rt rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. Wide forests had sprung
up, their whole undergrowth flowering shrubs peopled with song-birds.
Every thicket gave birth to a rivulet, and every rivulet to its
water-song.

The place of the buried hand gave no sign. Beyond and still beyond, the
river came in full volume from afar. Up and up we went, now along grassy
margin, and now through forest of gracious trees. The grass grew sweeter
and its flowers more lovely and various as we went; the trees grew
larger, and the wind fuller of messages.

We came at length to a forest whose trees were greater, grander, and
more beautiful than any we had yet seen. Their live pillars upheaved a
thick embowed roof, betwixt whose leaves and blossoms hardly a sunbeam
filtered. Into the rafters of this aerial vault the children climbed,
and through them went scrambling and leaping in a land of bloom,
shouting to the unseen elephants below, and hearing them trumpet their
replies. The conversations between them Lona understood while I but
guessed at them blunderingly. The Little Ones chased the squirrels,
and the squirrels, frolicking, drew them on--always at length allowing
themselves to be caught and petted. Often would some bird, lovely
in plumage and form, light upon one of them, sing a song of what was
coming, and fly away. Not one monkey of any sort could they see.

CHAPTER XLVI. THE CITY

Lona and I, who walked below, heard at last a great shout overhead, and
in a moment or two the Little Ones began to come dropping down from the
foliage with the news that, climbing to the top of a tree yet taller
than the rest, they had descried, far across the plain, a curious
something on the side of a solitary mountain--which mountain, they said,
rose and rose, until the sky gathered thick to keep it down, and knocked
its top off.

"It may be a city," they said, "but it is not at all like Bulika."

I went up to look, and saw a great city, ascending into blue clouds,
where I could not distinguish mountain from sky and cloud, or rocks from
dwellings. Cloud and mountain and sky, palace and precipice mingled in a
seeming chaos of broken shadow and shine.

I descended, the Little Ones came with me, and together we sped on
faster. They grew yet merrier as they went, leading the way, and never
looking behind them. The river grew lovelier and lovelier, until I knew
that never before had I seen real water. Nothing in this world is more
than LIKE it.