give a new and unexpected glory to the scene.
This time we ascend the mountain instead of deflecting as before. The
road is easy; there are no difficulties of access to the points of view
from the top of the tunnel, and they are undoubtedly the grandest. We
pass to the platform before described by a few steps from the main road.
It is a slab of rock projecting from an open patch of ground; a dead
cedar-tree is standing at its edge, throwing its gnarled and twisted
arms, as in wild and widowed sorrow, over the awful scene below. We now
see the great opposite amphitheatre of rock in added grandeur, for we
see it from above,--we see it across a chasm nine hundred feet wide and
five hundred feet deep, and the exposure being almost exactly eastern,
the long spears of the rising sun are being shattered on it. The effect
is inexpressibly grand. But there is one more circumstance to be added
to the scene; we do not see from this observatory the arch, the entrance
of the tunnel. A few yards farther the fearful chimney-shaped rock
invites to a more commanding view, but the ascent is dangerous; the
stone on top is loose, and so narrow that two persons can scarcely stand
on it. A single misstep, a moment's loss of balance, and we would fall
into eternity. But now the sense of peril is lost, or is rather mingled,
in the grandeur of the scene. It is a panoramic view. We have now the
whole sweep of the mural precipice opposite; the sun's glitter is
incessant on the polished stone; the trees which fringe the bottom
appear now scarcely more than shrubs; the entrance of the tunnel has now
come into view, and that which yesterday we thought so high and wide,
now appears, from our amazing height, as a stooped door-way. We imagine
the gloomy entrance into a cave of Erebus and Death, the broken rocks
lying within which look like black and mangled entrails. It is a fearful
picture,--it is that of a supernatural abode.

[This marvel of nature is not without its tradition,--one of
Indian origin,--in which is repeated, with suitable variations,
the familiar Lover's Leap narrative. A more prosaic and modern
interest attaches to it, in its having been chosen as the route
of a railroad, nature's contribution of a passage through a
difficult mountain wall.]

PLANTATION LIFE IN WAR TIMES.

WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.

[Russell, of former celebrity as war correspondent of _The
Times_, visited the seceded