OCR Text |
Show 2S8 Lewis and Clarke's .Expedition in some places and the mud so adhesive that they art' una~ ble to wear their moccasins; onr fourth of the timr tlu•y are obliged to be up to their armpits in the cold w~t'e r, and sometimes walk for srveral yards over the sharp fragments of rocks which havr fallen from the hills: all this added to the burden of dragging the lwavy canoes is vrry .painful, yet the men bear it with great patience and good humour. Once the rope of one of the periogues. the only one we lmd made of hemp, broke short. and the periogue swung and just touched a point of rock which almost overset her. At nine n1ile1 we came to a high wall of black rock l'ising ft·om 1he water's edge on the south. above the cliffs of the l'iver: this continued about a quarter of a mile, and was succeeded by a ltigh open plain, till three miles further a second wall two hundred feet high rose on the same side. 'Three miles fur .. ther a wall of the same kind about two hundred feet high and twelve in thickne!Ss, appeared to the north: these bills and river cliffs exhibit a most extraordinary and t•omantic aplu~arance: they rise in most places nearly perpendicular fl'om the water, to the height of between two and three hun· dred feet, and are formed of very white sandstone, so soft as to yield readily to the impression of water, in the uppct• part of 'vhicb lie imbedded two or three thin horizontal stt·atas of white freestone insensible to the rain, and on the top is a da1·k rich loam, whicll forms a gradually ascending l,lain, from a mile to a mile and a ball' in extent, when the hills again rise abt•uptly to the height of about three ltundrcd feet more. In trickling down the clifrs, the water has worn the soft sandstone into a thousand grotesque figures, among which 'vith a little fancy may be discerned elegant ranges or freestone buildings, with columns variously sculptured, and supporting long and elegant galleries, 'vhile the parapets are adorned with statuary: on a nearer approach they represent every form of elegant ruins; columns, some with pedestals and capitals entire, others mu· til a ted and prostrate, and some rising pyramidally over each Up the Missow·i. .239 other till they terminate in a sbarp point. These are varied by niches, alcoves, and the customary appra.rances of desolated magnificence: the allusion is inct•eased by tho number of martins, who have built their globular nests in the niches and hover over these columns; as in our country · they are accustomed to frequent lat·ge stone structures. As we advance thet•e seems no end to the visionary enchantment which surrounds us. In the midst of this fantastic 9Cenery are vast ranges of walls, which seem the produc. tions of art, so regular is the workmanship: they rise I•erpendicularly from the river, sometimes to the hci'-"ht of 0 one hundred feet, varying in thickness f1·om one to twelve feet, being equally broad at the top as below. 'rhe stoues of which they are formed are blackt thick, and durable, and composed of a large portion of eal'th, intermixed and cemented with a small quantity of sand, and a conside~·abJe proportion of talk or quartz. These stones are almost invariably regular parallelipeds of unequal sizes in the wall, but ~qually deep, and laid regularly in ranges over each other like bricks, each breaking and covering the interstice of the t':o on which it t•ests; but though the perpendicular interstice be destroyed, the horizontal one extends entirely through the whole work: the stones too are p1•oportioned t6 the thic~ness of ~he wall in which they are employed, being largest m the thickest walls. The thinner walls are composed of a single depth of the paralleliped, while the thicker o~es consist of two or more depths: these walls pass the r1ver at several places, rising from the water's edge much above the sandstone bluffs which they seem to penetrate; thence they cross in a straight line on either side of the river, the plains O'\'er which they tower to the height of from ten to seventy feet, until they lose themselves in the second range of hills: sometimes they run parallel in several ranges neal· to each other, sometimes intersect each other at right angles, and have the appearam~e of walls of ancient llouses or gal-dens. . |