Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/218

 there, from the fissures of the rock, or wherever there is a handful of dust, the heavy and immortal pine enroots itself, adding its gloomy verdure to the variegated hues of the torpid rocks. These circuitous paths often present the most ravishing and picturesque vistas; surrounded by colossal walls, the greatest diversity and most beautiful scenery in nature is spread out before the eye, where the plush and cedar rise majestically in these venerable woods, the graceful poplar waves on high its emerald plumes, and fights its battles with the howling storm, whilst over the precipitous and jagged rocks, the scarcely-waving pine fills the brown shade with religious awe. The birch springs from an earth carpetted with moss, and shines like magnificent silver columns, supporting diadems of golden autumnal leaves, amidst the redolent purple-berried juniper and azure turpentines, of these humid dells and forests.

After a day's journey through these primeval scenes, we reached the banks of the river Arcs-a-plats, where innumerable torrents rush headlong, with a thousand mazes from the mountain's {139} brow, and in their union form this noble river. From afar is heard the deafening and continuous sound of its own dashes, as it traverses a rocky bed with extraordinary rapidity. We crossed the river in order to attempt the passage of another defile, still more wonderful, where the waters of the Vermillion have forced an opening.[111] Here, everything strikes the eye; all is wild sublimity, in this profound but turbulent solitude. Projecting mountains rise like holy towers where man might commune with the sky;—terrible precipices hang in fragments overhead—the astounding