e pathway on the lower side, and winds round, gradually
ascending, until it meets the cleft of rock over which the celebrated
cedar stump hangs. Following this ledge to its termination, it brought
him thirty or forty feet from the ground, and placed him between two
deep fissures, one on each side of the gigantic column of rock on which
the aforementioned cedar stump stands.

This column stands out from the bridge, as separate and distinct as if
placed there by nature on purpose for an observatory to the wonderful
arch and ravine which it overlooks. A huge crack or fissure extends from
its base to the summit; indeed, it is cracked on both sides, but much
more perceptibly on one side than the other. Both of these fissures are
thickly overgrown with bushes, and numerous roots project into them
from trees growing on the precipice. It was between these that the
aforementioned ledge conducted him. Here he stopped, pulled off his coat
and shoes and threw them down to me. And this, in my opinion, is a
sufficient refutation of the story so often told, that he went up to
inscribe his name, and ascended so high that he found it more difficult
to return than to go forward. He could have returned easily from the
point where he disencumbered himself, but the fact that he did thus
prepare so early, and so near the ground, and after he had ascended more
than double that height on the other side, is clear proof that to
inscribe his name was not, and to climb the bridge was, his object. He
had already inscribed his name above Washington himself more than fifty
feet.

Around the face of this huge column, and between the clefts, he now
moved backward and forward, still ascending as he found convenient
foothold. When he had ascended about one hundred and seventy feet from
the earth, and had reached the point where the pillar overhangs the
ravine, his heart seemed to fail him. He stopped, and seemed to us to be
balancing midway between heaven and earth. We were in dread suspense,
expecting every moment to see him dashed in atoms at our feet. We had
already exhausted our powers of entreaty in persuading him to return,
but all to no purpose. Now it was perilous even to speak to him, and
very difficult to carry on conversation at all, from the immense height
to which he had ascended, and the noise made by the bubbling of the
little brook as it tumbled in tiny cascades over its rocky bed at our
feet. At length he seemed to discover that one of