and reality, and supported by some degree of practice in such exercise,
the brave youth went forward on his awful journey, step by step, winning
his way with a caution, and fortitude, and presence of mind, which alone
could have saved him from instant destruction. At length he gained a
point where a projecting rock formed the angle of the precipice, so far
as it had been visible to him from the platform. This, therefore, was
the critical point of his undertaking; but it was also the most perilous
part of it. The rock projected more than six feet forward over the
torrent, which he heard raging at the depth of a hundred yards beneath,
with a noise like subterranean thunder. He examined the spot with the
utmost care, and was led by the existence of shrubs, grass, and even
stunted trees, to believe that this rock marked the farthest extent of
the slip, or slide of earth, and that, could he but round the angle of
which it was the termination, he might hope to attain the continuation
of the path which had been so strangely interrupted by this convulsion
of nature. But the crag jutted out so much as to afford no possibility
of passing either under or around it; and as it rose several feet above
the position which Arthur had attained, it was no easy matter to climb
over it. This was, however, the course which he chose, as the only mode
of surmounting what he hoped might prove the last obstacle to his voyage
of discovery. A projecting tree afforded him the means of raising and
swinging himself up to the top of the crag. But he had scarcely planted
himself on it, had scarcely a moment to congratulate himself, on seeing,
amid a wild chaos of cliffs and woods, the gloomy ruins of Geierstein,
with smoke arising, and indicating something like a human habitation
beside them, when, to his extreme terror, he felt the huge cliff on
which he stood tremble, stoop slowly forward, and gradually sink from
its position. Projecting as it was, and shaken as its equilibrium had
been by the recent earthquake, it lay now so insecurely poised, that its
balance was entirely destroyed, even by the addition of the young man's