Sunken rock

“ We often came upon mountains standing alone, either on the top of table-lands or in the middle of extensive plains. Their presence seemed at first unaccountable.
Again as we journeyed onward the mules' hoofs were injured by treading over large expanses of lava pellets and sharp-edged, cutting, baked fragments of black rock, myriads of which also lay embedded in reddish half-formed rock or buried in layers of yellowish-red earth. ”

“ Restless as the ever-flowing waves, the eye travels over the chaos of rocks; it embraces hundreds of single pictures in one glance, and then combines these into one sublime, harmonious whole, the stiff masses of gleaming rock contrasting sharply with the white foam of the hissing water, the golden-yellow deserts that bound them on either side, and the dark, cloudless sky overhead. The upper region of the rapids is especially charming. ”

“ Rocks, mountains and storms, go much together in imagination, but here such an association is completely broken, and the barren mountain, and the naked rock, seem only objects for the sun to shine on. All nature looks cheerful and happy, and our melancholy recollections are almost driven away by the brilliancy of the prospect.
At Sunium eleven columns remain in their places, and the marble is kept rather of a raw, and overbearing whiteness by the action of the sea air. ”

“ Above high-water mark and thus away from the dash of the waves, we can often trace the progress of decay among such sedimentary rocks as sandstones and conglomerates. Worn into holes and scars, projecting cusps and tapering pinnacles, or eaten away into the rude semblance of a human form, headless perchance, or into the shape of a huge table poised on a narrow pedestal, the rock affords an endless variety of aspects and a continual source of pleasure. ”

“ For a while the clear radiance of the stars lighted the looming mountains; but when wastes of naked rock gave place to ragged woods, lakes and pits of darkness spread suddenly before her; every gully, every ravine brimmed level with treacherous shadows, masking the sheer fall of rock plunging downward into fathomless depths. ”

“ But the rock that has lived in the air for ten thousand years, where the light has every day laid on and melted its metallic tints, is the friend of the sun, and carries its mantle upon its shoulders; it has no need of a garment of verdure; if it suffers from parasitic vegetations, it sticks them to its sides and imprints them with its colors. The threatening tones with which it clothes itself suits the free sky, the naked landscape, the powerful heat that environs it; it is alive like a plant; only it is of another age, one more severe and stronger than that in which we vegetate. ”

“ Where a rain-drop first secures a resting-place, its successors deepen the little hollow. Water lies in this after every shower, working its way gently downwards. In time the rock may seem bored into as if prepared for blasting; the holes unite to form vertical grooves, and the surface is cut deeply into fantastic forms. ”

“ One gains a fuller understanding and appreciation of nature from their study. The orderliness, constancy, and interrelation within the rock and mineral “world” is a restful contrast to the one which man often keeps in turmoil. The beauty of a glistening crystal or a polished mineral or stone is as inspiring as a lovely flower, yet it lasts and lasts through centuries, a veritable “rock of ages.” ”

“ Here savage rock-grandeur and splendid sunlight{353} forever struggle for mastery of effect. A cloud drifts over us, and the dark headlands of granite loom up with impending mightiness, and seem to advance toward each other from opposite ranks; about their feet the wreck of centuries of avalanche, and above leaden vapors hurrying and whirling. All is dimness and gloom. Then overhead the clouds are furled away, and there is light—light joyous, pure, gloom-dispelling, before whose intense, searching vividness shadows unfold and mystery vanishes. ”

“ Where it is exposed along the shore bluffs and kept bare of vegetation and soil by the action of the ocean, ice, and heavy snow-drifts the rock presents a surface about as black as coal, without even a moss or lichen to enliven its sombre gloom. ”

“ Every fragment of the rock shows its dozens, nay, hundreds, of stone-lily joints, disjointed indeed, yet easily recognisable. They must have swarmed as thickly along the floor of the sea as the strong-stemmed tangle that darkens the bottom of many a picturesque bay along our western coasts, yet with a gracefulness of outline such as none of our larger sea-weeds can boast. ”

“ The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that they look in places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a rock; and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more intelligent reverence for the great builder, when we find, in the middle of the mass of these dead leaves, a course of living rock, of quartz as white as the snow that encircles it, and harder than a bed of steel. ”

“ A distinguished botanist whom I know is so familiar with the radiancies of the various pines of the Pacific Slope that he can sketch and perfectly describe the complete tree as soon as he sees the cone, or, blindfolded, smells its odor.
Every rock has its own radiancies of color, texture, weight, and density. One of John Ruskin's most useful and beautiful books is his Ethics of the Dust, and those who have not read it should do so to understand how many things a wise and good man has felt radiated from the rocks. ”

“ Farther up the cañon the rocks do not rise to so great heights, and the vista opens out into pleasant winding valleys well covered with grass, but there are several very interesting points where the action of internal convulsions upon the granite and syenite in elder ages, when they came hot from the crucible of nature, have rolled and twisted and kneaded the great rock-masses into most curious and notable shapes. ”

“ A little beyond Auchreoch, and to the left of the path, there is a bit of wild and rugged rock scenery well worth attention. Here and there, over the face of what seems the hard impenetrable rock, many trees grow and flourish as if through the very heart of the granite. The explanation of course is, that the rock which seems so homogeneous and solid at a distance is in reality fissured and fractured in all directions, and that in these fissures the trees find soil and food enough to sustain a wonderfully luxuriant growth and opulence of foliage for such a situation. ”

