. Harpers' New York and Erie rail-road guide book .. . Theleft side is a sheer precipice nearly, but the profile of theright hank is finely broken up, showing first a mass ofslate rock 60 feet high, and then, sloping upward withloose, crumbling stone, it terminates in a crest of splin-tered rock, tipped with the blighted hemlocks. One ofthese trees reclines over the ledge in a very curious andimminent way, as though it would every moment dartdownward. Between you and this pass is a table-landon each side of the track, covered with shanties and halfa dozen wretched houses, of the tenants of whi
. Harpers' New York and Erie rail-road guide book .. . Theleft side is a sheer precipice nearly, but the profile of theright hank is finely broken up, showing first a mass ofslate rock 60 feet high, and then, sloping upward withloose, crumbling stone, it terminates in a crest of splin-tered rock, tipped with the blighted hemlocks. One ofthese trees reclines over the ledge in a very curious andimminent way, as though it would every moment dartdownward. Between you and this pass is a table-landon each side of the track, covered with shanties and halfa dozen wretched houses, of the tenants of which you arenot long kept in doubt by the rich brogue issuing fromthem. A simple platform constitutes the station here—quite sufficient for its wants, as one may judge on lookingover the wild and unimproved settlement adjoining. Itis well worth while for the traveler to ascend the rightcliff of the cut. The view westward from that pointis extraordinary, and in winter presents the very pictureof extreme desolation, when the shanty roofs are but just. above the snow, and the scorched and charred hemlocksand black rock of the pass look doubly black, looming out 110 GUIDE-BOOK OF THE from the mantle that whitens all things else. Such amass of riven rock, and of burned, fallen timber, never werehuddled together as you see here on this pinnacle, sweptclean by the tempests. The last desperate stand againstthe engineer was made here ; and the charred fragmentsof bulky trees look as though vanquished Nature had heresought her funeral pyre ! There is a large water-tank at the mouth of the cut,and a turn-out with engine-house, in case an enginemay be required at this point. The accumulation of snowin the jaws of the cut often arrests the progress of thetrain, and then extra locomotives are ordered up from De-posite or from Susquehanna, on the other side of the sum-mit. It puzzles one to know what supports the tenantsof those shanties of a kennels size and a pig-stys cleanli-ness ; but the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookpublishernewyorkharperbroth
