there is set
a buttress, both of about equal height, their heads sloped out from the
main wall about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the north
is the most important; it is as sharp as the frontal angle of a bastion,
and sloped sheer away to the north-east, throwing out spur beyond spur,
until it terminates in a long low curve of russet precipice, at whose
foot a great bay of the glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a
lake. This spur is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont
Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the masonry
of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of examining the
character of its materials.

Sec. IV. Few architects would like to build with them. The slope of the
rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep with their ruins, a
mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull brick-red color, which yields
beneath the foot like ashes, so that, in running down, you step one
yard, and slide three. The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still
disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that
they look in places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a
rock; and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the
mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more intelligent
reverence for the great builder, when we find, in the middle of the mass
of these dead leaves, a course of living rock, of quartz as white as the
snow that encircles it, and harder than a bed of steel.

Sec. V. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the strength
of the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and the wall alike, the
courses of its varied masonry are seen in their successive order, smooth
and true as if laid by line and plummet,[34] but of thickness and
strength continually varying, and with silver cornices glittering along
the edge of each, laid by the snowy winds and carved by the
sunshine,--stainless ornaments of the eternal temple, by which "neither
the hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in
building."

Sec. VI. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance of any
universal law of natural building; there are solid as well as coursed
masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious that the most noble
cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe,
without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible
stability of precipitousness attained with