2-752-656 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The Cliffs of Seneca', 1872. View of Seneca Rocks, at the confluence of Seneca Creek with the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac River in West Virginia, USA: 'Imagine a thin, laminated sheet of rock, half a mile long by five hundred feet broad, set up on edge, the base covered for one-third of the height by a forest-grown talus; its sides ribbed with narrow terraces, moss-carpeted and festooned with gay, flowering shrubs; the bare surfaces stained with varied colors...its upper edge riven, splintered, and carved with a succession of grotesque forms which the pencil alone can describe. On the left the cliff abuts against a wooded mountain, defended, as it were, by a double line of bastioned and embattled walls. On the right it terminates abruptly in a sharp precipice'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1872]