He rubbed his eyes, dismounted, crept along the edge of the precipice, and looked below: whatever had subsided and melted down into its thousand feet of depth, there was no trace left upon its smooth face.

Scarcely an angle of drift or debris marred the perpendicular; the burial of all ruin was deep and compact; the erasure had been swift and sure--the obliteration complete.

It might have been the precipitation of ages, and not of a single night.

At that remote distance it even seemed as if grass were already growing ever this enormous sepulchre, but it was only the tops of the buried pines.

The absolute silence, the utter absence of any mark of convulsive struggle, even the lulling whimper of falling waters, gave the scene a pastoral repose.
So profound was the impression upon Key and his human passion that it at first seemed an ironical and eternal ending of his quest.