19. 
variation in altitude and size all the way up to the point where it 
» fP 909) 
ceases. ' 
Thoreau. gives the following account of the roughness of the mountain 
" Having, slumped, scrambled, roiled, bounced, ana walked by 
turns, over this scraggy country, I arrived upon a side-hill, or 
rather side- mountain, where rocks, gray, silent rocks, were the 
flocks and herds that pastured, chewing a rocky cud at sun se t. 
They looked at me with hard gray eyes, without a bleat or low. 
The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time 
it had rained tocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, 
nowhere fairity at rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking stone? 
with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf. 
They were the raw material of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry, 
which the vast chemistry of nature would anon work up, or work down, 
into the sailing and verdant plains and valleys of earth. This was a n 
undone extremity of tue globe; as in lignite we see coal in the pro- 
fp 2.SL2.4 IZ.'lJ 
:ess of formation. 
