their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the rich
soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley.
Others, again, were congregated into populous villages, where
some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in
the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human
cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories.
The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of
many modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children,
had a kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although
some possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand natural
phenomenon more perfectly than many of their neighbors.

The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of
majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a
mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in
such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely
to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as
if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness
on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a
hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long bridge; and the
vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled
their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.
True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost
the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap
of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon
another. Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features
would again be seen; and the farther he withdrew from them, the
more like a human face, with all its original divinity intact,
did they appear; until, as it grew dim in the distance, with the
clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains clustering about it,