ery in the centre, and the hurly-burly is general far
and wide over the whole field of battle.

But these lead drops dancing on our bonnet tell us to take up our crutch
and be off--for there it is sticking--by-and-by the waters will be in
flood, and we may have to pass a night on the mountain. Down we go.

We do not call this the same side of the mountain we crawled up? There,
all was purple except what was green--and we were happy to be a
heather-legged body, occasionally skipping like a grasshopper on turf.
Here, all rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ptarmigans. We hate
shingle from the bottom of our ---- oh dear! oh dear! but _this_ is
painful--sliddering on shingle away down what is anything but an
inclined plane--feet foremost--accompanied with rattling debris--at
railroad speed--every twenty yards or so dislodging a stone as big as
oneself, who instantly joins the procession, and there they go hopping
and jumping along with us, some before, some at each side, and, we
shudder to think of it, some behind--well somersetted over our head,
thou Grey Wacke--but mercy on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this
lasts, in another minute we are all at the bottom of that pond of pitch.
Take care of yourself, O'Bronte!

Here we are--sitting! How we were brought to assume this rather uneasy
posture we do not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to the fact.
Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape appears to have been little less than
miraculous, and must have been mainly owing, under Providence, to the
Crutch. Who's laughing? 'Tis you, you old Witch, in hood and cloak,
crouching on the cliff as if you were warming your hands at the fire.
Hold your tongue--and you may sit there to all eternity if you
choose--you cloud-ridden hag! No--there will be a blow-up some day--as
there evidently has been here before now; but no more Geology--from the
tarn, who is a 'tarnation deep 'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our
guide down to the Low Country.

Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green
serenity--not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable
to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell--"the air is balm." No
sultriness--how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had
wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury--Cherub we never were
nor Cauliflower--by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we
have made one day a whole week--with, at the end, a Sabbath. For