Dome of the Rock

“ One stands on each side of the valley. The North Dome is perfect, like the roof of some vast mosque; but the South, or Half Dome, is an extraordinary freak of nature, very puzzling to geologists, as literally half of a stupendous mass of granite has disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence, save a sheer precipitous rock-face, considerably over 4,000 feet in height, from which the corresponding half has evidently broken off, and slipped down into some fearful chasm, which apparently it has been the means of filling up. ”

“ Although composed of the hardest rock, they yet resemble in their contours, the low relief of a limestone area. Broad, even surfaces, on which rocky outcrops are few and over which a deep loam prevails, suggest rather that one is wandering over a plain than on a great mountain; yet you may sweep the entire horizon and find few higher peaks. The view is often very beautiful, it is far-reaching, not grand. No crags tower skyward, but many domes rise nearly to the same heights, and dome-like, their slopes are steepest toward the base. ”

“ In 831 A.D. the Khalif El Mamûn restored the Dome of the Rock, and if I am correct, enclosed it with an outer wall and gave it its present appearance. The beams in the roof of the arcade bear, as above stated, the date 913 A.D.: a well-carved wooden{167} cornice, hidden by the present ceiling, must then have been visible beneath them. ”

“ Stephen must give us another Bengal. Again we gaze in astonishment at this unparalleled wonder, and see beauties we did not see before. The light fades and dies, and again deep impenetrable gloom holds its sway. We ascend the ladder to our old ledge of rock at the mouth of the hole by which we must return, and feel thankful when we find ourselves safely at the top of it, take one last look at the dome, and then retrace our steps. When this dome was discovered in 1842, a lamp was found at the bottom of it, which puzzled the finders not a little as to how it could have got there. ”

“ Accordingly I let off a blue-light, which illuminated the grotto beneath, the arches of which were of immense size; and their vast ribs, protruding from the rock, and extending to a great height, formed a magnificent dome, from which hung innumerable concretions of pointed form. Masses of crystallised limestone grew from the floor in every shape that fancy could picture. There were trees, teeth, flowers, houses, men, &c.: in short, imagination never could exhaust itself in pointing out resemblances between these phenomena, and the ordinary productions of nature and art. ”

“ As to this rock site, which forms the natural position for a building surrounded by courts which were at lower levels, there is no doubt at all. The visitor can see the rock for himself on the surface to east, south, and north-west of the platform on which the Dome of the Rock stands, and the levels of this bare rock have been accurately ascertained. The Ṣakhrah rises on its west side about 4 feet above the level of the pavement, and slopes gently eastwards. ”

“ With the exception of a few spires and pinnacles, the South Dome is the only rock about the Valley that is strictly inaccessible without artificial means, and its inaccessibility is expressed in severe terms. Nevertheless many a mountaineer, gazing admiringly, tried hard to invent a way to the top of its noble crown—all in vain, until in the year 1875, George Anderson, an indomitable Scotchman, undertook the adventure. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon in us insists that there can be only one truth, and everything else must be error. It is known, for instance, that Castle Dome, which looks down on the Colorado River from Western Arizona, is a turret of granite—gray, red, brown, rock-colored, whatever color you please. With that antecedent knowledge in mind how difficult it is for us to believe the report of our eyes which says that at sunset the dome is amethystine, golden, crimson, or perhaps lively purple. The reality is one thing, the appearance quite another thing ”

“ We were in a region of extraordinary interest and surprises. In the plain which extended before us there stood two conical hills in the far north-west, and three other hills, dome-like, each isolated, but in a most perfect alignment with the others, towards the east. Close to us were giant domes of rock, the surface of which formed marvellous geometrical designs of such regularity that had they been on a smaller scale one might have suspected them of being the work of human beings ”

“ It is evident, however, as soon as the eye attaches itself to the side of the Dome, that one of its loftiest precipices, originally measuring an altitude as great as any yet remaining, has precipitated itself in a crushed and broken mass into the abyss. ”

“ It constitutes quite too important a feature of the landscape to escape notice. Dominated by the towering mass of the Dome, infolded by undulating slopes descending from opposite braces of Mount Washington, and resembling gigantic draperies, we see an enormous, funnel-shaped, hollow sunk in the very heart of the mountain. ”

“ The travellers reached the head of the valley, and examined from a near point the enormous dome. From a distance the curve on its sides had appeared as regular as if wrought by human skill; but they now found that it was piled up with huge blocks of slate and granite, over which it would be impossible to take the horses. A steep ascent to the north brought them, however, to its summit. There the scene was sufficiently remarkable: you might have thought that the Titans had been at play, with great fragments of slate, granite, jasper, and porphyry for their counters. ”

“ It leans upon the dome, and bears it up with stalwart breadth of shoulder. Separated from its younger brother by profound ravines, it grows up a mighty concave mass, a slow, majestic upward surge, with a sweep, and sway, and climb in every portion of its substance and its surface, and yet so broken by insurgent crests of cliff, paly purple over opalescent shadows, and so varied by slopes of snow, and wreath, and drift, and dimple, and bend, and rounded angle everywhere, that there is no monotony in its solemn curve towards the dome. Faint shadows of clouds dim its lustre. ”

“ High above the strength of his earth God has set the beauty of his earth; — glory of snow above the might of adamant.
When the observer estimates that the Dome is at least sixty miles from his point of view, he will be able to measure the power of its mass and the proportions of its details. Each sunny dimple thus expands to an abyss. Seeming ripples on the snow-fields become enormous mounds heaped up by the whirlwinds that riot forever among those dry, unfathomable drifts, the accumulation of ages. ”

