At the mouth of the lower gorge. There, the mountain stream emerged onto the first terrace of Split-Stone, everyone could feel the scent of wet lime plaster, crushed volcanic cement ash, and wet stone.
Forty experienced quarry masons from Old Flint had arrived in the valley three days prior, with eight heavy ox-wagons loaded with barrels of fiery volcanic cement from the southern Karst kilns. They were led by Mara Flint. A woman of forty-five with arms like seasoned oak, wearing a leather stonecutter’s apron and carrying an iron mason’s square.
“A dry-stone wall is fine for keeping sheep out of cabbage,” Mara called out over the roar of the current. She stood on the timber work frames of the Third Fluvial Weir. “But when eight thousand cubic feet of freezing alpine melt comes punching through this gorge in spring, you need high-pressure mortar that sets underwater and cures harder than bedrock!”
The physics of pouring high-pressure wear were etched into every foot of the ancient cascades.
Water drops through an eighty-foot upright gorge over six terraced steps. Then, its striking force multiplies with exponential speed. Without deep plunge basins and energy-draining away weir lips, the tumbling stream acts like a gritty saw, cutting through the bedrock foundation and undermining the stonework abutments from below.
