II. Єon'-duet, a-dieñ' (-dū'), sóv′-er-eign (sŭv'er-in). III. Find subjects and predicates (see XLI., note III.)—(e. g., day— advanced, Marmion—did array, he had, Douglas-gave, etc.). IV. Array, palfrey, behest, manors, peer, turret, swarthy, ire, hoary, hold, vassals, defied, unscathed, drawbridge, warder, portcullis, rowels, "ponderous grate," scanty, grazed, "shook his gauntlet," forged, "liked me ill." V. "Let the hawk stoop," etc. (De Wilton, the lover of Clara, had already left for the camp of Surrey, with proofs of Marmion's perfidy.) "By your king's behest" (King James had assigned Marmion to Douglas as royal guest). Note (10) the earl's opinion of learning. VI-ASCENT OF MOUNT KTAADN. 1. While my companions were seeking a suitable spot for camping that night, I improved the little daylight that was left in climbing the mountain alone. We were in a deep and narrow ravine, sloping up to the clouds at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and hemmed in by walls of rock, which were at first covered with low trees, then with impenetrable thickets of scraggy birches and spruce trees, and with moss, but at last bare of all vegetation but lichens, and almost continually draped in clouds. 2. Following up the course of the torrent which occupied this and I mean to lay some emphasis on the word up-pulling myself up by the side of perpendicular falls of twenty or thirty feet, by the roots of firs and birches, and then perhaps walking a level rod or two in the thin stream-for it took up the whole road, ascending by huge steps, as it were a giant's stairway, down which a river flowed-I had soon cleared the trees, and paused on the successive shelves to look back over the country. 3. The torrent was from fifteen to thirty feet wide, without a tributary, and seemingly not diminishing in breadth as I advanced; but still it came rushing and roaring down, with a copious tide, over and amidst masses of bare rock, from the very clouds, as though a waterspout had just burst over the mountain. 4. Leaving this at last, I began to work my way, scarcely less arduous than Satan's anciently through chaos, up the nearest though not the highest peak-at first scrambling on all fours over the tops of ancient black spruce trees, old as the flood, from two to ten or twelve feet in height, their tops flat and spreading, and their foliage blue and nipped with cold, as if for centuries they had ceased growing upward against the bleak sky, the solid cold. 5. I walked some good rods erect upon the tops of these trees, which were overgrown with moss and mountain cranberries. It seemed that in the course of time they had filled up the intervals between the huge rocks, and the cold wind had uniformly leveled all over. Here the principle of vegetation was hard put to it. 6. There was apparently a belt of this kind running quite round the mountain, though perhaps nowhere so remarkable as here. Once, slumping through, I looked down two feet into a dark and cavernous region, and saw the stem of a spruce, on whose top I stood as on a mass of coarse basket work, fully nine inches in diameter at the ground. These holes were bears' dens, and the bears were even then at home. 7. This was the sort of garden I made my way over for an eighth of a mile, at the risk, it is true, of treading on some of the plants, not seeing any path through it; certainly the most treacherous and porous country I ever traveled. "Nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, But nothing could exceed the toughness of the twigs; not one snapped under my weight, for they had slowly grown. 8. Having stumped, scrambled, rolled, bounced, and 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 sunset. They looked at me with hard gray eyes, without a bleat or a low. This brought me to the skirt of a cloud, and bounded my walk that night. But I had already seen that Maine country when I turned about, waving, flowing, rippling down below. 9. When I returned to my companions, they had selected a camping ground on the torrent's edge, and were resting on the ground; one was on the sick list, rolled in a blanket, on a damp shelf of rock. It was a savage and dreary scenery enough; so wildly rough, that they looked long to find a level and open space for the tent. 1 10. We could not well camp higher for want of fuel; the trees here seemed so evergreen and sappy, that we almost doubted if they would acknowledge the influence of fire; but fire prevailed at last, and blazed here, too, like a good citizen of the world. 11. Even at this height we met with frequent traces of moose as well as of bears. As here was no cedar, we made our bed of coarser-feathered spruce; but, at any rate, the feathers were plucked from the live tree. It was, perhaps, even a more grand and desolate place for a night's lodging than the summit would have been, being in the neighborhood of these wild trees and of the torrent. 12. Some more aërial and finer-spirited winds rushed and roared through the ravine all night, from time to time arousing our fire, and dispersing the embers about. It was as if we lay in the very nest of a young whirlwind. At midnight, one of my bedfellows, being startled in his dreams by the sudden blazing up to its top of a fir tree, whose green boughs were dried by the heat, sprang up with a cry from his bed, thinking the world on fire, and drew the whole camp after him. 13. In the morning, after whetting our appetite on some raw pork, a wafer of hard bread, and a dipper of condensed cloud or waterspout, we all together began to 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. 14. But soon my companions were lost to my sight behind the mountain ridge in my rear, which still seemed ever retreating before 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. 15. The mountain seemed a vast aggregation 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. 16. 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 smil ing and verdant plains and valleys of earth. This was an unfinished extremity of the globe; as in lignite we see coal in the process of formation. 17. 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 it 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. 18. Now the wind would blow me out a yard of clear sunlight, wherein I stood; then a gray, dawning light was all it could accomplish, 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 sunshine; but what was gained on one side was lost on another. 19. It was like sitting in a chimney and waiting for the smoke to blow away. It was, in fact, a cloud factory --these were the cloud works, and the wind turned them off down from the cool, bare rocks. Occasionally, when the windy columns broke in to me, I caught sight of a dark, damp crag, to the right or left, the mist driving ceaselessly between it and me. 20. It reminded me of the creations of the old epic and dramatic poets, of Atlas, Vulcan, the Cyclops, and Prometheus. Such was Caucasus and the rock where Prometheus was bound. Eschylus had, no doubt, visited such scenery as this. It was vast, Titanic, and such as man never inhabits. |