Catamount

“ The earthy scent of the catacomb will cling to the reader's clothes, and he will have two minds about keeping for a souvenir the taper which he carried, and which the guide wraps in a bit of newspaper for him; he may prefer the flower which he is allowed to gather from the tiny garden at the entrance to the catacombs. Yet these Catacombs of Domatilla are among the cheerfulest of all the catacombs, and a sense of something sweet and appealing invests them from the memory of the gentle lady whose piety consecrated them as the last home of the refugees and martyrs. ”

“ Northward, a forest darkled, whose glades of brightness I could not see. Eastward, the bank mounted abruptly to a bare fire-swept table-land, whereon a few dead trees stood, parched and ghostly skeletons draped with rags of moss.
Furthermost and topmost, I saw Katahdin twenty miles away, a giant undwarfed by any rival. The remainder landscape was only minor and judiciously accessory. The hills were low before it, the lake lowly, and upright above lake and hill lifted the mountain pyramid. Isolate greatness tells. ”

“ Manly men need the wilderness and the mountain. Katahdin is the best mountain in the wildest wild to be had on this side the continent. He looked at us encouragingly over the hills. I saw that he was all that Iglesias, connoisseur of mountains, had promised, and was content to wait for the day of meeting.
The steamboat dumped us and our canoe on a wharf at the lake-head about four o’clock. A wharf promised a settlement, which, however, did not exist. There was population, — one man and one great ox. ”

“ We stayed studying the pleasant solitude and dreamy breadth of Katahdin's panorama for a long time, and every moment the mystery of the mist above grew more enticing. Pride also was awakened. We turned from sunshine and Cosmos into fog and Chaos. We made ourselves quite miserable for nought. We clambered up into Nowhere, into a great, white, ghostly void. We saw nothing but the rough surfaces we trod. We pressed along crater-like edges, and all below was filled with mist, troubled and rushing upward like the smoke of a volcano. Up we went,—nothing but granite and gray dimness. ”

“ About two miles down the Appian Way, near the tomb of Caecilia Metella, the large round tower, you know, bodies have frequently been discovered. It is conjectured that these are the bodies of the Christians which have been obtained from the amphitheater and carried away for burial. On the approach of the guards, the Christians have dropped the bodies and fled. But, after all, this gives no assistance, for after you enter the Catacombs you are no nearer your aim than before. No human being can penetrate that infinite labyrinth without assistance from those who live there. ”

“ In the city above the Christian religion had been increasing for successive generations, and during all this time the dead had been coming here in ever-increasing numbers, so that now the Catacombs formed a vast city of the dead, whose silent population slumbered in endless ranges, rank above rank, waiting till
"The wakeful trump of doom should thunder through the deep." ”

“ Mountains, being cloud-compellers, are rain-shedders, and the shed water will not always flow with decorous gayety in dell or glen. Sometimes it stays bewildered in a bog, and here the climber must plunge. In the moist places great trees grow, die, fall, rot, and barricade the way with their corpses. Katahdin has to endure all the ills of mountain being, and we had all the usual difficulties to fight through doggedly. When we were clumsy, we tumbled and rose up torn. Still we plodded on, following a path blazed by the Bostonians, Cancut's late charge, and we grumblingly thanked them. ”

“ Katahdin,—the more I saw of it, the more grateful I was to the three powers who enabled me to see it: to Nature for building it, to Iglesias for guiding me to it, to myself for going.
We sat upon the deck and let Katahdin grow,—and sitting, talked of mountains, somewhat to this effect:—
Mountains are the best things to be seen. Within the keen outline of a great peak is packed more of distance, of detail, of light and shade, of color, of all the qualities of space, than vision can get in any other way. No one who has not seen mountains knows how far the eye can reach. ”

“ Beware, I tell thee, thou stranger in the land, lest the same hands which set thee above all the people of Kamt should hurl thee from that throne and send thee bruised and bleeding into the dark valley of death, a prey to the carrion of the wilderness from whence thou camest, followed by the maledictions of that same populace which is now ready to proclaim thee akin to the gods! ”

“ Pale, blue, and sulphury, it flashed in the north and east, dashing its forky strength between the masses of cloud, gleaming on the darkened water, and revealing the bleak outline of the Calton—the high and fantastic mansions of the city, among whose black summits the levin-bolts seemed playing and dancing—to be tossed from chimney to turret, and from turret to tower—leaping from hand to hand, ere they flashed away into obscurity, or cast one lurid glare on the gorge behind the church that, for four hundred years, covered the grave of Mary of Gueldres and of Zutphen. ”

“ The natural bend of the falling cataract, and the backward shelve of the precipice, form an immense area like the interior of a tent, but so pervaded by discharges of mist and spray, that it is impossible to see far inward. Outward the light struggles brokenly through the crystal wall of the cataract; and when the sun shines directly on its face, it is a scene of unimaginable glory. The footing is rather unsteadfast, a small shelf composed of loose and slippery stones; and the abyss below boils like—it is difficult to find a comparison. ”

“ Among them we might imagine the mountain rising with thousands more of feet of heaven-piercing height: there is one degree of sublimity in mystery, as there is another degree in certitude. We lay to in a shady nook, just off Katahdin’s reflection in the river, while Iglesias sketched him. ”

“ A peasant or two going home from the wine-shop, and a few carts of country produce coming up to Rome, were the only things which they met. They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them. Then Burger stopped with his hand to his side. "Your legs are longer than mine, and you are more accustomed to walking," said he, laughing. "I think that the place where we turn off is somewhere here. ”

