in the extreme.  It is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime to be felt beyond what they are here.  On the sight of so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable!  The fissure, continuing narrow, deep, and straight, for a considerable distance above and below the bridge, opens a short but very pleasing view of the north mountain on one side, and blue ridge on the other, at the distance each of them of about five miles.  This bridge is in the county of Rockbridge, to which it has given name, and affords a public and commodious passage over a valley, which cannot be crossed elsewhere for a considerable distance.  The stream passing under it is called Cedar Creek:  it is a water of James’s River, and sufficient in the driest seasons to turn a grist mill, though its fountain is not more than two miles above[24].”

[Footnote 24:  Upon this occasion it may be observed, the most wonderful thing, with regard to cosmology, is that such remnants, forming bridges, are so rare; this therefore must be an extraordinary piece of solid rock, or some very peculiar circumstances must have concurred to preserve this monument of the former situation of things.]

Thus both in what is called the Old World and the New, we shall be astonished in looking into the operations of time employing water to move the solid masses from their places, and to change the face of nature, on the earth, without defacing nature.  At all times there is a terraqueous globe, for the use of plants and animals; at all times there is upon the surface of the earth dry land and moving water, although the particular shape and situation of those things fluctuate, and are not permanent as are the laws of nature.

It is therefore most reasonable, from what appears, to conclude, that the tops of the mountains have been in time past much degraded by the decay of rocks, or by the natural operations of the elements upon the surface of the earth; that the present mountains are parts which either from their situation had been less exposed to those injuries of what is called time, or from the solidity of their constitution have been able to resist them better; and that the present valleys, or hollows between the mountains, have been formed in wasting the rock and in washing away the soil.

If this is the case, that rivers have every where run upon higher levels than those in which we find them flowing at the present, there must be every where to an observing eye marks left upon the sides of rivers, by which it may be judged if this conclusion be true.  I shall now transcribe a description of a part of the Vallais by which this will appear. (Discours sur l’Histoire Naturelle de la Suisse.)

“Apres avoir passe le village de Saint-Leonard, on commence a monter la montagne de la Platiere; cette route est on ne peut plus interessante pour le naturaliste Etc.