in bade his sight-seers look at
the vast Roman profile that showed itself upon the rock, and then he
pointed out the wonderful Gothic arch, the reputed doorway of an
unexplored cavern, under which an upright shaft of stone had stood for
ages statue-like, till not many winters ago the frost heaved it from its
base, and it plunged headlong down through the ice into the unfathomed
depths below. The unvarying gloom of the pines was lit now by the
pensive glimmer of birch-trees, and this gray tone gave an indescribable
sentiment of pathos and of age to the scenery. Suddenly the boat rounded
the corner of the three steps, each five hundred feet high, in which
Cape Eternity climbs from the river, and crept in under the naked side
of the awful cliff. It is sheer rock, springing from the black water,
and stretching upward with a weary, effort-like aspect, in long impulses
of stone marked by deep seams from space to space, till, fifteen hundred
feet in air, its vast brow beetles forward, and frowns with a scattering
fringe of pines. There are stains of weather and of oozing springs upon
the front of the cliff, but it is height alone that seems to seize the
eye, and one remembers afterwards these details, which are indeed so few
as not properly to enter into the effect. The rock fully justifies its
attributive height to the eye, which follows the upward rush of the
mighty acclivity, steep after steep, till it wins the cloud-capt summit,
when the measureless mass seems to swing and sway overhead, and the
nerves tremble with the same terror that besets him who looks downward
from the verge of a lofty precipice. It is wholly grim and stern; no
touch of beauty relieves the austere majesty of that presence. At the
foot of Cape Eternity the water is of unknown depth, and it spreads, a
black expanse, in the rounding hollow of shores of unimaginable wildness
and desolation, and issues again in its river's course around the base
of Cape Trinity. This is yet loftier than the sister cliff, but it
slopes gently backward from the stream, and from foot to crest it is
heavily clothed with a forest of pines. The woods that hitherto have
shagged the hills with a stunted and meagre growth, showing long
stretches scarred by fire, now assume a stately size, and assemble
themselves compactly upon the side of the mountain, setting their
serried stems one rank above another, till the summit is crowned with
the mass of their dark green plumes, dense and so