Eurydice, now dashing through the rapids, now 

 peering into some pool, as if to discover her fond 

 image in its depths, and calling ever to lure her 

 thence from that dark retreat up into the world 

 of light and love. This bird, more than all others, 

 embodies the wild. In him the spirit of the moun- 

 tain finds a voice. 



Here we make the acquaintance of the rocks 

 as no where else. One discovers their individuality 

 and comes to feel that even they may be com- 

 panionable. They have much to say if only one 

 can hear it; but like the aged, their conversation 

 is all of the past. The foibles of their youth are 

 still to be traced in faulting and non-conformity. 

 How tumultuous was that youth; how serene 

 their old age ! Stratified or volcanic, each tells its 

 own story. The sandstone cliffs speak of the sea, 

 which preceded them, and of which they are the 

 sediment merely. Upon that shore no human eye 

 ever looked, and yet it is registered here, as the 

 ruins of Mitla record a race unknown to history. 

 The cliff is a chapter in a biography written before 

 the advent of man. Long after the sea had disap- 

 peared, some convulsions upheaved the strata and 

 threw them on end. Here and there in the 



179 



