Quenchum annihilates your prima donna, as he extinguished your orator.
Anon you find yourself travelling with Quenchum. He is one of a party crossing the Blue Ridge of Virginia. The grandeur of that august chain of mountains strikes you with admiring awe. The picturesque and sublime are so wonderfully mingled that you almost hold your breath as you contemplate Nature in this imposing robe of majesty. Quenchum sits back in the stage-coach, which is ascending the winding road up the mountain's side, glances out of the window to see what you "are making such a fuss about," and remarks that "it may all be very fine, but a level road would be far preferable, the coach would travel so much faster, and get out of these tiresome mountains more quickly!"
You visit the Natural Bridge and Weyer's marvellous cave, and other noteworthy places. Quenchum pronounces the bridge a tolerable specimen of nature's handiwork, but he don't think it remarkably high, nor by any means perfect in its form, nor, indeed, extraordinary in any way. The cave he pronounces a "downright swindle!" He can discover none of the beautiful sculpturing with which you are all enchanted; he cannot make out Solomon's throne, with its oriental canopy, nor the falls of Niagara, nor the statue of Washington, nor the garden of Paradise; and frigidly asserts that these subterranean wonders are the most "unmitigated humbugs."
