The high mountain
beyond, near the crown, was girt around by a solid wall of rock, fifty
or sixty feet in height, from the edge of which the summit rose. It
was quite unapproachable, except, perhaps, in one place, round to the
northward.
The solid rock of which it had formerly been composed had, by some
mighty force of nature, been split into innumerable fissures and
fragments, both perpendicularly and horizontally, and was almost
mathematically divided into pieces or squares, or unequal cubes,
simply placed upon one another, like masons' work without mortar. The
lower strata of these divisions were large, the upper tapered to
pieces not much larger than a brick, at least they seemed so from a
distance. The whole appearance of this singular mount was grand and
awful, and I could not but reflect upon the time when these colossal
ridges were all at once rocking in the convulsive tremblings of some
mighty volcanic shock, which shivered them into the fragments I then
beheld. I said the hill we had ascended ended abruptly in a precipice;
by going farther round we found a spot, which, though practicable, was
difficult enough to descend. At the bottom of some of the ravines
below I could see several small pools of water gleaming in little
stony gullies.
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