Black Mountains

“ The summits of these mountains are of almost every figure, from the arch, to the bold, bluff, and sharp cone. In some instances, the loftier ones are bald, solemn, and forbidding; in others, they are clothed and crowned with verdure. It is the peculiarity of Lake George, that, while all the world agrees to speak only of its loveliness, it is surrounded by features of the highest grandeur and sublimity. The Black Mountain is one of these; and there is every variety of chasm, crag, promontory, and peak, which a painter would require for the noblest composition of mountain scenery. ”

“ I used to lie languid and dreamy before our tent and muse on the past and the future, and when most overcome with lassitude, my eyes turned always toward the distant Black Hills. There is a spirit of energy in mountains, and they impart it to all who approach their presence. ”

“ THE USK. The Black Mountains—Trecastle—The Gaer—Brecon—The Brecknock Beacons—Crickhowell—Abergavenny—Usk—Caerleon and the Arthurian Legend—Christchurch—Newport.
THE wild and inclement Black Mountains, “Fforest Fawr,” between Carmarthenshire and Brecknockshire, collect the first drops that, trickling down the side of the hills, gather volume and strength and in time become rivers that are the delight and pride of a country. ”

“ Its situation leaves nothing to be desired in an ideal mountain village. So completely is it secluded from the rest of the world by its environment of mountains, that you might pass and repass the Pemigewasset Valley a hundred times without once surprising the secret of its existence. All those houses, half hid beneath groves of maples, bespeak luxurious repose. Opposite to Black Mountain, whose dark forest drapery hides the mass of the mountain, is the immense whitish-yellow rock called Welch Mountain. Only a scanty vegetation is suffered to creep among the crevices. ”

“ The first mention I have met with of an Indian name for the White Mountains is in the narrative of John Gyles’s captivity, printed in Boston in 1736, saying:
“These White Hills, at the head of Penobscot River, are by the Indians said to be much higher than those called Agiockochook, [14] above Saco.”
The similitude between the names White Mountains and Mont Blanc suggests the same idea, that color, rather than character, makes the first and strongest impression upon the beholder. Thus we have White Mountains and Green Mountains, Red Mountains and Black Mountains, the world over. ”

“ The shadows are pitch black, the snow dazzling as with a radiance of its own, the “battlements that on their front bear stars” loom awfully out of the sky. In close-shuttered châlets the peasants sleep. In the brilliant overheated salons of hotels hundreds of little human beings dance and make music and play bridge. But out there, in this silent world of ice and stars, the enormous mountains dream solemnly upon their ancient thrones, unassailable, alone in the heavens, forgotten. The Alps, in these hours of the long winter night, come magnificently into their own. ”

“ Serrated ridges, not much lower than that on which we stood, rose, one beyond another, far as that pure atmosphere could carry the vision, broken into awful chasms deep with ice and snow, rising into pinnacles piercing the heavenly blue with their cold, barren grey, on, on for ever, till the most distant range upbore unsullied snow alone. There were fair lakes mirroring the dark pine woods, canyons dark and blue-black with unbroken expanses of pines, snow-slashed pinnacles, wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, watered and wooded, lying in the lap of summer ”

“ The mountain itself is partly covered with the luxuriant greenery of orchards and villas, and partly by the gloomy beds of lava thrown out by successive eruptions—"a black ocean, which was tumbled into a thousand fantastic shapes—a wild chaos of ruin, desolation and barrenness—a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder—of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great vines, trunks of trees all interlaced and mingled together ”

“ The atmosphere is so clear that the eye can view the country for hundreds of miles, though to the untrained sight, distances are deceiving. Silhouetted against the northern sky is Long’s Peak; northward the range breaks down on to 16 the Black Hills with their Twin Mountains; eastward the country slopes symmetrically to the plains, treeless, level to where their horizon meets the curve of the sky. ”

“ Their highest summit north of the Usk, on the eastern side, where they are known as the Black Mountains, or sometimes the Black Forest Mountains, is Pen y Gader (2624 ft.) between Talgarth and Llanthony, and on the south-west the twin peaks of the Mynydd Du (“Black Mountain”) or the so-called Carmarthenshire Vans or Beacons, only the higher of which, Fan Brycheiniog (2632 ft.) ”

“ In our way from Ramee, the sojourn of the Sheyennes, to the Green River, where the Flat Heads were waiting for me, we successively passed the Black Hills, which owe this name not to the color of the soil and rocks that form them, but to the sombre verdure of the cedars and pines that shadow their sides; the Red Bute, [113] a central point by which the savages are continually crossing, when emigrating to the West, or going up towards the North; and the famous rock, Independence, which is detached, like an outwork, from the immense chain of mountains that divide North America. ”

“ The Black Mountain, as you well know, is a long curved ridge, 15 or 20 miles in length, its base having somewhat the form of a common fish-hook, of which the extremity of the shank is near Thomas Young’s, in Yancey. ”

“ BLACK HILLS, an isolated group of mountains, covering an area of about 6000 sq. m. in the adjoining corners of South Dakota and Wyoming, U.S.A. They rise on an average some 2000 ft. above their base, the highest peak, Harney, having an altitude above the sea of 7216 ft. ”

“ The wild recesses of these hills, like those of the Rocky Mountains, are retreats and lurking-places for broken and predatory tribes, and it was among them that the remnant of the Cheyenne tribe took refuge, as has been stated, from their conquering enemies, the Sioux.
The Black Hills are chiefly composed of sandstone, and in many places are broken into savage cliffs and precipices, and present the most singular and fantastic forms ”

