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We seemed to be floating above a range of snowy Alps, their dusky valleys filled with glaciers, and their sovereign peaks glittering in the sun like diamonds. As we descended in a long slant, their dazzling summits rose to meet us, and the infinite play of light and shade became more and more beautiful.
The porphyritic mountains on the coast rise abruptly to a height of between one thousand nine hundred and three thousand feet: between their summits and an inland plain, on which the celebrated deposit of nitrate of soda lies, there is a high undulatory district, covered by a remarkable superficial saliferous crust, chiefly composed of common salt, either in white, hard, opaque nodules, or mingled with sand, in this latter case forming a compact sandstone.
The small country ponies, with a sure instinct, surmount the bog, and we arrive at an elevation whence the eye, as far as it can reach, embraces nothing but an amphitheater of desolate, yet green summits; owing to the destruction of timber, everything else has perished; a scene of ruined nature is far more melancholy a spectacle than any human ruins.
Leagues ahead of him stood the mysterious mountains rising palely through the haze of the midsummer afternoon. A pale violet light fell on their distant precipices, and the snow in the rifts upon their sides appeared of the purest and loveliest white. Gusts of wind hurrying from the distant summits swept the great plain, and the fields of ripening wheat bent before them and rustled harshly.
Rain cools the air around us and the ground, because it comes from cooler regions of the air above. Now it happens that not only the summits, but extensive portions of the upper declivities of the Alps, rise into the region of perpetual winter. Of course, ice congeals continually there, and the snow which forms falls to the ground as snow, and accumulates in vast and permanent stores.
That is to say, the whole of this included space, both sea and land, has been invaded from below with melted masses of whin-stone, breaking up through the natural strata of the country, and variously embossing the surface of the earth at present, when all the softer materials, with which those subterranean lavas had been covered, are washed away or removed from those summits of the country.
Everywhere there was the scent of bog-myrtle and wild-rose and sweetbrier, and the tinkling sound of becks babbling over glossy rocks; and in the glorious sunshine and luminous air, the mountains appeared to expand and elevate, and to throw out glowing peaks and summits into infinite space. Hand in hand the squire and his daughter climbed the fellside.
After riding for forty-five miles along their summits, I was in no instance able to descend; their brinks were perfectly steep and overhanging, and in many places enormous masses appeared severed by deep cracks from the main land, and requiring but a slight touch to plunge them into the abyss below.
These, it is claimed, retain their place in a permanent way; it is, indeed, by observing them that the rotation period of the planet has, according to some observers, been determined. It therefore seems likely that these spots are the summits of mountains, which, like many of our own earth, rise above the cloud level. Recent observations on Venus made by Mr.
We climbed over a part of the western dome, in order to descend into the hollow of the Silla, a valley which separates the two summits of the mountain. We there had great difficulties to overcome, occasioned by the force of the vegetation. The negroes walked before with their cutlasses or machetes.
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