" On that
Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no object of the familiar
landscape, through which, without formality, and in quiet grief, so many
of the renowned and the humble followed his remains from the
village-church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness to the
eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow Creek, near to which Ichabod
Crane encountered the headless horseman,--not only as typical of his
genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene, but because the
country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him honor, had hung
wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks.
Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of natural bridges, are
more numerous in rocky, mountainous, and volcanic regions than is
generally supposed; the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the
segments of caverns, the, accidental shapes of geological formations,
often result in structures so adapted for the use and like the shape of
bridges as to appear of artificial origin. In the States of Alabama and
Kentucky, especially, we have notable instances of these remarkable
freaks of Nature: there is one in Walker County, of the former State,
which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic
County of Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet
with an altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster
Mountain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of
this species.
Pages:
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260