Pincian Hill

“ The former is clean with open spaces, a broad main street, and is dotted about with palms and agaves in sub-tropical gardens. The old San Remo is a network, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes. This old portion goes by the name of la Pigna, the Pinecone, because of the manner in which the ancient houses are grouped, pressed together one on another, rising towards a culminating conical point.
The old town is built upon a hill that descends gently to the sea, and whose summit is crowned by a sanctuary. The streets twist about, are steep, with steps, and paved with bricks or rolled stones. ”

“ Set brightly against the sombre background of the tumulus- crowned hill stood shining silver birch trees and dark shaggy firs: they now looked wan and spectral in the fading light. For a fleeting moment the world glowed like a huge golden ball; then the whole countryside was one vast vista of green, finally merging into a deep illimitable purple. Down the valley crept the mist, trailing its filmy veils over point and peak and ridge. ”

“ Before Tinhead there were more vertical rolls and corresponding troughs on the hillside, and at the foot again three or four wide terraces, and below them a cornfield reaching to the road. To the low, dark-blue elm country away from the Plain—that is, northward—and to the far wooded ridge on its horizon, the westering light was beginning to add a sleeplike softness of pale haze. Over the low hedges I saw league after league of this lower land, and the drab buttresses of Beacon Hill near Devizes on its eastern edge. ”

“ On the way I skirted a grove of small pines, standing between the road and the edge of Cedar Creek ravine: dull, scrubby trees, like pitch-pines, but less bright in color; of the same kind as those amid which, on Cameron Hill and Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, there had been so notable a gathering of warblers the year before. Pinus pungens, Table Mountain pine, I suppose they were, though it must be acknowledged that I was never at the pains to settle the point. Here at Natural Bridge I had found all such woods deserted day after day, till I had ceased to think them worth looking into. ”

“ Fillan's Hill, we are yet high enough to get a glimpse of that gem of Highland lochs—Loch Earn, set literally at the feet of the hills, its waters murmuring a never ceasing song, as if happy with their near presence, having wooed and kissed their steep and rugged sides into silver strands and gently curving bays from end to end ”

“ It stands on the brow of a hill which bounds one side of the wealthy and picturesque valley that winds along from Huddersfield to Penistone. It boasts one main street, which sidles along down the hill-side with here and there a clever curve, just enough to prevent you from taking a full-length view of the street; on and down it goes, the houses on the one side looking down on those opposite, and evidently having the advantages of being higher up in the world than their neighbours, until it terminates in the highroad leading out of the village towards Honley and Penistone. ”

“ Leslie Pinckney Hill, schoolmaster of Cheyney, Pennsylvania, and authentic singer, is one of the newest arrivals on the slopes of Parnassus. A first glance tells that he is an agile climber, sinewy, easy of movement, light of step, with both grace and strength. Every indication in form and motion is for some point far up toward the summit. ”

“ To justify the slow progress of the army, jungles, forests, swamps and hills were introduced on the perfectly flat arable land such as that around Malolos, Calumpit, and San Fernando, extending in fact all the way from Manila to Tarlac.3 This country supports a dense population, and almost every bit of it has been under the plough for centuries. The only hill is Arayat. During the dry season, say from November to May or June, the soil is baked quite hard, and vehicles or guns can traverse any part of it with slight assistance from the pioneers. ”

“ It is about a hundred and fifty yards long, and is so narrow that only one person at a time can with difficulty make his way through it.
Eastward of Troup Head the scenery continues of the same character. The fishing village of Pennan, like Gardenstown, lies at the foot of a ledge of precipitous rocks, and is enclosed by a little creek or bay. From the summit of the Red Head of Pennan the indentations of the coast are seen to Kinnaird’s Head in the east, and to the Bin Hill of Cullen in the west. ”

