Excerpt from The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether Edgar Allan Poe

I thanked him, and, turning from the main road, we entered a grass-grown by-path, which, in half an hour, nearly lost itself in a dense forest, clothing the base of a mountain.
In this sentence from the second paragraph of the passage, the phrase clothing the base of the mountain is used

A)to suggest that the mountain forest is impenetrable.
B)to suggest that the trees looked like clothes on the mountain.
C)to provide directions for the path through the mountain forest.
D)to describe the way that the trees surrounded the base of the mountain.

It will be through raising high the prestige of your administration by success in short-range recovery, that you will have the driving force to accomplish long-range reform. on the other hand, even wise and necessary reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate recovery. what is the purpose of the transitional phrase on the other hand in this excerpt? a) it provides a counter-argument to the writer's main ideas. b) it provides a hypothetical situation for the reader to ponder. c) it provides additional evidence in favor of the writer's argument. d) it provides information about laws that are opposed to the writer's argument.