The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 [of 2]Shelley, Percy Bysshe
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The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 [of 2]
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
English prose literature
On arriving at a small village, at the distance of a league from St.
Martin, we dismounted from our mules, and were conducted by our guides
to view a cascade. We beheld an immense body of water fall two hundred
and fifty feet, dashing from rock to rock, and casting a spray which
formed a mist around it, in the midst of which hung a multitude of
sunbows, which faded or became unspeakably vivid, as the inconstant sun
shone through the clouds. When we approached near to it, the rain of
the spray reached us, and our clothes were wetted by the quick-falling
but minute particles of water. The cataract fell from above into a deep
craggy chasm at our feet, where, changing its character to that of a
mountain stream, it pursued its course towards the Arve, roaring over
the rocks that impeded its progress.
As we proceeded, our route still lay through the valley, or rather, as
it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the
creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains
whose immensity staggers the imagination. We crossed the path of a
torrent, which three days since had descended from the thawing snow,
and torn the road away.
We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there are lead and copper
mines, and where we saw a cabinet of natural curiosities, like those
of Keswick and Bethgelert. We saw in this cabinet some chamois’ horns,
and the horns of an exceedingly rare animal called the bouquetin, which
inhabits the deserts of snow to the south of Mont Blanc: it is an
animal of the stag kind; its horns weigh at least twenty-seven English
pounds. It is inconceivable how so small an animal could support so
inordinate a weight. The horns are of a very peculiar conformation,
being broad, massy, and pointed at the ends, and surrounded with a
number of rings, which are supposed to afford an indication of its age:
there were seventeen rings on the largest of these horns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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