t of it was extremely
fertile; he had never seen such fertility. It wound up among the hills,
and all that he was looking at was its broad lower end. The floor of the
valley was about half a mile wide; the stream that ran down its middle
was nearly a hundred feet across, but was exceedingly shallow--in most
places not more than a few inches deep. The sides of the valley were
about seventy feet high, but very sloping; they were clothed from top
to bottom with little, bright-leaved trees--not of varied tints of one
colour, like Earth trees, but of widely diverse colours, most of which
were brilliant and positive.

The floor itself was like a magician's garden. Densely interwoven trees,
shrubs, and parasitical climbers fought everywhere for possession of it.
The forms were strange and grotesque, and each one seemed different;
the colours of leaf, flower, sexual organs, and stem were equally
peculiar--all the different combinations of the five primary colours
of Tormance seemed to be represented, and the result, for Maskull was
a sort of eye chaos. So rank was the vegetation that he could not fight
his way through it; he was obliged to take to the riverbed. The contact
of the water created an odd tingling sensation throughout his body,
like a mild electric shock. There were no birds, but a few
extraordinary-looking winged reptiles of small size kept crossing the
valley from hill to hill. Swarms of flying insects clustered around him,
threatening mischief, but in the end it turned out that his blood was
disagreeable to them, for he was not bitten once. Repulsive crawling
creatures resembling centipedes, scorpions, snakes, and so forth were in
myriads on the banks of the stream, but they also made no attempt to use
their weapons on his bare legs and feet, as he passed through them into
the water.... Presently however, he was confronted in midstream by a
hideous monster, of the size of a pony, but resembling in shape--if it
resembled anything--a sea crustacean; and then he came to a halt. They
stared at one another, the beast with wicked eyes, Maskull with cool and
wary ones. While he was staring, a singular thing happened to him.

His eyes blurred again. But when in a minute or two this blurring passed
away and he saw clearly once more, his vision had changed in character.
He was looking right through the animal's body and could distinguish all
its interior parts. The outer crust, however, and all the hard tissues
were misty