being connected by the great cliffs of the valley of Sixt,
the dark mass of the Buet, the Dent du Midi de Bex, and the Diablerets,
with the great amphitheatre of rock in whose securest recess the path of
the Gemmi hides its winding. But the most frightful and most
characteristic cliff in the whole group is the range of the Rochers des
Fys, above the Col d'Anterne. It happens to have a bed of harder
limestone at the top than in any other part of its mass; and this bed,
protecting its summit, enables it to form itself into the most ghastly
ranges of pinnacle which I know among mountains. In one spot the upper
edge of limestone has formed a complete cornice, or rather bracket--for
it is not extended enough to constitute a cornice, which projects far
into the air over the wall of ashy rock, and is seen against the clouds,
when they pass into the chasm beyond, like the nodding coping-stone of a
castle--only the wall below is not less than 2500 feet in height,--not
vertical, but steep enough to seem so to the imagination.

Sec. 21. Such precipices are among the most impressive as well as the most
really dangerous of mountain ranges; in many spots inaccessible with
safety either from below or from above; dark in color, robed with
everlasting mourning, for ever tottering like a great fortress shaken by
war, fearful as much in their weakness as in their strength, and yet
gathered after every fall into darker frowns and unhumiliated
threatening; for ever incapable of comfort or of healing from herb or
flower, nourishing no root in their crevices, touched by no hue of life
on buttress or ledge, but, to the utmost, desolate; knowing no shaking
of leaves in the wind, nor of grass beside the stream,--no motion but
their own mortal shivering, the deathful crumbling of atom from atom in
their corrupting stones; knowing no sound of living voice or living
tread, cheered neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry; haunted
only by uninterrupted echoes from far off, wandering hither and thither
among their walls, unable to escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents,
and sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, and
sweeps frightened back from under their shadow into the gulf of air:
and, sometimes, when the echo has fainted, and the wind has carried the
sound of the torrent away, and the bird has vanished; and the mouldering
stones are still for a little time,--a brown moth, opening and shutting
its wings upon a g