. . .aving not a cleft of soil in it,—this huge, unjointed masonry raised against the sky, gray and weather-stained, with glittering patches of light on it,—is yet part of the same huge rock which towered at the farther end of the [Pg 60]tunnel, and through whose seamless cavity we have travelled two hundred yards. It is in this view that the mystery of the scene seizes the mind, and the last element of sublimity is added to it. It is in this view that the Natural Tunnel we had come to see as a mere “curiosity” takes rank among the greatest wonders of the world. What power, what possible imaginable agency of nature, could have worked out this stupendous scene?...

Turning our eyes away from the battlement of rock to the opposite side of the ravine, a new revelation of the grand and picturesque awaits us. Here a gigantic cliff, but one broken with rock and soil, and threaded to its summit by a sapling growth of the buckeye, the linden, and the pi. . . Read More