Ben Nevis

But narrative, after all, is Mr. Gilfillan’s forte, and his picture of the flood is a masterpiece. First, we have the march of the animals — lions and tigers, “the solemn elephants,” the hyena, “horrible even in its transient tameness,” “the fox and lamb embracing each other” — “thick streams of reptile existence, from the serpent to the scorpion, from the boa-constrictor to the lizard, wriggling on their ark-ward way” — “overhead flights of birds, here all oracular of doom—the earnest eagle, the gloom-glowing raven, the reluctant vulture,” sweeping to their destined home. Then, we have mountains submerged and volcanoes extinguished, “Ben Nevis sunk fathoms and fathoms more beneath the waves” — “the eye of Mount Blanc darkened, Old Taurus blotted out,” the tide “rolling over the summit of Mount Everest, and violating its last particle of virgin snow” — and lastly, “some human scenes of extraordinary interest,” which Mr. Gilfillan descries amidst the surrounding confusion.

1860 July 21, George Gilfillan, quotee, “Alpha and Omega”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 10, number 247, →OCLC, page 87, column 2