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Giant's Gap', 1874. The Sierra Nevada mountains in California and Nevada, USA. '...the rock-forms are picturesque and grand...Castellated, pinnacled, with sides like perpendicular walls, and summits like chiselled platforms, they give a strangely beautiful aspect to every shore and gorge and valley...it would be impossible to find a more glorious drive than is this along the edge of the river-bed...through the very heart of one of the noblest groups of the Sierra chain...The great canyons, and such noble breaks in the rock-wall as can give us glimpses like that of the Giant's Gap...are certainly among the vistas through which one looks upon the chosen scenes of the whole world'. 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. II, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1874]. Artist Thomas Moran. (Photo by The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images)