Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-07-24
The Old Man of the Mountains.
GHarpets' Magazine for August. !


Six miles of continual ascent have
brought us to Profile Lake. Although q
pretty enough piece of water, it is not fol
itself that this lake is resorted to by the
thousand, or for the trout which you take
for the reflection of birds on its FURNISHED
surface, but for the mountain rising high
above, whose wooded slopes it so faith
fully mirrors Now lift the eyes to the
bare summit. 1t is difficult to believe the
evidence of your senses. Upon the high
cliffs of this mountain is the remarkable
and celebrated rock-sculpture of human
head, which, from height twelve hun
dred feet above the lake, has for uncount-
ed ages looked with the same stony stare
down the pass upon the wlndings of the
river through its Incompatible valley.
The profile itself measures forty feet from
the the tip of the chin to the 1attened
crown, which imparts to it such pecu-
liarly antique appearance. 1t is perfect
except the forehead is concealed by some
thing like visor of a helmet. And all
this illusion is produced by several pro-
jecting crags 1t might be said to have
been begotten by a thunder-bolt.
Taking seat within rustic arbor on
the high shore of the lake, one is at liber-
ty to peruse at leisure what, | dare say,
is the most extraordinary sight of life
time. A slight change Of position varies
more or less the character of the express
sion, which is, after all, the marked pecu-
liarity of this monstrous altorelievo: 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 horror, but strongly par
taking of both emotions, draws him ire
sistibly back to the Dantesque head stuck
like felon's on the highest battlements
of the pass The more you may have
seen the more your feeling are disciplined
the greater the confusion of ideas. The
moment is come to acknowledge your
self vanauished This is not merely
face, it is a portrait That is not the
work of some cunning chisel, b ut cast
from living head You feel and will
always maintain that those features have
had a living and breathing counterpart.
Nothing more, nothing less.
But where'and what was tho original
proto-type? Not man; since ages before
ue was CTedCSu tlle CulSti VI tuC AliulSu lily
wrought this sculpture upon the rocks
above us. No, not man. the face is too
majestic, too nobly grand, for anything
of mortal mould One of the antique
gods may, perhaps, have sat for this
archetype of the coming man. And yet
not man, we think, for the head will sure
" hold the same strange converse with
futurity 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
exatation he has breathed into that trag-
edy His line,
''Bound to earth, he lifts his eyes to Heaven"
becomes descriptive here.
This gigantic silhouette, which has
been christened the Old Man of the
Mountain, is unquestionably the greatest
curiosity Of this or any other mountain
region. a