o the tree by which he had ascended, and turned his head
back as if spell-bound, to watch the descent of the fatal rock from
which he had just retreated. It tottered for two or three seconds, as if
uncertain which way to fall; and had it taken a sidelong direction, must
have dashed the adventurer from his place of refuge, or borne both the
tree and him headlong down into the river. After a moment of horrible
uncertainty, the power of gravitation determined a direct and forward
descent. Down went the huge fragment, which must have weighed at least
twenty tons, rending and splintering in its precipitate course the trees
and bushes which it encountered, and settling at length in the channel
of the torrent, with a din equal to the discharge of a hundred pieces of
artillery. The sound was re-echoed from bank to bank, from precipice to
precipice, with emulative thunders; nor was the tumult silent till it
rose into the region of eternal snows, which, equally insensible to
terrestrial sounds, and unfavourable to animal life, heard the roar in
their majestic solitude, but suffered it to die away without a
responsive voice.

The solid rock had trembled and rent beneath his footsteps; and
although, by an effort rather mechanical than voluntary, he had
withdrawn himself from the instant ruin attending its descent, he felt
as if the better part of him, his firmness of mind and strength of body,
had been rent away with the descending rock, as it fell thundering,
with clouds of dust and smoke, into the torrents and whirlpools of the
vexed gulf beneath. In fact, the seaman swept from the deck of a wrecked
vessel, drenched in the waves, and battered against the rocks on
the shore, does not differ more from the same mariner, when, at the
commencement of the gale, he stood upon the deck of his favourite
ship, proud of her strength and his own dexterity, than Arthur, when
commencing his journey, from the same Arthur, while clinging to the
decayed trunk of an old tree, from which, suspended between heaven and
earth, he saw the fall of the crag which he had so nearly accompanied.
The effects of his terror, indeed, were physical as well as moral, for
a thousand colours played before his eyes; he was attacked by a sick
dizziness, and deprived at once of the obedience of those limbs which
had hitherto served him so admirably; his arms and hands, as if no
longer at his own command, now clung to the branches of the tree, with a
cramp-like tenacit