“ The descent was easy, the turnings frequent, and light there was none, save the glimmerings of our slender tapers. The origin of the Catacombs is still a disputed question; but the most probable opinion is, that they were formed by digging out the pozzolana or volcanic earth, which was used as a cement in the great buildings of Rome. They extend in a zone round the city, and form a labyrinth of subterranean galleries, which traverse the Campagna, reaching, according to some, to the shore of the Mediterranean. He who adventures into them without a guide is infallibly lost. ”

“ It may not be often possible to trace as clearly as we have just done in a single instance, the logical order and dependence of the several subjects that were selected for representation in each chamber of the Catacombs; they may not always have been so admirably arranged as to be in fact equivalent, as these were, to a well-ordered dogmatic discourse. Nevertheless it is only when read in this way, that the decoration of the Catacombs can be made thoroughly intelligible ”

“ The booming of the cataract nearly drowned his voice and Marcus pretended not to hear it. A huge lumber mass was piling itself up among the rocks jutting out of the rapids, and a dozen men hanging like flies on the logs, sprang up and down with axes in their hands. They cut one log here and another there; shouted commands; and fell into the river amid the derisive jeers of the spectators; they scrambled out again and, dripping wet, set to work once more with a cheerful heart, to the mighty music of the cataract, whose thundering rhythm trembled and throbbed in the air. ”

“ Never had the monks heard Caedmon, or any other minstrel, sing with such fire; the intervening centuries fled before his song. They, too, went to the lowly manger, and saw the Divine Infant hushed on the happy breast of his young Mother and felt Mary's awe when the shepherds told her what they that night had seen and heard. While Caedmon sang they saw the caravan winding over an unmarked way and the wise men of the Orient following ever the strange star, till, after weeks of travel, it stood over the place where the young Child lay. ”

“ Time was, indeed, when learned men shrank from this conclusion, and suggested, that though unquestionably they were used as burial-places, yet perhaps this was only an afterthought, and that they may have been originally designed for something else. The building of Rome, it was said, must have required vast quantities of stone and of sand to make cement; perhaps, therefore, in the Roman Catacombs we have only lit upon a certain number of exhausted, or rather deserted, sandpits and quarries, which later generations availed themselves of, for economy’s sake, as places of burial. ”

“ There is something in the air of a burial place which is unlike that of any other place. It is not altogether the closeness, or the damp, or the sickening smell of earth, but a certain subtle influence which unites with them and intensifies them. The spell of the dead is there, and it rests alike on mind and body. Such was the air of the catacombs. Cold and damp, it struck upon the visitor like the chill atmosphere from the realms of death. The living felt the mysterious power of the dead.
The boy Pollio went on before and Marcellus followed after. ”

“ Meetings for prayer and praise were frequent throughout the Catacombs. Cut off from ordinary occupations of worldly business, they were thrown entirely upon other and higher pursuits. Deprived of the opportunity to make efforts for the support of the body, they were forced to make their chief business the care of the soul. They gained what they sought. Earth with its cares, its allurements, and its thousand attractions, lost its hold upon them. ”

“ The gods decree that thou be cast out for ever beyond the gates of Kamt, into the valley of death, where dwell neither bird nor beast, where neither fruit nor tree doth grow, and where thy soul and body, rotting in the arid sand, shall become a prey for ever to the loathsome carrion of the desert. ”

“ At the distance of half a mile beneath the cataract, the river is confined between two rocks, over which a strong bridge of a single arch has been thrown, and runs into a deep trough, with great roaring, and an impetuous velocity. On ascending, the cataract presents itself amid groves of beautiful trees, and exhibits a most magnificent and stupendous sight, such as, Mr. Bruce observes, ages, added to the greatest length of human life, could not efface or eradicate from his memory. ”

“ In all thy thoughts contained. Why further, then,
Seek we our deities? Let those who doubt
And halting, tremble for their coming fates,
Go ask the oracles. No mystic words,
Make sure my heart, but surely-coming Death.
Coward alike and brave, we all must die.
Thus hath Jove spoken: seek to know no more."
Thus Cato spake, and faithful to his creed
He parted from the temple of the god
And left the oracle of Hammon dumb.
Bearing his javelin, as one of them
Before the troops he marched: no panting slave
With bending neck, no litter bore his form. ”

“ The fall becomes a fall without any harsh edge of precipice. We cannot define where the shadowy gleam above bends fleeter over the first ledges; nor where the bend first breaks with spray, and spray thickens, and the curve passes into a leap, and the leap into a resistless plunge, and all the bends, curves, leaps, and plunges fling themselves together in joyful abandonment, thrilled through and through with sensitive tremors of graceful daring.
As the cataract comes gushing forward rather than dropped in precipitous downfall, so it is not received on a flattened level of water below. ”

“ The Catacombs are a series of connected fissures and small crevices in which every inch of exposed surface is covered with clear, translucent, almost transparent, calcite crystals, neither coated with lime nor stained with clay; nor even is the pearly lustre dimmed with the slightest trace of dust. The crystals are very sharp and of all sizes, ranging from half an inch to three and a half inches in length, the larger sizes being conspicuously abundant. The entire region is an enormously large, perfectly formed, and undamaged geode. ”

“ The paintings of the catacombs date from the third and fourth centuries after Christ. The catacombs, or burial-places of the early Christians, consist of long, narrow, subterranean passages, cut with regularity, and crossing each other like streets in a city. The graves are in the sides of these passages, and there are some larger rooms or chambers into which the narrow passages run. There are about sixty of the catacombs in and near Rome; they are generally called by the name of some saint who is buried in them. ”

“ The other sort of Authors give indeed a mighty Idea of the Catacombs, represent them as a work of that vastness, that the Christians in the persecuting times had not number enough to carry it on; but then most undevisedly with the same breath they confound them with the Puticuli in Festus Pempeius, where, at the same time that the Anicent Romans us'd to burn the Bodies of their dead, the custom was, to avoid expence, to throw those of the Slaves to rot. ”