“ Four or five miles off to the southward rose the summit of Monument Mountain, and seemed to be floating on a cloud. Some fifteen miles farther away, in the same direction, appeared the loftier Dome of Taconic, looking blue and indistinct, and hardly so substantial as the vapory sea that almost rolled over it. The nearer hills, which bordered the valley, were half submerged, and were specked with little cloud-wreaths all the way to their tops. On the whole, there was so much cloud, and so little solid earth, that it had the effect of a vision. ”

“ The Dome was an emblem of permanent and infinite peace: — this central mass of struggling mountain, with a war of light and shade over all its tumultuous surface, represents vigor and toil and perplexity. The great shadow of the picture is opposed in sentiment, as well as in color and form, to the great light. ”

“ At half-past twelve we began the ascent of the Dome. It is not so much the height as the steepness of this mountain that wins our respect. The path goes straight up to the first summit, deflects a little to reach the Pulpit, and then, turning more northerly, ascends for a mile and a half more by a much easier rise to the highest peak. There are no open ledges on the route. The path is cut through a wood from base to summit ”

“ The delight of standing on the summit of Sentinel Dome, conscious that your own good muscles have lifted you over four thousand feet from the valley's floor, with such a world spread before you; the indescribable beauty of a sunrise at Glacier Point, the beauty and majesty of Vernal and Nevada falls, the knightly crest of the Half Dome, and the imposing grandeur of the great Capitan—what words can even hint their varied glory! ”

“ Disappointed perhaps, but relieved of the gradient, and elated with the success of our climb, we run in the teeth of the wind across the platform, our feet scarcely sinking in the storm-swept crust of the surface, the gently undulating roof of the dome.... ”

“ A small pine-covered glacis of detritus lies at its foot, but every yard above that is bare of all life save the palæozoic memories which have wrinkled the granite Colossus from the earliest seethings of the fire-time. I never could call a Yo-Semite crag inorganic, as I used to speak of everything not strictly animal or vegetal. In the presence of the Great South Dome that utterance became blasphemous. Not living was it? Who knew but the débris at its foot was merely the cast-off sweat and exuviæ of a stone life's great work-day? ”

“ There is Half Dome, looking as if a gigantic hand had thrust it up through the earth and into the air, leaving its other half far, far below. There stretches before one a vast, upper country of irregular table lands and peaks, many still white with snow. ”

“ What a sublime, a terrifying spectacle would here have presented itself to a spectator standing on the North Dome and looking across the Valley, to behold a part of the mountain before him two thousand feet in depth, starting from its foundation, breaking away from the firmer portion, and falling, rolling, grinding, crashing, down the mountain side, with the roar and shaking of a terrible earthquake, and dashing into millions of fragments, until it reached the plain, three thousand feet below its starting point. ”

“ The domes of snow are stateliest. There may be more of feminine beauty in the cones, and more of masculine force and hardihood in the rough pyramids, but the great domes are calmer and more divine, and, even if they have failed to attain absolute dignified grace of finish, and [36] are riven and broken down, they still demand our sympathy for giant power, if only partially victor. Each form—the dome, the cone, and the pyramid—has its type among the great snow peaks of the Cascades. ”

“ The great dome, too, greatest in the world, which, in his early boyhood, had been only a daring thought in the mind of a small, quick-eyed man—there it raises its large curves still, eclipsing the hills. ”

“ His eyes, sweeping now across the field of tumbled rocks which topped the ridge at the base of his peak, were arrested by a flat piece of granite resting on top of a boulder which rose conspicuously above its neighbors.
A monument!
Here, where only a second ago he had told himself that perhaps no other human foot than his own had come! The old sign of a man-made trail, the sign to be read from afar, to last on into eternity. For the shrieking winds of winter and the racing snows do not budge the flat rock laid carefully upon flat-topped stone. ”

“ Dome Mountain, or, as it is frequently designated, simply "The Dome," and less often "Solomon's Dome," "King Dome," and "Mount Ophir," appears to be the culminating point of the entire region; and its prominent position at the water parting of Bonanza, Hunker, Sulphur, and Dominion Creeks makes it a noble figure in the landscape, and the most interesting single feature to the prospector and miner. ”

“ Peter's Dome,—a huge mass of granite towering eleven thousand feet into the air, around which the steel track winds in terraces, glory after glory of view repeating itself from the ascending vistas as the train climbs the dizzy height,—the engineering problem that is here at once presented and solved, has attracted scientific attention all over the world as the most extraordinary achievement in mountain transportation. ”

“ At last we emerge out of a hole, and find ourselves standing on the brink of a precipice, and hear the falling of water from a great height, and by the dim glimmer of our lights we see that there is something before us awfully grand and stupendous, and this is the Mammoth Dome! ”

“ All sense of time and direction are lost in the myriad of decoration, light and shadow, gigantic, often grotesque formations, and the serenity of this underground heaven.
Passing quietly ahead the traveler pauses at the largest "living" stalagmite within the known part of the Caverns, the Crystal Spring Dome. Generally dry, this part of the Big Cave is moist, and water, dripping slowly from the ceiling above, is still depositing its minute quantities of calcium on the mighty Crystal Spring Dome as it has been doing for countless centuries. ”

“ The great dome seemed to shake itself as if something within it had awakened to life. We stood in awe and waited. Then, as a chicken comes forth out of its shell, there came forth, with a terrific rending of the dome, a mighty fledgling having the aspect of that monstrous bird, the rukh, which, when grown, darkens the sky with its wings. ”

“ Arrived at the summit, a scene of awful grandeur and magnificence is presented to the view. Looking down the declivity, you see far below to the left, the visiters whom you have left behind, standing on the platform or termination of the avenue along which they had come; and lower down still, the bottom of the Great Dome itself. Above, two hundred and eighty feet, is the ceiling, lost in the obscurity of space and distance. The height of the ceiling was determined by E.F. Lee, civil engineer. ”