“ V2 Meanwhile Bouquet's men pushed on the heavy work of road-making up the main range of the Alleghanies, and, what proved far worse, the parallel mountain ridge of Laurel Hill, hewing, digging, blasting, laying fascines and gabions to support the track along the sides of steep declivities, or worming their way like moles through the jungle of swamp and forest. Forbes described the country to Pitt as an "immense uninhabited wilderness, overgrown everywhere with trees and brushwood, so that nowhere can one see twenty yards." ”

“ Sometimes the main-road is joined by the crossways, and from them to the main-road and over it passes the long vaunted Rising, the people's tumult, to sweep away the Unnecessary, then vanish back again into the crossways.
Near the main-road lies the railway. By turning aside from it, walking through a field, fording a river, penetrating first through a dark aspen grove, then through a red pine belt, skirting some ravines, threading a way across a village, trudging wearily through dried-up river-beds and on through a marsh, the village of Pochinki is reached, surrounded by forest. ”

“ But, seen closer, the mountain reveals itself as a vast slope of varied colour and composition, smooth everywhere, but patched and streaked with long strips of shale, or grass, or heather, which hang down the great breast of the hill for many hundreds of feet with surprising steepness. At the top is a wilderness of stone, below it a green tract of turf or bilberry, merging into purple heather or wide fields of fern, and all so subtly woven and blended as to produce, especially in late summer and autumn, a rich combination of tints. ”

“ A wide thoroughfare, Second Street-cut through Rincon Hill, the Nob Hill of a former day, to afford access to water for vehicles-has been the occasion of leaving isolated, high and dry, some few old houses, with cypress-trees about them, approached by wooden staircases almost interminable. Dark at sunset against a red sky, for instance, they present effects to delight the heart of an etcher. ”

“ The hump-backed ridges, connecting Cannon with Kinsman, present nearly the same appearance from this as from the other side of the Notch—or as remarked when approaching from Campton.
The superb picture seen from the upper end of the valley, combining, as it does, the two great chains in a single glance of the eye, is extended and improved by going a mile out of the village to the school-house on the Sugar Hill road. It is a peerless landscape. ”

“ The Chin Hills, bordering on Assam and Manipur, have already been mentioned as nothing but a maze of mountains. The main ranges run north and south, the principal being the Letta or Tang, the Inbuklang, and the Kong Klang, varying from 5000 to 9000 feet in height. West of Pakôkku, the southern part of the Chin Hills has heights from 5000 to 7000 feet, with the great peak of Mt Victoria (10,400 feet) . In the Arakan Hill Tracts, the heights dwindle to 3000 and 3500 feet, but the best defined range, Kyaukpan-daung, rises to 4500 feet. ”

“ The landing at Yorktown was in front of a hill which rose with a gentle slope some twenty-five feet above the beach, on the top of which, in front of the town, was an earthwork mounting six or eight guns.
From this point the party proceeded in a south-westerly direction, across the peninsula, to Grove Wharf, on James river. The distance was about ten [Pg 313] miles, and was accomplished without difficulty or delay. On their arrival at Grove Wharf, however, they were disappointed to learn that no boat was to leave there for Richmond until the following Monday. ”

“ Green valleys and cultivated farms margin the Carson and Walker rivers. Sierras are not lofty enough to be grand, desert too gentle and overspread with sage to be terrible; yet the pale, high key of all its colors, and singular aërial brilliancy lend an otherwise dreary enough picture the charm,—as I once before said,—of water-color drawings. There is no perspective under this fierce white light; in midday intensely sharp reflections glare from hill and valley, except where the shadow of passing cloud spreads cool and blue over olive slopes. ”

“ His eye for a moment rested on the familiar landscape, the blue waters of the loch glittering in the sunshine, a bleak moorland sprinkled here and there with white-fleeced sheep stretching away on one side, and on the other a valley, down which flowed, with ceaseless murmurings, a rapid stream, a steep hill covered with gorse and heather, the summit crowned with a wood of dark pines rising beyond it. Just above the manse could be seen the kirk, which, with a few cottages, composed the village; while scattered far around were the huts in which the larger part of the pastor’s flock abode. ”

