s, the less explicable those facts will become to him, and
the more reverent will be his acknowledgment of the presence of the
cloud.

For, as he examines more clearly the structure of the great mountain
ranges, he will find that though invariably the boldest forms are
associated with the most violent contortions, they sometimes _follow_
the contortions, and sometimes appear entirely independent of them. For
instance, in crossing the pass of the Tete Noire, if the traveller
defers his journey till near the afternoon, so that from the top of the
pass he may see the great limestone mountain in the Valais, called the
Dent de Morcles, under the full evening light, he will observe that its
peaks are hewn out of a group of contorted beds, as shown in Fig. 4,
Plate 29. The wild and irregular zigzag of the beds, which traverse the
face of the cliff with the irregularity of a flash of lightning, has
apparently not the slightest influence on the outline of the peak. It
has been carved out of the mass, with no reference whatever to the
interior structure. In like manner, as we shall see hereafter, the most
wonderful peak in the whole range of the Alps seems to have been cut out
of a series of nearly horizontal beds, as a square pillar of hay is cut
out of a half-consumed haystack. And yet, on the other hand, we meet
perpetually with instances in which the curves of the beds have in great
part directed the shape of the whole mass of mountain. The gorge which
leads from the village of Ardon, in the Valais, up to the root of the
Diablerets, runs between two ranges of limestone hills, of which the
rude contour is given in Fig. 17, page 154. The great slope seen on the
left, rising about seven thousand feet above the ravine, is nothing but
the back of one sheet of limestone, whose broken edge forms the first
cliff at the top, a height of about six hundred feet, the second cliff
being the edge of another bed emergent beneath it, and the slope beyond,
the surface of a third. These beds of limestone all descend at a uniform
inclination into the gorge, where they are snapped short off, the
torrent cutting its way along the cleft, while the beds rise on the
other side in a huge contorted wave, forming the ridge of mountains on
the right,--a chain about seven miles in length, and from five thousand
to six thousand feet in height. The actual order of the beds is seen in
Fig. 18, and it is one of the boldest and clearest examples of the form
o