Adam's Peak

“ The man who can look from the top of Adam's Peak, when the clouds have vanished and the great picture is spread before him, and not be impressed by the sight, must be made of something little better than the inanimate earth.
"'On the summit is a spring from which the pilgrims drink; occasionally leaves are found floating on the water of this spring, and the natives believe it has a connection with paradise, and that these leaves come from there. ”

“ Adams, John Couch, an English astronomer, the discoverer simultaneously with Leverrier of the planet Neptune (1819-1892) .
Adams, Parson, a country curate in Fielding's “Joseph Andrews,” with a head full of learning and a heart full of love to his fellows, but in absolute ignorance of the world, which in his simplicity he takes for what it professes to be.
Adams, Samuel, a zealous promoter of American independence, who lived and died poor (1722-1803) .
Adam's Bridge, a chain of coral reefs and sandbanks connecting Ceylon with India.
Adam's Peak, a conical peak in the centre of Ceylon 7420 ft. ”

“ He turned his face to the cool, sweet, sage-scented breeze, and then he lifted it to the afterglow of sunset. Ah! the new, strange joy of life—the incalculable force of the natural man!
The luminous desert stretched before him, valley and mountain, and beyond them was other range and other valley, leading to the sea, and across its heaving bosom were other lands; and above him was the vast, deep-blue sky with its pale evening star, and beyond them began the infinite.
Adam felt himself a part of it all. His ecstasy was that he lived. Nature could not deny him. ”

“ It was realization that a man needed.
A crescent beautiful moon soared up over the dark bulk of the mountain. Adam paced to and fro in a sandy glade of the oasis. All the immensity of desert and infinity of sky seemed to be at work to overwhelm him. The stars—so white, wonderful, watching, eyes of heaven, remorseless and wise! Not a sigh of wind stirred under the palms, not a quiver of a leaf. Nature seemed so strange, beautiful, waiting. All waited! Was it for him? The shadows on the white sand wrote Adam’s story of wild youth and crime and flight and agony and passion and love. ”

“ His exhaustion and pain and peril he welcomed as lessons to the end that his knowledge and achievement must be in a measure what Dismukes might have respected. Failure to Adam was nothing but a spur to renewed endeavor. The long climb, the crumbling ledge, the slipping rock, the deceitful distance, the crawl over sharp rocks, the hours of waiting—these too he welcomed as one who had set himself limitless tasks. Then when he killed a ram and threw it over his shoulder to carry it down the mountain, he found labor which was harder even than the toil of the gold mill at Picacho. ”

“ The thunder was still rolling around him when with a great shake Adam pulled himself together.
"I'm dreaming!" he told himself angrily. "A man couldn't ever climb the Spear Point, let alone live on a ledge that wouldn't harbour a sea-gull if he did. I'll go round to Rufus. I'll go round and knock him up."
With the words he tramped off through the rushing rain, and leaving the quay, struck upwards along the cliff in the direction of the narrow path that ran down to Rufus's dwelling above the Spear Point Caves. ”

“ What a ghastly fantasy the struggle for life in Death Valley! What mockery of wind and desert and avalanche!
“Wansfell—listen,” whispered the woman. “Do you hear—it passing on?”
“Yes,” replied Adam, bending lower to see her eyes. Did she mean that the roar of wind was dying away?
“The stormy blast of hell—with restless fury—drives the spirits onward!” she said, her voice rising.
“I know—I understand. But you mustn’t speak such thoughts. You must not give up to the wandering of your mind. You must fight,” implored Adam.
“My friend—the fight is over—the victory is mine.... I shall escape Virey. ”

“ When, stepping from his cave-house, he saw the sun rise on the outstretched grandeur of the mountain-world, and felt the earth a new creation as truly as when Adam first opened his eyes on its glory, his heart would give one little heave more at the thought that a portion of it was his own. ”

