34 LETTERS FROM THE BACKWOODS. 



rest ourselves, while from our very feet rose this 

 awful cliff, that fairly oppressed me with its near and 

 frightful presence. Majestic, solemn and silent, with 

 the daylight from above pouring all over its dread 

 form, it stood the impersonation of strength and gran- 

 deur. I never saw but one precipice that impressed 

 me so, and that was in the Alps, in the Pass of the 

 Grand Scheideck. I lay on my back, filled with 

 strange feelings of the power and majesty of the God 

 who had both framed and rent this mountain asunder. 

 There it stood still and motionless in its grandeur. 

 Far, far away heavenward rose its top, fringed with 

 fir trees that looked, at that immense height, like 

 mere shrubs — and they, too, did not wave, but stood 

 silent and moveless as the rock they crowned. Any 

 motion or life would have been a relief — even the 

 tramp of the storm, for there was something fearful 

 in that mysterious, profound silence. How loudly 

 God speaks to the heart when it lies thus awe-struck 

 and subdued in the presence of his works. In the 

 shadow of such a grand and terrible form, man seems 

 but the plaything of a moment, to be blown away 

 with the first breath. 



Persons not accustomed to scenes of this kind would 

 not at first get an adequate impression of the mag- 

 nitude of the precipice. Everything is on such a 

 gigantic scale — all the proportions so vast, and the 

 mountains so high about it that the real individual 

 greatness is lost sight of. But that wall of a thou- 

 sand feet perpendicular, with its seams and rents and 

 stooping cliffs, is one of the few things in the world 



