This kind of expression is often used in my language and I get where you're coming from (hopefully). In Turkish, this would emphasize plurality, meaning there are an increased number of small things rather than the same number of smaller things. Unfortunately, English has nothing like what you're suggesting.

The closest you can get is the adjectives like "many" or "a number of". As in

> There were **a number of** large mountains, and **many** small houses in
> the foothills.

or you can imply a plural form with "a range of" and by that way, you can use "a number of" for the houses without repeating yourself


> There was **a range of** large mountains, and there were **a number of** small 
> houses in the foothills.

If you want to imply distance between the houses or the mountains, you could change it to something like

> There were **a number of** large mountains **scattered around** [the valley], and small houses were at their foothills.

> There was **a range of** large mountains, and small houses were **scattered around** the foothills.

> There was **a range of** large mountains, and there were **a number of** small houses, **scattered around** the foothills.

[This page][1] I found also shows that it's used in distributive manner:

> (5) Reduplication used for emphasis and to indicate a distributive
> meaning: I bought some small small things; Why you don't give them one
> one piece of cake?

First sentence would mean "a number of small things" and the second sentence would mean "give everyone a piece of the cake". 

  [1]: http://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/indian-english