But, whether or no these hardy
vegetables have voluntarily chosen their rude resting-place, the cliff is
indebted to them for much of the beauty that tempers its sublimity. When
the eye is pained and wearied by the bold nakedness of the rock, it rests
with pleasure on the cheerful foliage of the birch, or upon the darker
green of the funereal pine. Just at the termination of the accessible
portion of the crag, these trees are so numerous, and their foliage so
dense, that they completely shroud from view a considerable excavation,
formed, probably, hundreds of years since, by the fall of a portion of the
rock. The detached fragment still lies at a little distance from the base,
gray and moss-grown, but corresponding, in its general outline, to the
cavity from which it was rent.
But the most singular and beautiful object in all this scene is a tiny
fount of crystal water, that gushes forth from the high, smooth forehead
of the cliff. Its perpendicular descent is of many feet; after which it
finds its way, with a sweet diminutive murmur, to the level ground.
It is not easy to conceive whence the barren rock procures even the small
supply of water that is necessary to the existence of this stream; it is
as unaccountable as the gush of gentle feeling which sometimes proceeds
from the hardest heart: but there it continues to flow and fall,
undiminished and unincreased.
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