The high mountain beyond, near the crown, was girt around by a solid wall of rock, fifty or sixty feet in height, from the edge of which the summit rose.

It was quite unapproachable, except, perhaps, in one place, round to the northward.
The solid rock of which it had formerly been composed had, by some mighty force of nature, been split into innumerable fissures and fragments, both perpendicularly and horizontally, and was almost mathematically divided into pieces or squares, or unequal cubes, simply placed upon one another, like masons' work without mortar.

The lower strata of these divisions were large, the upper tapered to pieces not much larger than a brick, at least they seemed so from a distance.

The whole appearance of this singular mount was grand and awful, and I could not but reflect upon the time when these colossal ridges were all at once rocking in the convulsive tremblings of some mighty volcanic shock, which shivered them into the fragments I then beheld.

I said the hill we had ascended ended abruptly in a precipice; by going farther round we found a spot, which, though practicable, was difficult enough to descend.