The ride
beneath these mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my
life. While they do not equal the rocks of the Saguenay, yet, with all
their appendages of extent, structure, complexion, and adjacent sea,
they are sufficiently lofty to produce an almost appalling sense of
sublimity. The surges lave them at a great height, sliding from angle
to angle, and fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the face
of the vast walls. They descend as deeply as two hundred feet, and
rise perpendicularly two, three, and four hundred feet from the water.
Their stratifications are up and down, and of different shades of
light and dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the
effect of height, and gives variety and spirit to the surface. At one
point, where the rocks advance from the main front, and form a kind of
headland, the strata, six and eight feet thick, assume the form of a
pyramid,--from a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to
meet in a point. The heart of this vast cone has partly fallen out,
and left the resemblance of an enormous tent with cavernous recesses
and halls, in which the shades of evening were already lurking, and
the surf was sounding mournfully. Occasionally it was musical, pealing
forth like the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity. Now
and then, the gloomy silence of a minute was broken by the crash of a
billow far within, when the reverberations were like the slamming of
great doors.
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