ble. It
was a region without man, or beast, or bird, or insect. The endless rocks,
not only denuded, but eroded and scraped by the action of bygone waters,
could furnish no support for animal life. A beast of prey, or even a
mountain goat, would have starved here. Could a condor of the Andes have
visited it, he would have spread his wings at once to leave it.

Yet horrible as the scene was, it was so sublime that it fascinated. For
hours, gazing at lofty masses, vast outlines, prodigious assemblages of
rocky imagery, endless strokes of natural frescoing, the three adventurers
either exchanged rare words of astonishment, or lay in reveries which
transported them beyond earth. What Thurstane felt he could only express
by recalling random lines of the "Paradise Lost." It seemed to him as if
they might at any moment emerge upon the lake of burning marl, and float
into the shadow of the walls of Pandemonium. He would not have felt
himself carried much beyond his present circumstances, had he suddenly
beheld Satan,

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

He was roused from his dreams by the quick, dry, grasshopper-like voice of
Phineas Glover, asking, "What's that?"

A deep whisper came up the chasm. They could hardly distinguish it when
they stretched their hearing to the utmost. It seemed to steal with
difficulty against the rushing flood, and then to be swept down again. It
sighed threateningly for a moment, and instantaneously became silence. One
might liken it to a ghost trying to advance through some castle hall, only
to be borne backward by the fitful night-breeze, or by some mysterious
ban. Was the desert inhabited, and by disembodied demons?

After a further flight of half a mile, this variable sigh changed to a
continuous murmur. There was now before the voyagers a straight course of
nearly two miles, at the end of which lay hid the unseen power which gave
forth this solemn menace. The river, perfectly clear of rocks, was a sheet
of liquid porphyry, an arrow of dark-red water slightly flecked with foam.
The walls of the canon, scarcely fifty yards apart and more stupendous
than ever, rose in precipices without a landing-place or a foothold. So
far as eye could pierce into the twilight of the sublime chasm, there was
not a spot where the boat could be arrested in its flight, or where a
swimmer could find a shelf of safety.

"It is a rapid," said Thurstane. "