“ The doubt, the curiosity in her expression must have related to Adam. That slight, subtle something about her revealed to Adam the inevitableness of disappointment in store for him if he still entertained any hopes of amenable relations with Virey.
“We all have to be excused sometimes,” said Adam, deliberately. “Now I had to excuse you on the score of ignorance of the desert. You chose this place as a camp. It happens to be the most dangerous spot I ever saw. Any moment a stone may roll down that slope to kill you. Any moment the whole avalanche may start. That slope is an avalanche.” ”

“ Yet there was fascination in the luring, deceitful Superstition range, and a sublimity in the measureless sweep of haze and purple slope leading north to the great peaks, and a compelling beckoning urge in the mystery and unknown that seemed to abide beyond the bronze ridge which marked Adam’s objective point.
“I’ll never forget your—your kindness,” said Adam, finally turning to Dismukes.
97 The prospector shook hands with him, and his grip was something to endure.
“Kindness is nothin’. I owed you what a man owes to himself. ”

“ This small valley, with the larger one through which flows Grand River, is the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman. Three years previous to the death of Adam, he gathered the patriarchs Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch and Methuselah, together with all their righteous posterity, into this valley we have described; and there gave them his last blessing. And even as he blessed them, the heavens were opened, and the Lord appeared, and in the presence of their God, the children of Adam arose and blessed him, and called him Michael, the Prince, the Archangel. ”

“ The coppery sun stood straight overhead and poured down a strong and leaden heat. Adam calculated that they were miles from camp and would never reach it at this rate. He pondered. He must carry the man. Suiting action to thought, he picked him up and, throwing him over his shoulder, started to plod on. The weight was little to one of Adam’s strength, but the squirming and wrestling of the fellow to get down made Adam flounder in the sand. ”

“ And Adam began to doubt that he would ever come. And the hope of Genie’s, that he never would come began insidiously to enter into Adam’s thought. Again the loneliness, the solitude and silence, and something more he could not name, began to drag Adam from duty, from effort of mind. The desert never stopped its work, on plant, or rock, or man. Adam knew that he required another shock to quicken his brain, to stir again the spiritual need, to make him fight the subtle, all-pervading, ever-present influence of the desert. ”

“ Death Valley was a part of the earth dying, and it would become like a canyon on the burned-out moon; but this woman’s spirit seemed everlasting. If her soul had been a whited sepulcher, it was in the way of transfiguration. Adam experienced a singular exaltation in the moment, a gladness beyond his comprehension, a sense that the present strange communion there between this woman’s awakening and the terrible lessons of his life was creating for him a far-distant interest, baffling, but great in its inspiration. ”

“ Midnight was haunting. Somehow the desert with its mustering shadows, dark and vast and strange, resembled his soul and his destiny and the mystery of himself. How sweet the loneliness and solitude of the oasis! There under the palms he could walk and be himself, with only the eye of nature and of spirit on him in this final hour of his extremity.
Happiness was not imperative; self-indulgence was not essential to life. Adam realized he had done wonderful things—perhaps noble things. But nothing great! Perhaps all his agony had been preparation for this supreme ordeal. ”

“ His last visit had been to Lizzen, and thence, instead of going back by the road, he struck across to the cliff by a narrow path known to him, and which would save him some considerable distance.
The day was perfect—the sky cloudless, the sea tranquil: the young verdure of the crag-crowned cliffs lay bathed in soft sunshine. For a moment Adam paused, struck by the air of quiet calm which overspread everything around. Not a breath of wind seemed abroad, not a sail in sight, not a sound to be heard. A few scattered sheep were lazily feeding near ”

“ The prospector seemed to expand with the increased strain of his gaze into Adam’s eyes, until the instant of recognition.
“By God! I know you now!” he boomed, and locked his horny hands on Adam in a gladness that was beyond the moment and had to do, perhaps, with a far-past faith in things. “I thought you died on the desert. Jinny’s comin’ back seemed proof of that.... But you lived! You—that boy, tall as a mescal plant—with eyes of agony.... I never forgot.... An’ now you’re Wansfell!”
“Yes, my friend. Life is strange on the desert,” replied Adam. “And now unpack your burros. ”

