Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/150

146 ing was bitterly cold, though the 24th of August, and a pelting rain came down upon us, from the dark and comfortless sky. About midnight, we found it necessary to mount the ridge, and, with great labor, at length reached the summit. A scene here opened such as we had never before conceived, and which perhaps, it is quite impossible to convey in description. A thick forest covered the mountain, half the trees standing, half of them prostrate, and every one dead. Not a particle of bark remained among all these ghostlike remnants of a gigantic, but now blasted and extinct vegetation. The huge rocks were swept bare of earth, by the violent winds from which this chain derives its name. Nothing met the eye in any direction, but naked granite and blasted trees. A feeling of intense awe chilled through our veins and crept into our hearts, as we gazed upon a scene that forced upon us a new and vast conception of desolation and sublimity. Tall pines, leafless, barkless and branchless, stood in gaping clefts and fissures pointing their spires towards the stormy sky, like ghostly figures upbraiding their destroyer. Many were pulpy with rottenness, though still standing, upheld by the firm twining of their roots among the rocks. Those that had fallen, seemed as though they had crumbled in their descent, without a crush, so silent was everything, except the fierce winds, to which the white spectres appeared to be listening in desolate grandeur."