Black Rock

“ One of these clefts was the Doone-gate, with a portcullis of rock above it, and the other was the chasm by which I had once made entrance. Betwixt them, where the hills fell back, as in a perfect oval, traversed by the winding water, lay a bright green valley, rimmed with sheer black rock, and seeming to have sunken bodily from the bleak rough heights above. It looked as if no frost could enter neither wind go ruffling; only spring, and hope, and comfort, breathe to one another. ”

“ Do you see that the Black Rock is darker than the others, because it consists of the dark: hornblende; that the Red Rock is red, because it is composed of red gneiss, and the white skerries of clean washed eurite? Is it not more to know why, than to know that a thing is so; and still less to see nothing but an even gray, as the painter, who paints all the skerries with a mixing of black and white? ”

“ It had become very poor and we had almost nothing to cook it with. There are no “Buffalo chips” this side of the Rockies.
We started in the afternoon and at about sunset came in sight of Black Rock (Spring) , which was then about nine miles distant across a level, barren plain.
When within about six miles of Black Rock one of the mules which I was driving became so exhausted that he refused to go any farther, and I was obliged to unpack and leave him with the pack by the roadside; after which I reached Black Rock at about eleven o’clock at night. ”

“ There one moment stood the statuesque figure, white as a cameo cut in the black rock, the next moment there was a gleam of something flashing through the air, and passing into the deep blue wave, which, as if by the contact of the figure, broke into silvery foam, rushing back like a vast cascade towards the Shangles. ”

“ But people who are flying for life do not pause to enjoy scenery, even of the finest. Lyon and Sybil rode on towards the upper banks of the Black River, hearing at every step the thunder of the Black Torrent, as it leaped from rock to rock in its passionate descent to the valley. ”

“ The road sometimes descends to the margin of the lake, and again rises to a high shelf, winding round and up very steep masses of projecting rock, blown up for the purpose of making the road, whose towering fragments, huge and solid, hang over the narrow way just the width of a carriage. At about fifteen miles from Inverness, I came within sight of the Black Rock, and it seemed as if it were impossible to pass by it; In truth, it does require courage and steady horses to perform it, it being a narrow shelf blown out of the rocks ”

“ Their tops are of black rock, their faces, from which here and there black crags project, are slopes of ash and cinders, shewing those strange and gruesome contrasts of colour which are often seen in the mineral world when vegetation and the atmosphere have not had time to tell upon them. ”

“ Then good-by to your jobs—and to Black Rock too perhaps."
"I guess Black Rock can stand it, if the old man can."
They walked around the charred clearing and mounted a high sand dune, from which they could see over a wide stretch of country. With a high wooden platform here the whole of the Upper Reserve could be watched. They sat for a while among the sandwort and smoked, while Peter described the work in the German forests that he had observed before the war. ”

“ The Formation of the Black Hills
One of the most rewarding features of a visit to the Black Hills is the opportunity for the average individual, who has no technical training, to see with his own eyes a museum of the earth’s ages and a living sample of practically every one of the many aeons of the planet’s history.
The Hills, which is to say the rock substances of the region, are older by hundreds of millions of years than the stone out-juttings of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ It had been in old times the camping-place of the blacks, and upon the largest of the three gigantic stones, which disposed in the form of triangle, seemed to point to the triple peaks of the triform mountain, human sacrifices had been held, and horrible banquets celebrated. The earth, pawed by my impatient horse, was black and rich--strangely black and rich when compared with the surrounding soil, and the three enormous trees that overshadowed the three alter-stones seemed to own roots fed with fat food, so vigorously had they upsprung from out the rock. ”

“ About half-way across the mouth of the harbour is the Black Rock, exposed at low water, but covered when the tide rises. An eccentric Mr. Trefusis, of Trefusis, opposite Falmouth, one day invited his wife to boat with him to the Black Rock and picnic there. ”

“ In the ascent, a narrow path not more than nine feet in width, leads along the margin of a frightful precipice of nearly fifteen hundred feet in extent, so perpendicular that it can not be approached without terror; while to the north of the summit nearest to the one the most elevated, a semi-amphitheater of precipitous rocks, also of a great hight, is seen; and, behind this summit, another semicircle of equal depth and extent. The loftiest summit here appears to descend in the form of a sharp ridge, and beneath it another appears, which, on account of its color, is called the Black Rock. ”

“ The country over which we made forty miles yesterday is known as the Black Rock Desert, and the road is literally strewn with dead animals—cattle, horses and mules. The stench of these dead and decaying carcasses contributes largely to render the traveling still more disagreeable than it would otherwise be. ”

“ The young crescent moon with its tender beam had gone down; but the great stars were 79out in all their glory, and by their shining the travellers saw before them a beautiful little river, whose rippling surface reflected in fitful glimmers the cheerful lights of a village on its opposite bank.
“This is the Black River. It rises in those distant mountains, which are called the Black Rocks, and which shut in our Black Valley. The village here is called Blackville,” explained Lyon Berners.
“What a deal of blackness!” replied Rosa Blondelle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then he watched them as they straggled across the river, and struck into the narrow cliff path which led to the great dark-hued cliff known as the Black Tor, where the Edens’ impregnable stronghold stood, perched upon a narrow ledge of rock which rose up like a monstrous tongue from the earth, connected on one side by a narrow natural bridge with the main cliff, the castellated building being protected on all sides by a huge rift fully a couple of hundred feet deep, the tongue being merely a portion of the cliff split away during some convulsion of nature ”

