Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1881-08-24
The Great stone Face.

| Six miles of continual ascent hay,
brovght us to profile lake, writes Samue
Adams Drake. Although pretty
enough piece of water, it is not for itsel
this lake is resorted to by the thousands
or for the trout which you take from the
reflection of birds on its FURNISHED sur
face, but for the mountain rising higf
above it, whose wooded slopes it so faith
fully mirrors. Now lift the eyes to the
bare summit. 1t is difficult to believe
the evidence of the senses. Upon the
high cliffs of this mountain is the remark
able and celebrated natural rock-sculp-
ture of human head, which, from a
height of l 200 feet above the lake, has
for uncounted ages looked with the same
stare down the pass upon the windings
of the river through its incompatible
valley. The profile itself measures about
forty feet from the tip of the chin to the
fiatted crown, which imparts to it such
peculiarly antique appearance. 1t is
perfect except that the forehead is con-
cealed by something like the visor of a
helmet And all this illusion is pro-
duced by several projecting crags 1t
might be said to have been begotten by
a thunder bolt.
Taking a seat with rustic arbor on
the high shore of the lake, one is at lib
erty to pursue at leisure what, dare
say, is the most extraordinary sight of a
lifetime. A slight change of position
varies more or less the character of the
expression, which is, after all, the mark
ed popularity of this monstrous altore-
lievo: for, let the spectator turn his gaze
vacantly upon the more familiar objects
at hand, as he inevitably will, to assure
himself that he is not the victim of some
strange hallucination. fascination born
neither of admiration nor a horror, but
strongly partaking of both emotions,
draws him irresistibly back to the Dan
tesque head struck like felon's on the
highest battlements of the pass. The
more you may have seen. the more your
feelings are disciplined, the greater the
confusion of ideas. The moment is come to
acknowledge yourself vanquished. This
is not merely face, it is portrait
That Is not the work of some chisel, but
a cast from living head. You feel and
will always maintain that those features
have had n living and breathing coun-
terpart. Nothing more, nothing less.
But where and what was the original
prototype? Not man; since ages before
he was created the chisel of the Almighty
wrought this sculpture upon the rock
above us. No, not man; the face is too
majestic, too nobly grand, for anything
of mortal mold. One of the antique gods
may, perhaps, have set for this archie
type of the coming man. And yet not
man, we think, for the head will surely
hold the same strange converse with fu-
turity when man shall have vanished
from the face of the earth. Had Byron
visited this place of awe and mystery,
his Manfred" the scene of which is
laid among the mountains of the Bernese
Alps, would doubtless have had deeper
perhaps more sinister, impulse, but
even among those eternal realms of ice
the poet never beheld an object that
could so arouse the gloomy exaltation
he has breathed In that tragedy.
This gigantic silhouette, which has
been christened The Old Man of the
Mountain. is unquestionably the great
est curiosity OF this or any other noun
tain region. But it is not merely curl
Gus; nor is it more marvellous for the
wonderful accuracy of outline than for
the almost superhuman expression of
frozen terror it eternally fixes on the
vague and dshadowy distance-a far-away
look, an intense and speechless amaze
ment, such as sometimes settles upon
the face of the dying, untranslatable
into words, but seeming to declare the
presence of some unutterable vision too
bright and dazzling for mortal eyes to
behold. The face puts the whole world
behind it.