Mount Calvary

“ Whatever one may think as to the site of Calvary, no one can approach a spot which even claims to be it, and which has been for centuries the object of worship of millions, and is constantly thronged by believing pilgrims, without profound emotion. It was late in the afternoon when I entered the church, and already the shades of evening increased the artificial gloom of the interior. At the very entrance lies an object that arrests one. It is a long marble slab resting upon the pavement, about which candles are burning. ”

“ And as we stood there on that Calvary, built in memory of the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of their Master by the peasants, and looked down over the earth, bright with crimson poppies everywhere in field and hill, brilliant with the old-gold blossom of the broom flower, as we stood there, our hearts subdued to awe and wonder, looking down, suddenly the rain ceased and the sun shone in its full glory and lighted anew the white marble of the figures of the ascension far below us in the field. ”

“ The sunlight had crept down the cliff, it touched the drifted masses at its base and incontinently came striding with seven-leagued boots towards us. The distant cliff seemed to shift and quiver, and at the touch of the dawn a reek of grey vapour poured upward from the crater floor, whirls and puffs and drifting wraiths of grey, thicker and broader and denser, until at last the whole westward plain was steaming like a wet handkerchief held before the fire, and the westward cliffs were no more than refracted glare beyond.
“It is air,” said Cavor. ”

“ He can hear the rustle of trees against the cliff on a level with his ear, and he guesses that he must be near the base of the precipice. A slide of a few feet—a dozen yards along a rocky ledge crawling on his hands and knees, the cavern widens, and, with such a feeling of relief as he has seldom, if ever, experienced before in the course of his life, Claverton steps forth from his subterranean prison-house and stands looking out into the moonlit valley, drinking in the fresh, cool night air in grateful draughts. ”

“ The climb of the walls helps out the eye, somehow. I lay down on a solitary rock that was like an island in the bottom of the valley, and looked up. The grey sage-brush and the blue-grey rock around me were already in shadow, but high above me the canyon walls were dyed flame-colour with the sunset, and the Cliff City lay in a gold haze against its dark cavern. In a few minutes it, too, was grey, and only the rim rock at the top held the red light. When that was gone, I could still see the copper glow in the piñons along the edge of the top ledges. ”

“ A marvel of glory is this mountain peak now christened Mount Edith Cavell. It rises in solitary majesty out of this morning-world, lifting its head into the faint, transparent azure of ethereal spaces, while its base is rooted amid the rocky fastnesses of the great range. The naming of Mount Edith Cavell is the tribute of the Dominion to one great-souled woman, and thus to all that makes for the greatness of womanhood. On its precipitous slopes may be read by all who have the inner vision the scroll of human fate. ”

“ Precipitous limestone scars fringe the browny-green heights in many places, and almost girdle the summit of Calver Hill, the great bare height that rises a thousand feet above Reeth. The farms and hamlets of these upper parts of Swaledale are of the same grays, greens, and browns as the moors{62} and scars that surround them. The stone walls, that are often high and forbidding, seem to suggest the fortifications required for man’s fight with Nature, in which there is no encouragement for the weak. ”

“ In short their religion amounts to nothing more than a sort of Catholic mummery taught them by the traders. May He who teaches us as never man was taught soon teach them the way of life and salvation opened up by the great atonement made on Calvary. We have been nine hours ascending and descend- ing one mountain, the highest and most difficult by far that we have crossed. Found some beautiful springs of water. Camp in the woods almost without grass. ”

“ All went on pleasantly till they reached MacLean's Calvary. This fine red, granite monument, fourteen feet high, which overlooks the high road to Main Street, is the only one left of the three hundred and sixty crosses with which the island was covered at the time of the Reformation, about the middle of the sixteenth century.
Oliver Sinclair was anxious to make a sketch of this monument, which is a fine work, and stands out well in the midst of a bare, desolate plain. ”

“ We have come to Plougastel to see the people, and also its famous calvary, which stands in the middle of a desolate churchyard strewn with newly cut stone. As the day begins to dawn, we make our way to the church, and to the spot where we can just discern the calvary, with its carved figures standing darkly against the sky. There is a flutter at our approach, for birds have been nestling behind the headless horsemen, and sheltering in the nooks and corners of the ancient pile. We leave them to silence a little longer, and stroll out to the highest ground to see the sun rise. ”

“ But the climb from the Monastery to the summit of Monserrat is fraught with a succession of overpowering sensations, of perpetual contrast between terror and delight. The immense mass of mountain, about twenty-five miles in circumference at its base, is composed of a grey conglomerate of the granite type, brittle and crumbling; and by its nature assuming every variety of fanciful and weird appearances, baffling the utmost extent of men’s inventive powers. For about half the distance to the top its body remains solid ”

“ Fronting us stood the west chain, a great mural ridge watched over by two dominant heights, Kaweah Peak and Mount Brewer, its wonderful profile defining against the western sky a multitude of peaks and spires. Bold buttresses jut out through fields of ice, and reach down stone arms among snow and débris. North and south of us the higher, or eastern, summit stretched on in miles and miles of snow peaks, the farthest horizon still crowded with their white points. ”

