, and he had a vision of those further slopes, distance beyond
distance, with Bogota, a place of multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory
by day, a luminous mystery by night, a place of palaces and fountains and
statues and white houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He
thought how for a day or so one might come down through passes, drawing
ever nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. He thought of the
river journey, day by day, from great Bogota to the still vaster world
beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places, the rushing
river day by day, until its banks receded and the big steamers came
splashing by, and one had reached the sea--the limitless sea, with its
thousand islands, its thousands of islands, and its ships seen dimly far
away in their incessant journeyings round and about that greater world.
And there, unpent by mountains, one saw the sky--the sky, not such a disc
as one saw it here, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in
which the circling stars were floating...

His eyes scrutinised the great curtain of the mountains with a keener
inquiry.

For example, if one went so, up that gully and to that chimney there, then
one might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort
of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge.
And then? That talus might be managed. Thence perhaps a climb might be
found to take him up to the precipice that came below the snow; and if
that chimney failed, then another farther to the east might serve his
purpose better. And then? Then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow
there, and half-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations.

He glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it
steadfastly.

He thought of Medina-sarote, and she had become small and remote.

He turned again towards the mountain wall, down which the day had come to
him.

Then very circumspectly he began to climb.

When sunset came he was no longer climbing, but he was far and high. He
had been higher, but he was still very high. His clothes were torn, his
limbs were blood-stained, he was bruised in many places, but he lay as if
he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face.

From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a
mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain
summits around him were things of light and fire. The mou