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Show io2 Early Western Travels [ VOLJ6 VII " The hills! our mountain- wall, the bills! " Alpine Omen. " But thou* exulting and abounding river! Making thy waves a blessing as they flow Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever, Could man but leave thy bright creation so-" CkUde Harold. THERE are few objects upon the Mississippi in which the geologist and natural philosopher may claim a deeper interest than that singular series of limestone cliffs already alluded to, which, above its junction with the Ohio, present themselves to the traveller all along the Missouri shore. The principal ridge commences a few miles above Ste. Genevieve; and at sunrise one morning we found ourselves beneath a huge battlement of crags, rising precipitously from the river to the height of several hundred feet Seldom have I gazed upon a scene more eminently imposing than that of these hoary old cliffs, when the midsummer- sun, rushing upward from the eastern horizon, bathed their splintered pinnacles and spires and the rifted tree- tops in a flood of golden effulgence. The scene was not imworthy Walter Scott's graphic description of the view from the Trosachs of Loch Katrine, in the " Lady of the Lake:" " The eastern waves of rising day Roll'd o'er the stream their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. * * * * * Their rocky summits, split and rent, Form'd turret, dome, or battlement, Or seem'd fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked Or mosque of eastern architect-" [ 74] All of these precipices, not less than those on the |
