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186 your imagination, just fancy the frigid zone let in upon the huge conflagration, and all that twisted flame and smoke congealed in an instant to solid rock, and you have the best idea I can give of the appearance of this remarkable geological formation. As we continued our way upward, this little mountain on the left, which we at first mistook for the Wrekin, assumed an animal form, something like Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh, but not so lion-like as that celebrated height. It took the shape of a huge elephant crouching on its haunches. From the shoulders backward it was covered with a tawny hide of frostbitten and russet fern. At every rod of our ascent the shape showed some new feature of resemblance, until the elephant was fully developed in all his good-natured strength and stature, as if looking off into the great valley northward like a huge beast of burden that had brought it a splendid load of good weather.

For about a third of the ascent we had a very good roadway, when at this point we left it by a path at a right angle and mounted to the "Halfway House," where we rested for a few minutes. It is a large cottage planted at a good point of view, and fitted up very comfortably for companies of visiters, even of the usual pic nic size. The waiting and refreshment room is a large apartment, chaired for forty or fifty persons, with a bay