Harper’s Ferry.

“The passage of the Potowmac through the Blue ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Potowmac, in quell of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion, that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the Blue ridge of the mountains, and have formed an ocean which have filled the whole valley, that continuing to rise they have at length broken over at this spot, and torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the fore ground. It is as placid and delightful, as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountain being cloven asunder, the presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small sketch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you as it were from the riot and tumult roaring round, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself, and that way too the raod seems actually to lead. You cross the Potowmac above the junction pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and within 20 miles reach of Frederickstown, and the finer country round that. This scene is worth a voyage through the Atlantic. Yet here, as in the neighbourhood of the natural bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains which must have shaken the earth itself to the centre.
Jefferson’s Notes.]