this channel for some hours, the gloom
deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel
brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin of
very considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. It
was about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all points but
one--that immediately fronting the vessel as it entered--by hills equal
in general height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughly
different character. Their sides sloped from the water's edge at an
angle of some forty-five degrees, and they were clothed from base to
summit--not a perceptible point escaping--in a drapery of the most
gorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a green leaf being visible among the
sea of odorous and fluctuating color. This basin was of great depth, but
so transparent was the water that the bottom, which seemed to consist of
a thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible
by glimpses--that is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself not
to see, far down in the inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the
hills. On these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any size.
The impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness,
warmth, color, quietude, uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness,
voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture that suggested
dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful, magnificent, and
fastidious; but as the eye traced upward the myriad-tinted slope, from
its sharp junction with the water to its vague termination amid the
folds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancy
a panoramic cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes,
rolling silently out of the sky.

The visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of the
ravine, is delighted but astounded by the full orb of the declining sun,
which he had supposed to be already far below the horizon, but which now
confronts him, and forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitless
vista seen through another chasm--like rift in the hills.

But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and
descends into a light canoe of ivory, stained with arabesque devices in
vivid scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak of this boat
arise high above the water, with sharp points, so that the general form
is that of an irregular crescent. It lies on the surface of the bay
with