--- title: "The riddle of the rocks 1895 by Charles Egbert Craddock — Classic Ebo…" description: "Read a free sample of The riddle of the rocks 1895 by Charles Egbert Craddock at Publica Now — a public-domain classic ebook, readable online." canonical: "https://publica.now/creators/vito/works/the-riddle-of-the-rocks-1895" --- Literary # The riddle of the rocks 1895 by Charles Egbert Craddock [ V Vito ](https://publica.now/creators/vito) Follow $1.99 [ Sign in to buy ](https://publica.now/access?redirect=%2Fcheckout%2Fthe-riddle-of-the-rocks-1895) Secure payment on Stripe. publica.now never sees your card. Share Link copied Format epub Published May 03, 2026 Rating No reviews yet ![The riddle of the rocks 1895](https://fls-a13cb2d7-1b3e-4883-a0bd-297afd110a11.367be3a2035528943240074d0096e0cd.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/works/01kqnp9dppj58nssq2kz0rjjn6/cover.png?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=d29ce3bb571c165c97a702f29f7aee93%2F20261019%2Fauto%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20261019T153258Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Signature=36122b29390c42bc2f37331f1bc83717a47a446f43858ffe094be6ba8b3753f6) ## About this work The riddle of the rocks 1895 by Charles Egbert Craddock, A. B. (Arthur Burdett) 1851-1928 \[Illustrator\] Frost — a public-domain edition published by publica.now. Sample ## Take a look inside THE RIDDLE OF THE ROCKS By Charles Egbert Craddock 1895 Upon the steep slope of a certain “bald” among the Great Smoky Mountains there lie, just at the verge of the strange stunted woods from which the treeless dome emerges to touch the clouds, two great tilted blocks of sandstone. They are of marked regularity of shape, as square as if hewn with a chisel. Both are splintered and fissured; one is broken in twain. No other rock is near. The earth in which they are embedded is the rich black soil not unfrequently found upon the summits. Nevertheless no great significance might seem to attach to their isolation—an outcropping of ledges, perhaps; a fracture of the freeze; a trace of ancient denudation by the waters of the spring in the gap, flowing now down the trough of the gorge in a silvery braid of currents, and with a murmur that is earnest of a song. It may have been some distortion of the story heard only from the lips of the circuit rider, some fantasy of tradition invested with the urgency of fact, but Roger Purdee could not remember the time when he did not believe that these were the stone tables of the Law that Moses flung down from the mountain-top in his wrath. In the dense ignorance of the mountaineer, and his secluded life, he knew of no foreign countries, no land holier than the land of his home. There was no incongruity to his mind that it should have been in the solemn silence and austere solitude of the “bald,” in the magnificent ascendency of the Great Smoky, that the law-giver had met the Lord and spoken with Him. Often as he lay at length on the strange barren place, veiled with the clouds that frequented… [ Sign in to buy ](https://publica.now/access?redirect=%2Fcheckout%2Fthe-riddle-of-the-rocks-1895) The sample continues in the full work. 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