“ The Ridge of the Hill shoots from North to South, and is in no Part of it less than two hundred Paces broad, and of equal Length with the Valleys that enclose it, and joins to the Plain upon the Continent. The South Side of this Hill, and the Plain below it, is bounded by the Bay of Ceras, which makes it almost a Peninsula of a semicircular Figure, in the Form of a drawn Bow, with this Difference only, that the Western Point of it is larger by half ”

“ Numerous brooks unite to form two rivers, one running down the green slope among ranches and gardens into the blooming valley of San Bernardino, the other pouring eastward, shrinking as it flows out upon the hot sands, till, in a few miles, the unslakable desert has drunk it dry.
There are but few points in America where such extremes of physical condition meet. What contrasts, what opposed sentiments, the two views awakened! Spread out below us lay the desert, stark and glaring, its rigid hill-chains lying in disordered grouping, in attitudes of the dead. ”

“ East, the Sierra slope is rent and gashed in a wilderness of cañons, yawning deep and savage. Miles of chaparral tangle in dense{225} growth over walls and spurs, covering with kindly olive-green the staring red of riven mountain-side and gashed earth. Beyond this swells up the more refined plateau and hill country made of granite and trimmed with pine, bold domes rising above the green cover; and there the sharp, terrible front of El Capitan, guarding Yosemite and looking down into its purple gulf. Beyond, again, are the peaks, and among them one looms sharpest. ”

“ Its oak-clad hills wander out into the great, plain-like coast promontories, enclosing yellow or, in spring-time, green bays of prairie. The hill-forms are rounded, or stretch in long, longitudinal ridges, broken across by the river cañons. Above this zone of red earth, softly modelled undulations, and dull, grayish groves, with a chain of mining towns, dotted ranches and vineyards, rise the swelling middle heights of the Sierras, a broad, billowy plateau cut by sharp, sudden cañons, and sweeping up, with its dark, superb growth of coniferous forest to the feet of the summit-peaks. ”

“ Flocks of pelicans, high against the sky, floated in slow, wheeling flight, reflecting the sun from white wings, and, turning, were lost in the blue to gleam out again like flakes of snow.
The eye ranges over strange, forbidding hill-forms and leagues of desert, from which no familiarity can ever banish suggestions of death. Traced along boundary hills, straight terraces of an ancient beach indicate former water-levels, and afar in the Sierra, great, empty gorges, glacier-burnished and moraine-flanked, lead up to amphitheatres of rock once white with névé. ”

“ Between Maerdy, Pont-y-Glyn, and Dinas Hill, there are a number of dangerous precipices, steep hills, and difficult narrow turnings. At Dinas Hill the width of the road is not more than twelve feet at the steepest part of the hill, and 19with a deep precipice on one side; two carriages cannot pass without the greatest danger. ”

“ Distinguished by the beautiful groves of maple that adorn its crest, Sugar Hill is destined to grow more and more in the popular esteem. No traveller should pass it by. It is so admirably placed as to command in one magnificent sweep of the eye all the highest mountains; it is also lifted into sun and air by an elevation sufficiently high to reach the cooler upper currents. The days are not so breathless or so stifling as they are down in the valley. You look deep into the Franconia Notch, and watch the evening shadows creep up the great east wall. ”

“ For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. ”

“ This hill is a conical coronet-topped hill of burned sandstone mixed with some quartz and is four miles from camp, on a bearing of 157 1/2 degrees. Belts of mulga between camp and this; the country to north-east and round by east to south for some miles is not all good; a little spinifex and the ground perfectly strewed with bronzed stones of various sizes; no ranges visible from north round to north-east, but plains and mulga scrub; one larger hill similar, but coated with spinifex and bush of various sizes, is close by bearing 300 degrees ”