“ Collecting his brother Fred, who was fruitlessly panning the sands of the Last Chance Gulch in the high border country of Montana, Moses started east, passing of course through the Black Hills, to scout down this one last ray of rumor—that a new strike was in the making. Setting out their camp in Bobtail Gulch, a mere pistol shot from certain placer claims in Deadwood Gulch, they went to work in midwinter, hoping to find, the legend has it, just enough blossom rock to give them a stake for their homeward journey. ”

“ On either side of the valley, which, sloping westward, opens upon the desert plain below, rise the scarped and pinnacled buttresses of great, crumbling granite cliffs. These grey heights are crowned with a dark red stratum of rock, which Claude recognizes as part of the desert sandstone formation, which has, in all probability, at one period covered the greater portion of Northern Central Queensland. ”

“ The black shale is water bearing, and wells sunk in it to a depth of eighty feet or more yield in most cases a good supply.
I have, I think, for the present done with the sedimentary formations, and come now to the igneous rocks below them.
The first rock under the black shale gone through, as shown in the diagram, is a light gray volcanic rock, three feet thick, with a specific gravity of 2.815. The body of the rock is of a light bluish gray color, and contains beside other minerals nodules of quartz, agates and jasper, from the size of a mustard seed to that of a walnut. ”

“ A little north of Shelving Rock is the Black Mountain, its summit twenty-two hundred feet high, thickly covered with the dark spruce, and its sides robed with the cedar, fir, pine, and tamarac. There the wild deer, the bear, and the catamount have free range, for the hunter seldom toils up its weary ascent.
* This little sketch was taken from the steam-boat, near the south end of Long Island, which appears in the foreground. Long Point is seen in the center, and on the right are Dunham's Bay and the northern extremity of the French Mountain. ”

“ By the violence of earth movement the limestone has been crushed, probably when the land was undergoing depression, prior to the upheaval which opened the great parallel fissures. The varying hardness of the rock, as well as proximity to the surface, would readily account for the difference in size of the fractures, which is from one-half inch to twelve inches; the largest being the most distant from the surface. ”

“ The old man stops speaking to listen to a slight noise outside the cave for a moment, and then continues: “If yer 202 like to camp here longer me till I’ve done this gully, yer can. But just sling me a yarn about how yer came to this hole in the ranges.” The speaker turns towards the fire, that has burnt itself low, and commences to rake it into renewed brightness. As he does so, his head and right arm leave the shelter of the projecting rock before-mentioned, and come between the luminous background of flames and the cave entrance. ”

“ Almost as soon as this era of upheaval first started, as soon as the first land of the Black Hills was elevated above the great sea, the forces of erosion set to work. Wind and rain worked their terrifying magic on the slowly rising terrain, carving away the softer rocks and the loose dirt and leaving only the granite outcroppings. Down from the sides of the great dome poured the waters of melting snows, gushing springs, and torrential rainfalls, digging out rivers, canyons, and the deep and narrow cuts which characterize this beautiful region. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The road winds and curves in an interminable pattern, finding its way, by trial and error it seems, among the great granite spires that give the region its name. These “needles,” through the last of which the highway actually plunges in a tunnel, are the remains of a great granite plateau which once covered that entire portion of the Black Hills. Contrary to popular opinion, the rocks are not outthrusts, the 34 result of some ancient upheaval, but the last thin vestiges of this once-solid plateau. The age-old process of erosion has carved them into the shapes they now have ”

“ And so deeply had he descended now, that the sunshine, silver rather than golden, already streamed past far over his head along the ridges, and no gleam found its way to where he was. The shadows, too, no longer blue and purple, had changed to black, as though woven of some delicate substance that had definite thickness, like a veil. Across the opposite slope, one of the mountain summits in the western sky already dropped its monstrous shadow fringed with pines. ”

“ In winter, each Stube with its Bruder, we wandered through the lovely forest paths, skated, tobogganed, or plunged in high snow-boots through the great drifts in the woods. It was the real Black Forest then. No tourist was ever seen. No carriages, bicycles, or “visitors for health” ever crossed our path. Unmolested, we explored new glades, and found in every direction unknown little valleys hidden away among the dense trees and Strafe (punishment) , when to the pain of carpeted with moss a foot thick. ”

“ A black mountain is a sinister object. There is a kind of fear which does not concern itself with real things that might happen, but is a primitive fear of nature herself. Even the bandits admitted feeling it sometimes. It is a fear of something impending in the bare spaces, as though the mountains threatened. A little creeping chill that had nothing to do with the cool of evening kept us close behind the Ford. At the [Pg 47] bottom of the rough slope lay a somber basin full of shadow, beyond which rose an abrupt, high ridge of sand. ”