Rock wall

“ Except where deep chines break in, too precipitous to be crossed, it is not difficult to walk along the edge and to see how perpetually the rugged walls of rock present some fresh diversity of form; at one time they are absolutely perpendicular as though they had been hewn by a mason’s hand, at the next turn they slope like the glacis of a gloomy rampart, and then suddenly they assume the aspect of a huge garden-wall dotted over with clusters of green and crimson in striking contrast with the dull brown ground. ”

“ For when mountains are striking to the general eye, they almost always have the high crest or wall of cliff on the top of their slopes, rising from the plain first in mounds of meadow-land, and bosses of rock, and studded softness of forest; the brown cottages peeping through grove above grove, until just where the deep shade of the pines becomes blue or purple in the haze of height, a red wall of upper precipice rises from the pasture land, and frets the sky with glowing serration. ”

“ The vast wall of rock, arising a sheer hundred feet directly opposite to where we lay, appeared densely black now in the shadow, but as my glance swept higher along its irregularity, the upper edge, jagged from outcropping stones, stood clearly revealed in the full silver sheen of the moon, each exposed line, carven as from marble, standing distinctly forth in delicate tracery against the background of the night sky. ”

“ In many gardens an abrupt change of level makes a retaining wall necessary, and when I see this built in the usual way as a solid structure of brick and mortar—unless there be any special need of the solid wall—I always regret that it is not built as a home for rock-plants. An exposure to north or east and the cool backing of a mass of earth is just what most Alpines delight in. A dry wall, which means a wall without mortar, may be anything between a wall and a very steep rock-work, and may be built of brick or of any kind of local stone. ”

“ Conversely, it is valuable practical training to note, when we are on a glacier, the character of its rock walls, and the points at which the ice could be reached on a descent of the last rocks from the surrounding peaks. The rock wall just above a glacier is like a sea cliff, smoothed below, and presents a perpetual problem, of ascent or descent. Long returns may often be avoided by our recollection of inspections of a particular wall, or by deductions from our memory of the fashion of rock finishes found on the local glaciers. ”

“ Why, a black and beetling wall of rock rising sheerly perpendicular up out of the water, and towering to a height of over one thousand feet. Although the loch is five hundred yards wide, you can hardly get rid of the impression that this immense wall of rock is bending towards you from the top, and about to fall and crush your pigmy body to atoms. ”

“ It is a blank, continuous wall of precipices, bending around us in the form of a horseshoe, a mile in diameter, and starting abruptly from the floor of the valley,—perhaps the most magnificent face of naked rock to be seen in Europe. ”

“ On the left side the rock forms a single vertical wall, and here the eyes fall on a succession of singular forms of relief, rocks like congealed cascades, citadels, church towers, and embattled fortifications, separated by cañon-like hollows. ”

“ It is clear that in this way each block or slab is made to provide the maximum of wall area at the expense of the thickness of the wall. Naturally, in districts where the rock is of a slabby nature blocks of a more or less uniform thickness lay ready to the builders' hand, and the appearance of the structure was much more finished than it would be in places where the rock had a less regular fracture or where shapeless boulders had to be relied on. ”

“ The outer wall consists of immense stones, or slabs of rock, three feet high, and many of them four or six feet long, joined closely together and hewn with a regularity and neatness truly astonishing, in view of the rude implements by which it must have been accomplished. On a level with the top of this outer wall, a pavement of large flat stones, several feet in width, extends entirely round, forming seats for the chiefs, warriors, and other persons of distinction, and singers performing the recitatives and choruses accompanying the dance. ”

“ In more than one place the rock has been hollowed into a series of rough steps, giving it the appearance of a vast ladder.* Below this precipitous path the waves dash with fury, and when the wind sets towards the land every thud causes the rocky wall to tremble, and detaches fragments from its surface. ”

“ Then take the natural division into blocks made by joints in the rocks to which cliffs like the famous Castle Head at Bar Harbor owes its striking form. These blocks are so nearly true that you feel sure they must have been cut by stone-masons, and yet they have the variety which art demands; they have not the monotonous sameness of - 229 - shape of the bricks in a wall. This is mainly due to the differences in the strains which cracked the original rock mass. So, from the beginning a sea-wall built by nature is more picturesque than a sea-wall built by man. ”

“ The view from the edge of the cliff is extensive; stunted trees unite with the craggy character of the rock in giving variety to the foreground. The Wall adheres, with tolerable pertinacity, to the edge of the crags, and hence pursues a course that is by no means direct. The accompanying wood-cut, which exhibits the view looking eastwards, shews the zig-zag path which it adopts. Nearly all our historians agree in stating that the 266most perfect specimens of the Wall now remaining, are on Walltown crags. ”

“ A wall garden is a perpendicular rock garden. But whereas a rock garden is of all things irregular, a wall garden has regularity. The wall need not be a straight line; it is better that one end should describe a curve, and rocks at the base may give it further irregularity. Yet it can never quite lose the air of man's handiwork. ”

“ Wild and desolate, the rock walls, which round themselves off to bald peaks, rise on both sides, and have their golden tops covered with coal-black stones, burnt, as it were, by the sun. The peculiarly solemn and dull character of this region always struck me the most when I rode after sunset over the unmeasureable rock rubbish which covers the earth to a great height, and is only interrupted by broad water-streams, which have formed themselves in the course of thousands of years, by the unfrequent, though not unknown storms, as experience has shown. ”

“ There is the old wall which you see, and on the rock one can follow the lines of the walls of houses, built square and with many rooms, and from the rocks which have fallen they must have been tall houses. ”

“ The way to make a wall garden is to build a dry wall of rough stones—that is, a wall without mortar. Instead use soil and pack it tight in every crevice as well as behind the stones, which should be tilted back a little to carry water into the soil. ”

