A CLOUD-CAPT CITY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 9, 11 January 1908, Page 6

A CLOUD-CAPT CITY.

(By a Banker.)

Probably the . most strikingly situated city in the whole world, is Constantine, an inland town of North Africa., Perched, at an elevation of more "than two thousand feet, on the summit of a vast towering block of limestone rock, it is almost completely encircled by a narrow gorge or canon out deep into the mountains through which, swirls and eddies a furious raging torrent, its perpendicular walls, in which; a footpath has been hollowed out in order to enable visitors to inspect tins _ wonder of nature, rising; sheer from the foaming flood more than eight hundred feet. Descending this precipitous pathway, ntw under overhanging ledges-of rock, now on the very edge of a terrible precipice, beneath which . the boiling surge is wildly foaming in a very paroxysm of turmoil, or now round the spur of a jutting crag, the visitor is awe-struck and bewildered at the.-majestic grandeur and the august solemnity of the scene. Far beneath, the turbulent river—after the continuous rams and the abnormal snows of the past winter, much fuller and grander than, usual—swirling round a sharp corner of the ravine, leaping over a steep encasement into a boiling caldron beneath, and then with a throbbing plunge disappearing in the semi-darkness of a nature-hewn tunnel scraped out of a Projecting bastion of the solid rock. Above this is the.upreared beetling clifl rising in savage grandeur upwards towards the clouds on its summit the white houses of Constantine, or the ™unded dome of a mosque, built upon the very edge of the precipice; or the shaip ailfiouette of some stately wbntreeß apparlntly very deep, pursuing its S^iZihet^&^in? abyssfar beneath with a deafenin? roar" while a cloud of foam and wind-driven ■ spray rises high in the air far above the watery hurricane beTruly\hi,s earth of ours is adorned and beautified, with a lavish hand and well may the heirarchs of high heaveThav?sung for joy at the contemplation of its beauties And yet He who made it all, (for by HunJesus—all things were and aie created,) was content to bleed and to die for us and on our behalf; thus paying the penalties for those who believe in Him an eternity of supernal joys.