the youngster was not directly much benefited by his excursion, but you
are to remember that perhaps his mother could not have come without
him, and therein lay the benefit. The day before our ascent, a lady
over seventy years old ascended without extreme fatigue or any injury.
Several days after, a lady with apparently but a few weeks of earth
before her, made the ascent to satisfy the longings of her heart, and
gaze upon the expanses of this, before the radiance of another world
should burst upon her view. If people insist upon encountering danger,
they can find a swift river and ford it, or pile up a heap of stones
and climb them, or volunteer to serve their country in the army:
meanwhile, let us rejoice that thousands who have been shut away from
the feast may now sit down to the table of the Lord.
This road, we were told, was begun about eight years ago, but by
disastrous circumstances its completion was delayed until within a year
or two. Looking at the country through which it lies, the only wonder
is that it ever reached completion. As it is, I believe its
proprietors do not consider it quite finished, and are continually
working upon its improvement. Good or bad, it seems to me to be much
the best road anywhere in the region. The pitches and holes that would
fain make coaching on the common roads so precarious are entirely left
out here. The ascent is continuous. Not a step but leads upward. The
rise was directed never to exceed one foot in six, and it does not; the
average is one foot in eight. Of course, to accomplish this there must
be a great deal of winding and turning. In one place you can look down
upon what seem to be three roads running nearly parallel along a ridge,
but what is really the one road twisting to its ascent. Some idea of
the skill and science required to engineer it may be gathered by
looking into the tangled wilderness and rocky roughness that lie still
each side the way. Through such a gnarled, knotted, interlaced jungle
of big trees and little trees, and all manner of tangled twining
undergrowths, lining the sides of precipices, or hanging with bare
roots over them, concealing dangers till the shuddering soul almost
plunges into them, the road-men carefully and painfully sought and
fought their way. Up on rocky heights it was comparatively easy, for,
as one very expressively phrased it, every stone which they pried up
left a hole and made a hole. The stone wrenched from above rolled
below, and go lowered the height and raised the depth, and constantly
tended to levelness. Besides, there were no huge tree-trunks to be
extracted from the unwilling jaws of the mountain by forest-dentists,
with much sweat and toil and pain of dentist if not of jaws. Since,
also, the rise of one foot in six was considered as great as was
compatible with the well-being and well-doing of horses, whenever the
way came upon a knob or a breastwork that refused to be brought down
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