Explore "In the Tennessee Mountains" by Mary Noailles Murfree on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What momentous morning arose with so resplendent a glory that it should have imprinted its indelible reflection on the face of this great Cumberland cliff; what eloquence of dawn so splendid that the dumb, insensate stone should catch its spirit and retain its expression forever and forever? A deep, narrow stream flowed around the base of the "paint-rock. " Immense fissures separated it from its fellows. And charged with its subtler meaning it towered above them in isolated majesty. Moons waxed and waned; nations rose and fell; centuries came and went. And still it faced the east, and still, undimmed by storm and time, it reiterated the miracle and the prophecy of the rising sun.
"Twar painted by the Injuns, -- that's what I hev always hearn tell. Them folks war mos'ly leagued with the Evil One. That's how it kem they war gin the grasp ter scuffle up that thar bluff, ez air four hunderd feet high an' ez sheer ez a wall; it ain't got foothold fur a cockle-burr. I hev hearn tell that when they got ez high ez the pictur' they war 'lowed by the devil ter stand on air. An' I believes it. Else how'd they make out ter do that thar job?"