“ By what means the thousands and thousands of tons of rock and brick were ever carried up the sheer steep mountainsides is a question that must excite every traveller's wonder. Certainly no one who has walked on top of the great wall, climbing among the clouds from one {121} misty eminence to another, as we did to-day, can ever forget the experience. ”

“ At the point where the group halted, after emerging from the lower darkness, the wall of rock descended perpendicularly for a sheer thirty feet to the level sands of the crater's bottom, an area some hundred and fifty feet in diameter. ”

“ They only come down upon the lower peaks and ridges, and remain about the rocky walls, which are so precipitous that the snow can not lie on them to any considerable depth. Their power of climbing over and walking on these almost perpendicular rock walls is utterly astounding. ”

“ I vaguely remember a far-extending gigantic wall of stone that seemed to bar all further progress—a rocky precipice rising to a stupendous height, seen by moonlight, with a huge sinuous rope of white mist suspended from its summit; as if the guardian camoodi of the mountain had been a league-long spectral serpent which was now dropping its coils from the mighty stone table to frighten away the rash intruder. ”

“ Thus mountain chains and mountain systems were created. Often their summits, worn down by frosts and rains, disclose the core of rock which, ages before, then hot and fluid, had underlain the crust and bent it upward into mountain form. Now, cold and hard, these masses are disclosed as the granite of to-day's landscape, or as other igneous rocks of earth's interior which now cover broad surface areas, mingled with the stratified or water-made rocks which the surface only produces. ”

“ Ledges of rocks form our floor, and the uneven walls are incrusted over with a beautiful brown spar, which is sometimes suspended from the canopy in thin, shining, and translucent sheets. In passing on over the rugged rock of our pathway, our attention is divided between a care for our safety, and an admiration of the surrounding wonders. ”

“ A narrow path, winding and steep, and bordered here and yonder by precipices, leads up to the first fortified enclosure, whose ramparts, thirty feet high by two feet thick and flanked with large towers of brick, constitute one mass with the rock that serves as their foundation, a rock hewn with the pick and surrounded by abysses. ”

“ There, in a basin of rock, it collects its scattered forces, under cover of eternal spray and cloud, and then takes another header of 434 feet to a barrier of granite, against which it rages for a mad moment, till it swells over and escapes from control by another spring of 600 feet sheer down—and now it is free, and rushes past at our feet, a joyous flashing stream. ”

“ When you attempt to leave the forests and advance towards the upper grounds, you commonly find yourself stopped by a precipitous wall of basaltic columns, ranging from sixty to seventy feet in height in one unbroken shaft, and forming a vast barrier for miles and miles in length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round, and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving tops of the trees. ”

“ Skirting the brow of the hill, and generally conforming to its outline, is a wall of mingled earth and stone, having an average height of five feet by thirty-five feet base. It has no accompanying ditch; the earth composing it, which is a stiff clay, having been for the most part taken up from the surface, without leaving any marked excavation. ”

“ South of the turnpike road, and behind a small house, called Beggar-bog, is a low freestone crag, which exhibits some quarry-like excavations, filled with the chippings of stone. It has probably furnished material for the Wall, the stone being of the same character.
The stream which we next cross is the Knag-burn; it forms the eastern boundary of Housesteads. Passing it, we scale the ramparts of this far-famed station. ”

“ Finally an ancient stone wall with tiled roof threw a protective semicircle close about all this at the rear, beyond which the rather thin pine forest, gnarled and bent with age, climbed the hill-slopes across which only disrespectful mortals ever pass. ”

“ We must-not conceive of piles of bowlders or heaps of fragments, but a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it; cathedral-shaped buttes towering hundreds or thousands of feet; cliffs that can not be scaled, and cañon walls that shrink the river into insignificance; with vast hollow domes, and tall pinnacles and shafts set on the verge overhead. ”

“ Below the peat, and at the base and up the sides of the chalk hills, the rock is more or less thickly covered up with beds of gravel and light loam, in which are found the flint implements which have been the subject of so much speculation. ”

“ These are the elements with which the walls are constructed, from black buttress below to alabaster tower above. All of these elements weather in different forms and are painted in different colors, so that the wall presents a highly complex facade. A wall of homogeneous granite, like that in the Yosemite, is but a naked wall, whether it be 1,000 or 5,000 feet high. Hundreds and thousands of feet mean nothing to the eye when they stand in a meaningless front. ”

“ It does, nevertheless, make easier the choice of a site; where rocks are naturally, there they ought to be. Occasionally the rocks are so disposed that there is no choice; the site settles itself and it is up to you to make the most of it.
A single boulder, a few scattered rocks, or a rocky bank can be converted into a simple rock garden without moving a stone. A little judicious planting and the transformation is complete.
A rock garden with water is a rock garden glorified. ”

“ They consider it clever to heave these over with a splash into the water, or to throw down half a dozen yards of ‘dry wall.’ In many places fields are commonly enclosed by the roadside with such walls, which are built of a flat stone dug just beneath the surface, and used without mortar. ”

“ Beyond the burn, the ground again rises, and the Wall, stretching onwards in a line with the road, forms a distinct, but turf-covered mound. At the distance of a field to the south of it, the Vallum is seen in greater distinctness than before. Both of the aggers and the intervening fosse may be clearly made out. Some young ash-trees grow in the ditch. ”

“ It is no more a rock garden than a line of cedars planted in an exact circle would be a wood. A rockery is generally a lot of stones stuck in a pile of soil or, worse yet, a circular array of stones filled in with soil.
A rock garden, above all else, is not artificial; at least, so far as appearance goes. It is a garden with rocks. The rocks may be few or many, they may have been disposed by nature or the hand of man; but always the effect is naturalistic, if not actually natural. The rock garden's one and only creed is nature. ”