KTAADN. 
63 
make our way up the falls, which I have described; this 
time choosing the right hand, or highest peak, which was 
not the one I had approached before. But soon my 
companions were lost to my sight behind the mountain 
ridge in my rear, which still seemed ever retreating be¬ 
fore me, and I climbed alone over huge rocks, loosely 
poised, a mile or more, still edging toward the clouds; 
for though the day was clear elsewhere, the summit was 
concealed by mist. The mountain seemed a vast aggre¬ 
gation of loose rocks, as if some time it had rained rocks, 
and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere 
fairly at rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking- 
stones, with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or 
smoother shelf. They were the raw materials of a 
planet dropped from an unseen quarry, which the vast 
chemistry of nature would anon work up, or work down, 
into the smiling and verdant plains and valleys of earth. 
This was an undone extremity of the globe ; as in lignite, 
we see coal in the process of formation. 
At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud 
which seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet 
would never be gone, but was generated out of that 
pure air as fast as it flowed away ; and when, a quarter 
of a mile farther, I reached the summit of the ridge, 
which those who have seen in clearer weather say is 
about five miles long, and contains a thousand acres of 
table-land, I was deep within the hostile ranks of clouds, 
and all objects were obscured by them. Now the wind 
would blow me out a yard of clear sunlight, wherein I 
stood ; then a gray, dawning light was ail it could ac¬ 
complish, the cloud-line ever rising and falling with the 
wind’s intensity. Sometimes it seemed as if the summit 
would be cleared in a few moments, and smile in sun- 