“ Gold!... The man who loves gold is ruined. Passion makes men mad.... An’ now I must go.”
“Death Valley? No! No!” whispered Adam.
“Straight for Death Valley! It has called me across half the earth. I remember no desert place so lonely an’ silent an’ free. So different from the noisy world of men that crowds my mind still! There I shall find peace, perhaps my grave. See! life is all a hopin’ to find! I go on my way. Wansfell, we never know what drives us. But I am happy now.... Our trails have crossed for the last time. Good-by.”
He wrung Adam’s hand and quickly whirled to his burros. ”

“ He paused; it was as if the rock halted for a moment on the edge of the precipice before plunging finally into the abyss of silence below. "When there's a ground swell," he said, "the quicksand will pull a man down quicker than hell. And there's no one—not Adam himself—can tell the lay of it for certain when the light is bad."
His mouth closed upon the words like the snap of a strong spring. Knight waited for more, but none came. Whatever the thought behind the warning that he had just uttered it was evident that Rufus had no intention of giving it expression. ”

“ The long shadow of that valley of purple shadows still enveloped him. Death, desolation, and decay; the appalling nudity of the racked bowels of the earth; the abode of solitude and silence, where shrieked the furies of the midnight winds; the grave of Magdalene Virey—these haunted Adam and lured him back with resistless and insupportable claim.
“Death Valley again—for me. I shall go mad,” soliloquized Adam.
At last his mind was slowly being unhinged by the forces of the desert. Some places of the earth were too strong, too inhuman, too old, and too wasted for any269 man. ”

“ Adam watched by her side till dawn, and when the gray light came he could no more have been changed than could the night have been recalled. He would find the burros and pack them and saddle one for Magdalene Virey to ride; he would start to climb out of Death Valley and when another night fell he would have her safe on the cool mountain heights. If Virey tried to prevent this, it would mean the terrible end he merited. Adam gazed down upon the sleeping woman. How transparent, how frail a creature! She mystified Adam. She represented the creative force in life. ”

“ It blew down Adam’s sun shelter of brush and carried the branches rustling away. Then stormed contending tides of winds until, what with burning blasts and whirling dust devils and air thick with powdered salt and alkali, life became indeed a torment for Adam, man of the desert as he was.
In the face of these furnace winds, tenacity of life had new meaning for Adam. The struggle to breathe was the struggle of a dying man to live. But Adam found that he could survive. ”

“ Then came a low, grating roar. The avalanche of endless broken rocks had slipped an inch. It left an ominous silence. Adam stirred restlessly in his blankets. There was a woman in the lee of that tremendous sliding slope—a woman of delicate frame, of magnificent spirit, of a heart of living flame. Every hour she slept or lay wide eyed in the path of that impending cataclysm was one of exceeding peril. Adam chafed under the invisible bonds of her will. Because she chose to lie there, fearless, beyond the mind of man to comprehend, was that any reason why he should let her perish? ”

“ For he seemed to see a thousand miles of green-gray barrenness, of lifting heat veils like transparent smoke, of wastes of76 waved sand, and of ranges of upheaved rock. How terribly it confronted him! Pitiless mockery of false distances on all sides! A sun-blasted world not meant for man!
Then Adam ascended to the summit of the ridge. A glaring void seemed flung at him. His chocolate-hued mountain range was not far away. From this height he could see all the gray-green level of desert between him and the range. ”

“ It is time, however, that we should describe Adam more particularly to our readers. He was dressed in a coarse grey coat; with trousers of the same colour, a striped waistcoat; a half-worn broad-brimmed hat, and thick shoes, studded with nails, which clattered as he went. Thus arrayed, and with his trunk upon his shoulders, Adam went tramping and clattering along East Smithfield, over Tower-hill, and along the Minories, inquiring at every turning—"If any one could direct him to Mr Davison's, the merchant in Cornhill?" ”