The University was built on hilly ground. To the southeast the Montagne Sainte-Genèvieve formed an immense bulge, and it was a sight to see from the top of Notre-Dame that throng of narrow winding streets (the Latin Quarter of today), those clusters of houses, spread out in all directions from the summit of that eminence, tumbling in disorder, almost vertically, down its slopes to the water’s edge, looking as if some were falling and others climbing back again, all holding on to each other.
Huckleberry Finn, chapter 21:
"On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, The people had moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it."
