Explore "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
After leaving the boat we climbed the mountain. Dear Lord, nothing comes from Thy hand without a purpose and a use, but why Thou shouldst have piled up these mountains, and why Thou shouldst have covered them with so many stones, is a mystery to me, since I can see no purpose in stones, which are a blessing to neither man nor beast.
After hours of climbing we reached a spring, where I sat down, faint and footsore and out of breath. As I looked about me the scene fully justified all that I had been told of these high solitudes. Wherever I turned my eyes was nothing but gray, bare rocks streaked with red and yellow and brown. There were dreary wastes of stones where nothing grew -- no single plant nor blade of grass -- dreadful abysses filled with ice, and glittering snowfields sloping upward till they seemed to touch the sky.