e garish
sun through the day, one species rises at night with the stars;
bursting forth in dazzling constellations of blossoms, which close at
dawn. Others, slumbering through the darkness, are up and abroad with
their petals, by peep of morn; and after inhaling its breath, again
drop their lids in repose. While a third species, more capricious,
refuse to expand at all, unless in the most brilliant sunshine, and
upon the very tops of the loftiest trees. Ambitious flowers! that will
not blow, unless in high places, with the bright day looking on and
admiring.

Here and there, we passed open glades in the woods, delicious with the
incense of violets. Balsamic ferns, stirred by the breeze, fanned all
the air with aromas. These glades were delightful.

Journeying on, we at length came to a dark glen so deftly hidden by
the surrounding copses, that were it not for the miasma thence wafted,
an ignorant wayfarer might pass and repass it, time and again, never
dreaming of its vicinity.

Down into the gloom of this glen we descended. Its sides were mantled
with noxious shrubs, whose exhalations, half way down, unpleasantly
blended with the piny breeze from the uplands. Through its bed ran a
brook, whose incrusted margin had a strange metallic luster, from the
polluted waters here flowing; their source a sulphur spring, of vile
flavor and odor, where many invalid pilgrims resorted.

The woods all round were haunted by the dismal cawings of crows; tap,
tap, the black hawk whetted his bill on the boughs; each trunk stalked
a ghost; and from those trunks, Hevaneva procured the wood for his
idols.

Rapidly crossing this place, Yoomy's hands to his ears, old Mohi's to
his nostrils, and Babbalanja vainly trying to walk with closed eyes,
we toiled among steep, flinty rocks, along a wild, zigzag pathway;
like a mule-track in the Andes, not so much onward as upward; Yoomy
above Babbalanja, my lord Media above him, and Braid-Beard, our guide,
in the air, above all.

Strown over with cinders, the vitreous marl seemed tumbled together,
as if belched from a volcano's throat.

Presently, we came to a tall, slender structure, hidden among the
scenic projections of the cliffs, like a monument in the dark, vaulted
ways of an abbey. Surrounding it, were five extinct craters. The air
was sultry and still, as if full of spent thunderbolts.

Like a Hindoo pagoda, this bamboo edifice rose story above story; its
many angles and points decora