2-752-554 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Rocks, Rock City', 1872. ...'a singular grouping of rocks, known by the name of "Rock City" [near Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA]...This is a very odd phenomenon. Vast rocks of the most varied and fantastic shape are arranged into avenues almost as regular as the streets of a city. Names, indeed, have been given to some of the main thoroughfares, through which one may travel between great masses of the oddest architecture conceivable. Sometimes these structures are nearly square, and front the avenue with all the imposing dignity of a Fifth Avenue mansion. But others exhibit a perfect license in capricious variety of form. Some are scooped out at the lower portion, and overhang their base in ponderous balconies of rock. Others stand balanced on small pivots of rock, and apparently defy the law of gravitation. I know of nothing more quaint and strange than the aspects of this mock city-silent, shadowy, deserted, and suggestive, some way, of a strange life once within its borders. One expects to hear a foot-fall, to see the ponderous rocks open and give forth life, and awaken the sleep that hushes the dumb city in a repose so profound'. 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]