“ Such had been the dimensions of the High Rock Spring.
But it was now a mountain, rising high in the air, and flowing crystal and gold, like a volcano in an eruption of jewels. The pyrites of sulphur and motes of iron, that formerly gleamed in the rills that trickled down its slopes, were now big as cascades, filled with carbuncles and rocks of amethyst. A mist of soft splendor, like the light of stars crushed to dust and diffused around the mountain's head, revealed an immense multitudes of people scaling the slopes, and drinking ”

“ The immediate entourage was of a darker rock, and the mountain tops were green and rounded. The road for the first mile, or so, seemed to be along the arc of the segment of a circle. In a spirit of speculation I took to the scattered rocks along the chord of the segment. Among the rocks were many pools of water of marvellous transparency. Every stain and scratch on the rocks at the bottom of the water was as distinct as if there had been no water at all, indeed they might have been more distinct, for as seen under the water they had the appearance of having been brought out by varnish. ”

“ Huge blocks of syenite—a granitic rock of which the upper part of the mountain entirely consists—cumber the soil in every direction, and gradually increase in numbers till the furze can scarcely find a nestling-place, and is at last choked altogether. Then comes a scene of utter desolation. Grey masses of rock of every form and size are piled upon each other in endless confusion. ”

“ These extreme skirts of the mountain consist of various eddies and whirlpools of different dates of lava, whose black, rough substance is scantily covered by the slowly accumulating soil, seldom sufficient to ensure a clothing of vegetation, the black and naked rock forming a vivid contrast to the brightest verdure. ”

“ The rock is a soft and crumbling limestone, containing "fossil creatures still so like the creatures they were once, that there it first occurred to the human brain to imagine that the buried shapes were not mockeries of life, but had indeed once lived; and, under those white banks by the roadside, was born, like a poor Italian gypsy, the modern science of geology." ”

“ I also had a clear view of the coast mountains for a hundred miles or thereabouts, all of which are tellingly glaciated in harmony with the above generalization. Most of the rock is granite with cleavage planes that cause it to weather rapidly into flat blocks. One conical black hill, fifteen hundred feet high, is volcanic rock, close-grained and dense like some kinds of iron ore. ”

“ Upon the steep slope of a certain “bald” among the Great Smoky Mountains there lie, just at the verge of the strange stunted woods from which the treeless dome emerges to touch the clouds, two great tilted blocks of sandstone. They are of marked regularity of shape, as square as if hewn with a chisel. Both are splintered and fissured; one is broken in twain. No other rock is near. The earth in which they are embedded is the rich black soil not unfrequently found upon the summits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sound rock, with a covering of firm loam, particularly when the rock is jagged or cloven, or much dirupted and mixed with the earth.—In such cases, a very slight covering or admixture of earth will suffice. We would give the preference to primitive rock, especially micaceous schist and mountain limestone. Larch seldom succeeds well on sandstone or on trap, except on steep slopes, where the rock is quite sound and the soil firm. ”

“ By Rocks.--In the cruel climate of Thibet, Dr. Hooker tells us that it is the habit to encamp close to some large rock, because a rock absorbs heat all day, and parts with it but slowly during the night-time. It is, therefore, a reservoir of warmth when the sun is down, and its neighbourhood is coveted in the night-time. Owing to the same cause, acting in the opposite direction, the shadow of a broad rock is peculiarly cool and grateful, during the heat of the day, in a thirsty land. ”

“ The rocks are generally dark-coloured and of fine grain, and everywhere they are worn by the action of the water into fantastic and beautiful forms. They are well known all the world over as serpentine, and it gives the traveller a strange feeling to see the valuable rock being used as building material and even for the repair of roads. A considerable trade is done in polishing this stone, especially at the Lizard, and the very sands are dark with the detritus. ”

“ High limestone rocks on the left. They become more deeply coloured as you advance, and form many beautiful caves. Presently there commences a sort of rock which may be called clay slate, or sandstone (graywacke) . In the brooks you now meet pebbles of granite. The yellow apples of the solanum, the red flowers of the oleander, give beauty to the landscape. The little stream of Nisi brings down with it mica-pebbles, as do also all the streams we reached afterward. ”

“ The absence of soil and the smoothness of weathered surfaces render quartzite mountains hard to climb. The uniform cementing of the rock leaves the bedding with little influence on the surface-features, and rock-ledges and shelves are rare. The traveller ascends over taluses of angular and obstinate blocks towards slippery and inhospitable domes. But the wildness of the scenery will be his sure reward. ”

“ The wearing away of rocks by wind and water has furnished the materials out of which the aqueous [Pg 131] rocks have been made. Layers upon layers of sandstone, shales, limestone, and the like, are exposed when a river cuts a canyon through a plateau. The layered deposits of débris at the mouth of the river make new aqueous rocks out of old. Every sandy beach is sandstone in the making. This work is never ended.
In the early days the earth's crust often gaped open in a mighty crater and let a flood of lava overspread the surface. The ocean floor often received this flood of melted rock. ”

“ The scenery too is here of the most magnificent description; rocks overhang rocks in ruinous grandeur, and appear so fearfully equipoised, that, although secure in their immensity, they create in the mind the most awful apprehension of their instability, whilst the mighty roar of the ocean beneath, unites in effect with the scenery above.—All around is sublime.——But the Geology, enough of the picturesque.
The body of the rock is composed of Slate and Granite ”

“ The colours of the pale rock-skeleton are so faint that there is nothing to interfere with the perfect development of atmospheric effects: it is a white sheet spread to catch the grand illumination, lambent lights of saffron and peach-blossom and shades of purple and hyacinth. ”