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stone, yawning with many points, like the jaws of a shark; breaknecks of
wet moss, rapid slopes of rock ending in the sea. Whosoever undertakes
to pass over an isthmus meets at every step misshapen blocks, as large
as houses, in the forms of shin-bones, shoulder-blades, and
thigh-bones, the hideous anatomy of dismembered rocks. It is not
without reason that these striæ of the sea-shore are called
côtes.[9]
The wayfarer must get out as he best can from the confusion of these
ruins. It is like journeying over the bones of an enormous skeleton.
Put a child to this labour of Hercules.
Broad daylight might have aided him. It was night. A guide was
necessary. He was alone. All the vigour of manhood would not have been
too much. He had but the feeble strength of a child. In default of a
guide, a footpath might have aided him; there was none.
By instinct he avoided the sharp ridge of the rocks, and kept to the
strand as much as possible. It was there that he met with the pitfalls.
They were multiplied before him under three forms: the pitfall of water,
the pitfall of snow, and the pitfall of sand. This last is the most
dangerous of all, because the most illusory. To know the peril we face
is alarming; to be ignorant of it is terrible. The child was fighting
against unknown dangers. He was groping his way through something which
might, perhaps, be the grave.
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