, and seen from the moraine of the Charmoz glacier, a quarter
of a mile distant to the south-west.[64] It is formed of decomposing
granite, thrown down in blocks entirely detached, but wedged together,
so as to stand continually in these seemingly perilous contours (being a
portion of such a base of aiguille as that in _b_, Fig. 36, p. 185).[65]
The block forming the summit on the left is fifteen or eighteen feet
long; and the upper edge of it, which is the dominant point of the
Charmoz ridge, is the best spot in the Chamouni district for giving a
thorough command of the relations of the aiguilles on each side of the
Mer de Glace. Now put the book, with that page open, upright, at three
yards distance from you, and try to draw this contour, which I have made
as dark and distinct as it ever could be in reality, and you will
immediately understand why it is impossible to draw mountain outlines
rightly.

Sec. 21. And if not outlines, _a fortiori_ not details of mass, which have
all the complexity of the outline multiplied a thousand fold, and drawn
in fainter colors. Nothing is more curious than the state of
embarrassment into which the unfortunate artist must soon be cast when
he endeavors honestly to draw the face of the simplest mountain
cliff--say a thousand feet high, and two or three miles distant. It is
full of exquisite details, all seemingly decisive and clear; but when he
tries to arrest one of them, he cannot see it,--cannot find where it
begins or ends,--and presently it runs into another; and then he tries
to draw that, but that will not be drawn, neither, until it has
conducted him to a third, which, somehow or another, made part of the
first; presently he finds that, instead of three, there are in reality
four, and then he loses his place altogether. He tries to draw clear
lines, to make his work look craggy, but finds that then it is too hard;
he tries to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft; he draws a
curved line, and instantly sees it should have been straight; a straight
one, and finds when he looks up again, that it has got curved while he
was drawing it. There is nothing for him but despair, or some sort of
abstraction and shorthand for cliff. Then the only question is, what is
the wisest abstraction; and out of the multitude of lines that cannot
altogether be interpreted, which are the really dominant ones; so that
if we cannot give the whole, we may at least give what will convey the
most