72 THE ADIRONDACK. 



ing all over its dread form, it stood the impersonation 

 of strength and grandeur. 



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 grandeur of the God who 

 had both framed and rent this mountain asunder. 

 There it stood still and motionless in its majesty 

 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 magnitude of the precipice. Every- 

 thing is on such a gigantic scale — all the proportions 

 so vast, and the mountains so high about it, that the 



