Mount Royal

“ You generally do," retorted Leonard, churlishly; "and, after having dragged me about a lot of mouldy old French towns, and made me look at churches, and Roman baths, and the sites of ancient circuses, until I hated the very name of antiquity, you will expect me to vegetate at Mount Royal for the next six months."
"I don't see any reason why a quiet life should be mere vegetation," said Christabel; "but if you would prefer to spend part of the year in London I can stay at Mount Royal." ”

“ The excellent building-stone of the neighborhood, a gray limestone, is utilized extensively, and this adds to the ornamental appearance, the city rising upon a series of terraces stretching back from the river and giving many good sites for construction. Numerous, massive and elaborate, the multitude of costly houses devoted to religion, trade and private residences are both a surprise and a charm. Mount Royal, rising boldly behind them, gives not only a noble background to the view from the river, but also a grand point of outlook, displaying their beauties to the utmost. ”

“ These royal roads to the summit are, however, too democratic for the taste of some visitors, who mourn the olden days of ponies, guides and adventures; and though they give an excellent view of the geological structure of the mountain, they do not afford a good opportunity for the study of the alpine flora, which is one of the chief attractions of Mount Washington. ”

“ At the upper end of the valley the dome formation is dominant. To the north are the rounded summits of North Dome, Basket Dome and Mount Watkins. The granite walls below them have fractured in great concentric arcs, forming the marvelously symmetrical Royal Arches, at the east end of which is the striking vertical promontory of Washington Column. At the edge of the perpendicular cliffs of the south wall is Glacier Point, the finest lookout point in the valley, and a short distance back from the rim are the symmetrical curves of Sentinel Dome. ”

“ From the summit there is a commanding view of the Promontory, and you may mark its varying breadth and inequalities, its storm indented figure, and its broken fantastic cliffs, abrupt declivities, and deep gorges, as by some earthquake cleft.
There is, indeed, a charm connected with this mount, before which the pageant of pomp, and the heralds of emblazonry must bow down. That charm is
The power of thought, the magic of the mind. ”

“ The road up is rough, tedious, and, until the ridge at the foot of the south peak is reached, uninteresting. It crooks and turns with absolute lawlessness while climbing the flanks of the southern peak, skirting also the side of the profound ravine eating its way into the mountain from the south. Nearing this summit we obtained through an opening a glimpse of Mount Washington, veiled in the clouds. ”

“ Mont Blanc, seen from the north, is a wonderful, glistening mass of snowy domes, piled one against the other in ever-increasing altitude to a beautifully-proportioned and well-balanced whole. No beauty or symmetry of form can be read out of the ponderous, ungainly, ill-proportioned lump whose horizontal stratification lines produce an appearance of almost comical squatness and which carries, as if by accident, on its western extremity a little carelessly truncated cone to serve as a summit. For such is Mount Everest as seen from the Base Camp. ”

“ A mountain is not a thing that you can put away in your pocket, or hide under the eaves till an accident reveals its whereabouts. Verily our misguided brethren have much to do to make out a case; and, in the firm belief that I am climbing up the highest point of land this side the Rocky Mountains, I begin my journey.
Time was when the ascent of Mount Washington could be justly considered a difficult and dangerous feat ”

“ Its rocky ice-mantled slopes above timberline contrast with the dense green forests and give Mount Rainier the appearance of an arctic island in a temperate sea, an island so large that you can see its full size and shape only from the air. The mountain is highly photogenic because of the contrasts it offers among bare rock, snowfields, blue sky, and the incomparable flower fields that color its lower slopes. Shadows cast by the multitude of cliffs, ridges, canyons, and pinnacles change constantly from sunrise to sunset, endlessly varying the texture and mood of the mountain. ”

“ From the bosom of the tumbling sea of ice, huge granite needles shoot into the sky, objects of singular sublimity, one of them rising to the great hight of thirteen thousand feet, seven thousand above the point where you are standing. This is more than double the hight of Mount Washington in our country, and this amazing pinnacle of rock looks like the spire of an interminable colossal cathedral, with other pinnacles around it. No snow can cling to the summits of these jagged spires; the lightning does not splinter them; the tempests rave round them ”

“ Mountain range rises beyond mountain range, until only the snowy summits are visible in the great distance, and one knows that beyond the last of them lies the open sea. The near-by peaks and ridges, red with granite or black with shale and gullied from top to bottom with snow and ice, the broad highways of the glaciers at their feet carrying parallel moraines that look like giant tram-lines, stand out with vivid distinction. A lofty peak, that we suppose is Mount Hunter, towers above the lesser summits. ”

“ Up to an elevation of 4,000 feet or more the flanks of Mount Rainier are clothed in a continuous belt of somber forest, broken only where glaciers and their nascent streams have hewn pathways, or where, alas, fire has left desolate slopes marked here and there by the whitened, weather-worn shaft of some old tree, a dreary monument to its destroyed fellows. ”

“ Note the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains as they rise from the plains, their peaks snow-capped, glistening in clear blue sky, breathe the pure essence of life, drink of the crystal streams twinkling down their sides, then scorn the wine made by man. Listen to the salute of the bells and the whistles as the trains approach and pass that strange monument of nature's handiwork, the Mount of the Holy Cross. ”

“ Soon the tourist finds himself in the heart of the mountain. Peak upon peak rises above him, until the splintered summits seem to touch the sky. Darker and darker grow the shadows, narrower and still more narrow grows the gorge, deeper and deeper grows the gloom, the river ceases its roaring, the noise of the train is hardly perceptible, for the engineer has "slowed up," and the Royal Gorge is at hand. Here the cañon is not wide enough for road and river, and here is one of the most remarkable feats of engineering. ”

