A Few Planks Formed Passages From House To
House, Which You Must Often Scale, Mounting Steps Like A Ladder To
Enter.
The only road across the rocks leads to a habitation sterile enough,
you may suppose, when I tell you that the little earth on the
adjacent ones was carried there by the late inhabitant.
A path,
almost impracticable for a horse, goes on to Arendall, still further
to the westward.
I inquired for a walk, and, mounting near two hundred steps made
round a rock, walked up and down for about a hundred yards viewing
the sea, to which I quickly descended by steps that cheated the
declivity. The ocean and these tremendous bulwarks enclosed me on
every side. I felt the confinement, and wished for wings to reach
still loftier cliffs, whose slippery sides no foot was so hardy as
to tread. Yet what was it to see? - only a boundless waste of water-
-not a glimpse of smiling nature - not a patch of lively green to
relieve the aching sight, or vary the objects of meditation.
I felt my breath oppressed, though nothing could be clearer than the
atmosphere. Wandering there alone, I found the solitude desirable;
my mind was stored with ideas, which this new scene associated with
astonishing rapidity. But I shuddered at the thought of receiving
existence, and remaining here, in the solitude of ignorance, till
forced to leave a world of which I had seen so little, for the
character of the inhabitants is as uncultivated, if not as
picturesquely wild, as their abode.
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