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In some places the trees rose like scattered spires; in others they rolled down the slope in blurred dark masses. Behind the woods snowy mountains cut against the sky. The dim landscape was desolate and savagely grand. It had the strange half-finished look one notes in Canada. In order to banish his drowsiness, Jim gave himself up to wandering memories.
For example, in St. Etienne, the upper part of the western towers and the fine spires with which they are crowned were built subsequent to the original structure, as was also, in all probability, the chevet, or eastern limb. It seems probable also that the vaulting may not be what was contemplated in the original plan. St. Etienne is 364 ft. long, and is lofty in its proportions.
But the waters, the evidences of their power, that go down the steep and stony ways, the outlets of ice-bordered pools, the young rivers swaying with the force of their running, they sing and shout and trumpet at the falls, and the noise of it far outreaches the forest spires.
Between these picturesque precipices lay the two Pragues, twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries, and growing up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and most splendid city, bristling with steeples and spires, and united by the ancient many-statued bridge with its blackened mediaeval entrance towers.
The sun was just rising, and the roofs and spires of the city were outlined against a lucent belt of sky. Spike Island lay green and smiling in the middle of the cove; and on either side, on the emerald slopes, white villas were dotted here and there. The whole scene looked very sweet and pure and homelike, and there were certain thoughts in my own mind which made the view memorable.
The town thus laid bare seemed to sleep; the spires and roofs, and its palisade and walls, gleamed quietly in the glare of the distant conflagrations. Andrii went the rounds of the Cossack ranks. The camp-fires, beside which the sentinels sat, were ready to go out at any moment; and even the sentinels slept, having devoured oatmeal and dumplings with true Cossack appetites.
Some of the lower mountains are covered with them, giving rise to remarkably beautiful masses of pale, translucent green in spring and summer, yellow and orange in autumn, while in winter, after every leaf has fallen, the white bark of the boles and branches seen in mass seems like a cloud of mist that has settled close down on the mountain, conforming to all its hollows and ridges like a mantle, yet roughened on the surface with innumerable ascending spires.
All these towns and spires looked peaceful, but all were held by the Burgundians. Men-at-arms were thick on the crest of our boulevard, and on the gate-keep, all looking across the river towards the town, whence the Maid should sally by way of the bridge. So there I lay on a couch in the window and waited, having no fear, but great joy.
The reader may create for himself a good image of Yosemite by thinking of a section of seven or eight miles of the Hudson River, midway of its course, as emptied of its water and deepened three thousand feet or more, having the sides nearly vertical, with snow-white waterfalls fluttering against them here and there, the famous spires and domes planted along the rim, and the landscape of groves and glades, with its still, clear winding river, occupying the bottom.
I liked the town because it was pretty, with graceful spires and lovely, ivied ruins; but I didn't care much about the saints, or even about the last Lord Selkirk, for whom they put up a Celtic cross in the Kirkcudbright market place; and I couldn't be bothered pronouncing Kirkcudbright correctly. Of course it's done in the last way you think it possibly could be, like all other Scottish names!
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