old song says,

"First upon the heel-tap, then upon the toe,
Wheel about, and turn about, and do just so."

Your topography is entirely dislocated. You must begin your
acquaintance anew. Fresh lines and curves, new forms and faces and
chameleon tints, thrust you off from the secrets of the Storm-Kings.
While you fancy yourself to be battering down the citadel, you are but
knocking feebly at the out-works. You have caught a single phase, and
their name is legion. Infinite as light, infinite as form, infinite as
motion, so infinite are the mountains. Purple and intense against the
glowing sunset sky, the Pilot range curves its strong outlines, or
shimmers steely-blue in the noonday haze. Day unto day uttereth
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge of their ever-vanishing
and ever-returning splendors. New every morning, fresh every evening,
we fancy each pageant fairer and finer than the last. Every summer
hour, a messenger from heaven, is charged with the waiting landscape,
and drapes it with its own garment of woven light, celestial broidery.
Sunshine crowns the crests, and stamps their kinship to the skies.
Shadows nestle in the dells, flit over the ridges, hide under the
overhanging cliffs, to be chased out in gleeful frolic by the slant
sunbeams of the mellow afternoon. Clouds and vapors and unseen hands
of heaven flood the hills with beauty. They have drunk in the warmth
and life of the sun, they quiver beneath his burning glance, they lie
steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate, rosy red dropping
away into pale gold, emeralds dim and sullen where they ripple down
towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black
massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing,
and the earth sitteth still and at rest.

On such an evening, never to be forgotten, we stood alone with the
night. Day had gone softly, evening came slowly. There was no speech
nor language, only hope and passion and purpose died gently out.
Individualities were not, and we stood at one with the universe, hand
in hand with the immortals, silent, listening. It was as if the
heavens should give up their secret, and smite us with the music of the
spheres. Suddenly, unheralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah came
the full moan, a silver disc, a lucent, steady orb, globular and grand,
filling the valleys with light, touching all things into a hushed and
darkling splendor. To us, sta