“ It rises to the foothills beyond Calgary and sights the white wall of the Rocky mountains a hundred miles away. It plunges through the Gap at Canmore, ascends the valley of the Bow between colossal peaks, crosses the continental divide at Laggan, drops down the canyon beside a foaming torrent to the mountain-girt valley of the Columbia, rises again mile after mile into the icy air of Rogers Pass amid the glaciers of the Selkirk summits and finds its way with the rushing waters of the
Fig. 3. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Crevasses in the dark do put your nerves on edge.
When we started next morning (July 15) we could see on our left front and more or less on top of us the Knoll, which is a big hill whose precipitous cliffs to seaward form Cape Crozier. The sides of it sloped down towards us, and pressing against its ice-cliffs on ahead were miles and miles of great pressure ridges, along which we had travelled, and which hemmed us in. Mount Terror rose ten thousand feet high on our left, and was connected with the Knoll by a great cup-like drift of wind-polished snow. ”

“ It may be mentioned, however, that toward its terminus the glacier makes a steep descent and develops a series of parallel medial moraines and that it reaches down to an elevation of 3,365 feet, almost 600 feet lower than any other ice stream on Mount Rainier. A beautiful cave usually forms at the point of exit of the Carbon River. ”

“ Widely scattered throughout the plateau are small canyons, each one a few miles in length and a few hundred feet in depth. Throughout their course cliff-dweller ruins are found. In the highland glades and along the valley, pueblo ruins are widely scattered, but the strangest sights of all the things due to prehistoric man are the cave dwellings that are dug in the tops of cinder cones and the villages that were built in the caves of volcanic cliffs. If now I have succeeded in creating a picture of the plateau I will attempt a brief description of the canyon. ”

“ If we pass along the shores of the lake to the south-western edge, a few hundred feet up an open gully brings us to a series of cliffs south-west from Cumloughra lake. The rock is sound, and a fine, almost vertical ascent of 1,000 ft. may be made, striking the ridge of Caher (3,000 ft.) 200 ft. below the summit. It is a severe climb and very long, entailing many zigzags. There is no main gully to adhere to, and the cliffs are less impracticable than they look. Along the west side of the two lakes the cliffs are easier. ”

“ The Cawlitz Valley, North of the Columbia, like the Willammette, South, furnishes, perhaps, the largest valley of land, suitable for cultivation, between the Cascades and the Ocean; but on the North, as well as the South side, there are many other smaller valleys, besides these, capable of sustaining considerable settlements; which will, altogether, in time, when all that can, is made to yield, furinsh agricultural products, sufficient to sustain a population of some millions. ”

“ Far over the lake came their floating perfumes, as though to lend enchantment to each sense, and steep the very soul in a delicious luxury.
Now, as Calvert felt the refreshing breath of the gentle air that stirred the water, he was conscious of a glorious morning, and of something generally grand in the scene about him; but that was all. He had little romance—less of the picturesque—in his nature. If his eyes fell on the lake, it was to fancy the enjoyment of cleaving through it as a swimmer; if he turned towards the Alps, it was to imagine how toilsome would prove the ascent ”

“ Closed on the south, it sends its drainage through deep valleys to the plain. The white face of a limestone rock interrupts the more grassy spaces, and is varied by the darker serpentines. The soaring heights around the cirque are of eruptive volcanic origin, and display the lava flows. After a sharp ascent, the chaussée reaches the standing southern wall of this caldron, and is taken, in a fine gallery, for some distance along its northern slope. Its cliff-like outline extends from the heights of Palandöken to those of Eyerli in the west. ”

“ Others resembled a "maze," the puzzle being how to get from one point to another a few away. The rock was a sandstone and presented a rough surface affording a good hold, so there was little danger of slipping. We usually sat down and "inched" way to the edge of the cracks, jumping across to little ledges when possible, always helping each other.
The rock at the very edge of the main canyon overhung, in places 75 to 100 feet, and the great mass of gigantic boulders—sections of shattered cliffs—on the steep slope near the river gave evidence of a continual breaking away of these immense rocks. ”

“ Climbing the face of a cliff, a man will walk along a step or shelf, but a few inches wide, without hesitancy, if the landing is but ten feet below, should he fall; but if the foot of the cliff is a thousand feet down, he will crawl. At last our way is cut off by a fissure so deep and wide that we cannot pass it. Then we turn and walk back into the country, over the smooth, naked sandstone, without vegetation, except that here and there dwarf cedars and piñon pines have found a footing in the huge cracks. ”

“ He is alive, and in a cave, and the shafts of light are as much of that indispensable element as can penetrate a thick mass of creepers which falls over its entrance. But how came he there?
Instinctively, as he felt himself falling, Claverton had kicked his feet free of the stirrups; and instinctively again, and without being aware of it, he had clutched at the first substance which had come in his way—a trailing ladder of creepers hanging from the rock—and this it was which had made him feel as if he was supporting the whole weight of the globe in his hands. But the jerk had been too great. ”

“ Standing in a bath of vapors one looks backward over the track whence he came and notes tiny columns of steam marking the trail along which he so recently advanced. Every place in the crust that was punctured with the staff is slowly changing into a cauldron like the one at his feet and the traveller experiences a sensation of uneasiness, knowing, as he does, that in a brief time a new line of cauldrons will be in operation and for the first time he fully realizes the insecurity of his position and he longs for the solidity of the lava ridge where he left the hobbled ponies. ”

“ The first special object to fix our attention below the Cascades is Castle Rock. It is an isolated cliff of basalt, nine hundred feet high, covering about seventeen acres, its summit thinly clothed with stunted trees. It stands right on the verge of the River, nearly perpendicular on all sides, marvellous for symmetry from every point of view. At first sight one gets no conception of its magnitude, for it is dwarfed by the stupendous pinnacles, three thousand feet high, which compose the walls of the cañon. ”