entirely, or widened and deepened original tracks and fissures in the surface, into enormous wall-sided valleys. The current of the Simeto – the largest Sicilian river round the base of Etna – was crossed by a great stream of lava about two centuries and a half ago; but, since that era, the river has completely triumphed over the barrier of homogeneous hard blue rock that intruded into its channel, and cut a passage through it from fifty to a hundred feet broad, and from forty to fifty deep. The formation of the magnificent rock-bridge which overhangs the course of the Cedar creek, one of the natural wonders of Virginia, is very probably due in part to the solvent and abrading power of the stream. This sublime curiosity is 213 feet above the river, 60 feet wide, 90 long, and the thickness of the mass at the summit of the arch is about 40 feet. The bridge has a coating of earth, which gives growth to several large trees. To look down from its edge into the chasm inspires a feeling answering to the words of Shakspeare:
“Come on, sir; here’s the place: – stand still. How fearful
And dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!”
Few have resolution enough to walk to the parapet, in order to peep over it. But if the view from the top is painful and intolerable, that from below is pleasing in an equal degree. The beauty, elevation, and lightness of the arch, springing as it were up to heaven, present a striking instance of the graceful in combination with the sublime. This great arch of rock gives the name of Rock-bridge to the county in which it is situated, and affords a public and commodious passage over a valley which cannot be crossed elsewhere for a considerable distance. Under the arch, thirty feet from the water, the lower part of the letters G. W. may be seen, carved in the rock. They are the initials of Washington, who, when a youth, climbed up hither, and left this record of his adventure. We have several examples of the disappearance of rivers, and their emergence after pursuing for some distance a subterranean course. In these cases a barrier of solid rock, overlaying a softer stratum has occurred in their path; and the latter has been gradually worn away by the waters, and a passage been constructed through it. Thus the Tigris, about twenty miles from its source, meets with a mountainous ridge at Diglou, and, running under it, flows out at the opposite side. The Rhone, also, soon after coming within the French frontier, passes under ground for about a quarter of a mile. Milton, in one of his juvenile poems, speaks of the
“Sullen Mole, that runneth underneath;”
and Pope calls it, after him, the
“Sullen Mole, that hides his diving flood.”
The Hamps and the Manifold, likewise – two small streams in Derbyshire – flow in separate subterraneous channels for several miles, and emerge within fifteen yards of each other in the grounds of Ilam Hall. That these are really the streams which are swallowed up at points several miles distant has been frequently proved, by watching the exit of various light bodies that have been absorbed at the swallows. At their emergence, the waters of the two rivers differ in temperature about two degrees – an obvious proof that they do not anywhere intermingle. On the side of the hill, which is overshadowed with spreading trees, just above the spot where the streams break forth into daylight, there is a rude grotto, scooped out of the rock, in which Congreve is said to have written his comedy of the “Old Bachelor,” and a part of his “Mourning Bride.” In Spain, a similar phenomenon is exhibited by the Guadiana; but it occurs under different circumstances. It disappears for about seven leagues – an effect of the absorbing power of the soil – the intervening space consisting of sandy and marshy grounds, across which the road to Andalusia passes by a long bridge or causeway. The river reappears with greater power, after its dispersion, at the Ojos de Guadiana – the Eyes of the stream.
REMEMBERED ONES
Not those who’ve trod the martial field,
And led to arms a battling host,
And at whose name “the world grew pale,”
Will be in time remembered most:
But they who’ve walked the “paths of peace,”
And gave their aid to deeds t’were just,
Shall live for aye, on Mem’ry’s page,
When heroes sleep in unknown dust.
THE GAME OF THE MONTH
This, though a very common and extremely beautiful bird, with an exceedingly extensive geographic range, is the object of a very general and perfectly inexplicable prejudice and dislike, common, it would seem, to all classes. The gunner never spares it, although it is perfectly inoffensive; and although the absurd prejudice, to which I have alluded, causes him to cast it aside, when killed, as uneatable carrion; its flesh being in reality very delicate and juicy, and still held in high repute in Europe; while here one is regarded very much in the light of a cannibal, as I have myself experienced, for venturing to eat it. The farmer and the boatman stigmatize it by a filthy and indecent name. The cook turns up her nose at it, and throws it to the cat; for the dog, wiser than his master, declines it – not as unfit to eat, but as game, and therefore meat for his masters.
Now the Bittern would not probably be much aggrieved at being voted carrion, provided his imputed carrion-dom, as Willis would probably designate the condition, procured him immunity from the gun.
But to be shot first and thrown away afterward, would seem to be the very excess of that condition described by the common phrase of adding injury to insult.
Under this state of mingled persecution and degradation, it must be the Bittern’s best consolation that, in the days of old, when the wine of Auxerre, now the common drink of republican Yankeedom, which annually consumes of it, or in lieu of it, more than grows of it annually in all France, was voted by common consent the drink of kings – he, with his congener and compatriot the Heronschaw, was carved by knightly hands, upon the noble deas under the royal canopy, for gentle dames and peerless damoiselles; nay, was held in such repute, that it was the wont of prowest chevaliers, when devoting themselves to feats of emprise most perilous, to swear “before God, the bittern, and the ladies!” an honor to which no quadruped, and but two plumy bipeds, other than himself, the heron and the peacock, were admitted.
Those were the days, before gunpowder, “grave of chivalry,” was taught to Doctor Faustus by the Devil, who did himself no good by the indoctrination, but exactly the reverse, since war is thereby rendered less bloody, and much more uncruel – the days when no booming duck-gun keeled him over with certain and inglorious death, as he flapped up with his broad vans beating the cool autumnal air, and his long, greenish-yellow legs pendulous behind him, from out of the dark sheltering water-flags by the side of the brimful river, or the dark woodland tarn; but when the cheery yelp of a cry of feathery-legged spaniels aroused him from his arundinaceous, which is interpreted by moderns reedy, lair; when the triumphant whoop of the jovial falconers saluted his uprising; and when he was done to death right chivalrously, with honorable law permitted to him, as to the royal stag, before the long-winged Norway falcons, noblest of all the fowls of air, were unhooded and cast off to give him gallant chase.
If, when struck down from his pride of place by the crook-beaked blood-hound of the air, his legs were mercilessly broken, and his long bill thrust into the ground, that the falcon might dispatch him without fear of consequences, and at leisure, it was doubtless a source of pride to him, as to the tortured Indian at the stake, to be so tormented, since the amount of the torture was commensurate with the renown of the tortured; besides – for which the Bittern was, of course, truly grateful – it was his high and extraordinary prerogative to have his legs broken
