THREE GRAND MOUNTAINS. 127 



their altitude, I am told, is nine thousand feet ; which 

 peak is the highest it would be difficult to say, for they 

 are not equally distant from where we are now halted. 



The first and nearest has its sides, in fact all three 

 have, at exactly the same angle, but the summit of each 

 is crowned most dissimilarly. The nearest possesses 

 for its apex a castle, and such a castle! not unlike 

 that of Edinburgh, but increased in size a hundred- 

 fold. There are battlements and tower and watch- 

 house, and all so perfect that it is not necessary 

 to draw upon imagination to believe them the works 

 of man in the feudal ages ; and the sky is so clear, 

 so rarefied, that the outline of each detail of this 

 immense citadel can be seen without aid of tele- 

 scope. The summit of the second is a perfect repre- 

 sentation of a crown, not such as is now worn on 

 state occasions by our most gracious Majesty, but such 

 as you see in aged drawings as the head-gear of 

 warlike kings nine or ten centuries ago men who 

 competed with their lords and barons who should be 

 first to hew down the opposing foe. 



The third mountain is capped with a mitre ; it is 

 not so perfect as the others, being rather broad in pro- 

 portion to its height, such as might be expected to have 

 come from the hands of an inexperienced workman, or 

 that had suffered through some sacrilegious infidel 

 having sat on it. Still it is a mitre. Thus we find 

 capping three adjoining mountains a castle, crown, and 

 mitre. Strange, wondrous strange, coincidence! 



How horrible it is to think that we must eat to live ! 

 I am certain I had quite forgotten that fact when that 

 abominable William, totally destitute of an eye for the 

 picturesque or respect for those that had it, disturbs my 