“ The flanks of the Purple Mountain have been planed down by the moving ice, and the rocky amphitheatre which the guides choose for the production of echoes has been scooped and polished by the same agency. Near the point where the road from the Gap joins that up the Black Valley is a slab of rock, which rivals the famous Höllen Platte in Haslithal. The Black Valley, indeed, was the mould through which a great glacier from the adjacent mountains moved, ‘unhasting, unresting,’ grinding the rocks right and left, and filling the entire basin now occupied by the waters of the Upper Lake. ”

“ There is a long range of snow-clad mountains along the southern coast of the Black Sea reaching almost the entire distance from Trebizond to Rizeh, the next stopping place, and between them and the water side are low foothills covered with farms. The new wheat was a vivid green that lights up a lovely picture. There is no more beautiful sea coast. Indeed, there is nothing to surpass that landscape in the Alps, or the Pyrenees, or the Andes, or the Rocky50 Mountains, or anywhere else, owing to the great variety of scenery that lies between the water and the snow-capped crags. ”

“ Here nature has reared great mountains and spread out broad prairies. Along the western border of this region, the Rocky Mountains lift their snow-clad peaks above the clouds. Here and there, from north to south, and from east to west, lie minor ranges, black with pine forests if seen near at hand, or in the distance mere gray silhouettes against a sky of blue. Between these mountain ranges lies everywhere the great prairie ”

“ Above these rocks we look up the stony bed of the frantic river and meet the blue mass of a distant mountain. Rocks are picturesquely dropped about the margin. Upon one side a birch leans far out over the basin, whose polished surface brilliantly reflects the white light of its bark. One sees the print of foliage on the black water, like that of ferns and grasses upon coal; or, rather, like the most beautiful Italian mosaics—black marble inlaid with arabesques of color. The illusion is more perfect still when the yellow and scarlet of the maples is reflected, as in autumn. ”

“ In regions of gently rolling country even small hummocks are sometimes called "mountains," while out West, where scenery grows so tall, the Black Hills seem to the people only stepping-stones to the big Rockies. So they call them "hills." In the region of the Himalaya Mountains—mountains that don't think anything, you remember, of climbing up 16,000 to 30,000 feet in the air—a peak of 10,000 feet is often called a "hill." ”

“ The geological interest in the Caucasus Mountains is due to the fact that they rise abruptly from two flat plains, similar to our western prairies, known as steppes, and are unique because of the simplicity of their structure, the regularity of their outlines, the steepness of the declivities, and the narrowness of the range. It is not split up, as other great mountain chains are, into secondary and parallel ranges, and has no buttresses running at right angles, nor outlying peaks. ”

“ Actually, much of the high western plain abutting on the Rocky Mountains is basic badland formation, and small pockets of distinct erosion can be seen all through eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, and eastern Wyoming, in addition to the vast depression in the valleys of the White and Cheyenne rivers in South Dakota. This one region, though, sixty-five miles long and five to fifteen miles wide, is the largest and from the geologist’s point of view the most important of all such regions in the world. ”

“ The wind currents that forever suck through the deep valleys marshal the details with even more bewildering effects; the black depths, suddenly revealed and as suddenly closed again, the awful chasms, opened and shut so swiftly, throw the imagination into a state of disorder that adds enormously to the confusing grandeur of the spectacle. ”

“ Black earth is occasionally met with on the mountains, where it may probably have originated in the decomposition of those forests to which tradition gives existence in ancient days, but of which no other vestige now remains. ”

“ While delayed by the mules and their masters, we may amuse ourselves and divert our thoughts from the battle, and, perhaps, murder and sudden death, which may happen this evening, by studying the geography of the Black Hills. The range forms nearly a right angle, the larger limb—ninety miles—running east to west with a little southing along the Platte, the shorter leg—sixty miles—trending from north to south with a few degrees of easting and westing. ”

“ Mary’s Lakes in October, 1882, in company with Charles Phemmister, James Rutherford, Charles Carter, and Oliver Sanderville, all old plainsmen, good company, and best of hunters. We outfitted for the trip at the Old Agency, on Badger Creek, Blackfeet Reservation, and started northward. There was no trail after leaving the crossing of Little or Milk River, and we struck up country toward the big gap in the mountains, in which we knew the lakes must lie, and that evening camped on the shore of a large prairie lake that was black with ducks. ”

“ For five miles the road skirts the western slopes of the valley, which grows continually deeper, narrower, and higher. Spruce Mountain is now on our left, the broad flanks of Black Mountain occupy the right side of the valley. Beyond Black Mountain Carter Dome lifts its ponderous mass, and between them the dip of the Perkins Notch, dividing the two ranges, gives admittance to the Wild River Valley, and to the Androscoggin, in Shelburne. ”

“ Their route lies either through the Crow country, and the Black Hills, or through the lands of the Nez Perces, Flatheads, Bannacks, and Shoshonies. As they enjoy their favorite state of hostility with all these tribes, their expeditions are prone to be conducted in the most lawless and predatory style; nor do they hesitate to extend their maraudings to any party of white men they meet with, following their trail, hovering about their camps, waylaying and dogging the caravans of the free traders, and murdering the solitary trapper. ”

“ Twenty-five miles from this place, in a northerly direction, stands Black Mountain, which is the gloomy looking patriarch of the Alleghanies, and claimed to be the most elevated point of land eastward of the Mississippi. It is nearly seven thousand feet high, and, with its numerous pinnacles, covers an area of territory which must measure in length a distance of at least twenty miles. ”

“ “I have seen,” he said, “the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean; ”

“ The United States' interest in the land through the National Park Service was due to the fact that this particular area had been included in the Great Smoky Mountains Park project. Had this land been actually owned by the United States for park purposes it would have been easier to subject it to servitudes in the interest of the T.V.A. development. North Carolina was interested in the land because it was its duty to continue to hold and maintain a highway so long as its citizens continued to live within the area. ”