Then, There Is A
Thundering, And Echoing From Hill To Hill, And Perhaps A Splashing
Up Of Great Fragments Of
Rock into the air; and on you toil again
until some other bugle sounds, in a new direction, and you
Stop
directly, lest you should come within the range of the new
explosion.
There were numbers of men, working high up in these hills--on the
sides--clearing away, and sending down the broken masses of stone
and earth, to make way for the blocks of marble that had been
discovered. As these came rolling down from unseen hands into the
narrow valley, I could not help thinking of the deep glen (just the
same sort of glen) where the Roc left Sindbad the Sailor; and where
the merchants from the heights above, flung down great pieces of
meat for the diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles here, to
darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them; but it was as
wild and fierce as if there had been hundreds.
But the road, the road down which the marble comes, however immense
the blocks! The genius of the country, and the spirit of its
institutions, pave that road: repair it, watch it, keep it going!
Conceive a channel of water running over a rocky bed, beset with
great heaps of stone of all shapes and sizes, winding down the
middle of this valley; and THAT being the road--because it was the
road five hundred years ago!
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