At their sight
one experiences true delight, but at the same time a sensation of awe.
One feels like a pigmy before these Titans of nature. But in India,
the Himalayas excepted, mountains produce quite a different impression.
The highest summits of the Deccan, as well as of the triangular
ridge that fringes Northern Hindostan, and of the Eastern Ghats,
do not exceed 3,000 feet. Only in the Ghats of the Malabar coast,
from Cape Comorin to the river Surat, are there heights of 7,000
feet above the surface of the sea. So that no comparison can be
dawn between these and the hoary headed patriarch Elbruz, or Kasbek,
which exceeds 18,000 feet. The chief and original charm of
Indian mountains wonderfully consists in their capricious shapes.
Sometimes these mountains, or, rather, separate volcanic peaks
standing in a row, form chains; but it is more common to find
them scattered, to the great perplexity of geologists, without
visible cause, in places where the formation seems quite unsuitable.
Spacious valleys, surrounded by high walls of rock, over the very
ridge of which passes the railway, are common. Look below, and
it will seem to you that you are gazing upon the studio of some
whimsical Titanic sculptor, filled with half finished groups,
statues, and monuments. Here is a dream-land bird, seated upon
the head of a monster six hundred feet high, spreading its wings
and widely gaping its dragon's mouth; by its side the bust of a
man, surmounted by a helmet, battlemented like the walls of a
feudal castle; there, again, new monsters devouring each other,
statues with broken limbs, disorderly heaps of huge balls, lonely
fortresses with loopholes, ruined towers and bridges.
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