attraction where strange wild 
     
     creatures dwell, and tourists travel 
     
     in the summertime. True, Brimstone 
     
     Hollow lies quite close at hand; and 
     
     awful are the legends that were once 
     
     quite sagely told, though now of course forgotten since men have "so much to do." 
     
     See it and live; then drink of it and die. 
     
    

    
     Why yes, I have been there, in early April, too; in fact I saw it yesterday, 
     
     and that is why I write. It was a wild uncanny place; great snow-banks lined the 
     
     border round, and held the lofty spruce-limbs firmly bound; 
     
    

    
     "Gray birch and aspen wept beneath," 
     
     a score of petty torrents rushed from under twenty jutting rocks, and mingled in ‘ 
     
     the hole below as many varied tints of red. Down thirty feet I climbed alone, 
     
     within that roaring bowl of punch. It is a fiendish place at any time, but 
     
     yesterday the task would baffle any tongue. I am no adept at describing punch, 
     
     but here flowed every liquor true to name as are the mixtures famous vendors 
     
     blend. 
     
    

    
     Yonder is the full red wine pouring over its precipice! that, - what may it 
     
     not be, with its peaty tint, as it oozes from amongst fallen leaves? while, here 
     
     at hand, various translucent streams pour in their contributions, with these 
     
     pearly jets whose each drop glitters as it falls into the seething bowl. 
     
    

    
     How the place re-echoed as the streamlets rattled down! tumbling sharp rocks 
     
     the frost had burst a few short months before, and held until an added warmth 
     
     released them for their downward plunge, - how the hoarse roar reverberated in that 
     
     pent-up bowl, until thrown upward to the vault above! I revelled in my new 
     
     discovery, it was a feast to stand there and enjoy it all alone. I spoke aloud; 
     
    

    
     I tried my voice to Bryant's famous lines: - 
     
     "To him who in the love of Nature 
     
     Holds communion with her visible forms, 
     
     She speaks a various language . . . . ..." 
     
    

    
     Here I had found a miniature Niagara; with a far deeper crescent, and I think 
     
     a richer bass; for the echoes were caught up and carried to my ear, not lost in the 
     
     awful lunge and roar of that mighty mother of waters, which still disappointed me 
     
     from every stand, until I went beneath its tons of spray, and felt its mighty 
     
     power thrill my soul. Niagara's voice is grand - but twenty times a season on 
     
     our outside shore we have sea-scapes almost as grand as any in the world; and 
     
     even here we may learn many things, if we but cultivate the ears that hear. ‘ 
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
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