about nine o'clock
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 the water obtain a little passage , than it began to clear the way for itself , gushing out in a torrent , through the pass already mentioned .