“ At the end of the valley and above the glacier Everest rises not so much a peak as a prodigious mountain-mass. There is no complication for the eye. The highest of the world's great mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy. ”

“ It is a huge natural niche excavated high up the mountain. You see everything—grizzled spruces, blackened shafts of stone, rifted walls, tawny crags—all in one glance. It is formidable and forbidding, though a way has been made through it by which to ascend Mount Adams. Now that there is a good path skirting the ravine and avoiding it, that look will usually suffice to deter sensible people from attempting to reach the summit by it. It is far better to descend into it and grope one’s way down through and underneath the bowlders. ”

“ The Royal Gorge must have been formed by some great convulsion in nature, rending the mountains from the top to the bottom, and leaving this deep chasm. The muddy mountain torrent has burrowed a channel through for itself, where it lashes and foams into fury against the obstructing rocks. ”

“ Nowhere is the unapproachable grandeur of Mount Washington more fully manifested than here. This large and impressive view is at once suggestive of that glorious pre-eminence always associated with high mountains. There are mountains, respectable ones too, in the middle distance; but over these the great peak lords it with undisputed sway. The bold and firm, though gradual, lines of ascent culminating at the apex, extend over leagues of sky. After a clear sunset, Mount Washington takes the same dull lead-color of the clouds hovering like enormous night-birds over its head. ”

“ Turning his course thither, he follows the narrow and naked ridge over one peak after another, first rising upon Mount Pleasant, then Mount Franklin, and then Mount Monroe, each lifting him higher, and making the sea of mountains around him more wide and billowy, and the yawning gulfs on either side more profound and awful, so that every moment his interest deepens, and reaches not its climax till he stands upon Mount Washington, when the vast panorama is completed, and the world seems spread out at his feet. ”

“ A peak near at hand they named Mount George, in honor of George I., who had just been made king, and a second one Mount Alexander, in honor of the governor, and they drank the health of both. Then they rode down the western slope into the lovely valley they had gazed upon. Here they had no warlike or romantic adventures, fights with Indians or wild beasts, but they had a very enjoyable time. After a delightful ride through the valley they recrossed the mountains, and rode joyously homeward to tell the people of the plain the story of what they had seen. ”

“ Cascades the distinction of being the equal, in picturesqueness and grandeur, of the Rockies, or, in fact, of any other range in the country. As continental landmarks, Mounts Pitt, Union, Thielson, Jefferson, Hood, Adams, St. Helens, Tacoma, Baker, Stuart, Chiam, Douglass, and others are unsurpassed. Their hoary crests tower to such majestic heights as to be visible, in some instances, hundreds of miles, and their many glaciers feed mighty rivers upon whose bosoms the commerce of nations is borne. Mount Jefferson is 9,020 feet high ”

“ We were perched upon the extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward which we had been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days and nights together—and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high—grand old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight. ”

“ The general view from the summit consists of a sublime assemblage of ice-born rocks and mountains, long wavering ridges, meadows, lakes, and forest-covered moraines, hundreds of square miles of them. The lofty summit-peaks rise grandly along the sky to the east, the gray pillared slopes of the Hoffman Range toward the west, and a billowy sea of shining rocks like the Monument, some of them almost as high and which from their peculiar sculpture seem to be rolling westward in the middle ground, something like breaking waves. ”

“ You, my dear friend, who are well acquainted from my infancy with my clambering disposition, which, within these few months, has carried me to the top of both Vesuvius and Ætna, will not be much surprised to learn, that I have attempted, with success, to mount to the summit of Mont Blanc; an aerial journey which the sight of this mountain has inspired many persons with a wish to accomplish; but in which few have engaged, and still fewer have succeeded. ”

“ Coming up the land from the south I had thought that the lifting of Mount Washington through the plastic earth had caused the waves of land to radiate from it in all directions, but to stand on the highest summit is to see that this is not so. The force that made the mountains to the south and the mountains to the north is the same, and the Presidential Range is a result, also, and not a cause. It is but the seventh wave of those which ride in from the northwest, and the force which made them all came over the land from countless leagues beyond. ”

“ We found the summit not a peak so much as a dome — a rounded mass of granite. Serbal is about the height of Mount Washington, but this gives no impression of its real grandeur: for while Mount Washington rises by a gradual slope, its sides being covered with forests, Serbal rises so perpendicularly that its five separate masses appear, as I have said, like gigantic columns, lifting their heads against the sky. We stood on the brow of a precipice, which might well make one shudder as he advanced to the point of the cliff, and looked over to a depth of four thousand feet. ”

“ There are, nevertheless, in the United States, as in Europe, several groups of mountains which have acted as independent centres for the dispersion of erratics, as, for example, the White Mountains, latitude 44 degrees north, the highest of which, Mount Washington, rises to about 6300 feet above the sea ”

“ PENZANCE HARBOUR: NIGHT.
But we leave these, and embark upon that little voyage of three miles to “the Mount,” as you come to abbreviate Saint Michael’s crags, across the shallow waters of the tumbling bay.
In less than half an hour our little launch runs alongside the massive stone walls of the tiny haven, at the foot of the historic Mount, and we presently disport ourselves upon its delightful slopes, whose history, with that of the grey castle above, goes back to very dim antiquity: a history of sieges, surprises, and fierce fights among the rocks, and on the sands below. ”

“ They will find themselves in one of the boldest mountain-passes in the United States, in the heart of a scene comprising crags, forests, and a river sprinkled with numerous islands, all striking, harmonious, and romantic. There, indeed, is neither a Round-Top nor a Mount Washington, with ladders on which to climb to heaven; but there are certain mountain ridges hard by, from whose tops he who is hardy enough to mount them, can well believe he looks down on heaven, so broad, so fair, so elysian are the prospects that stretch below. ”