They Are A Succession Of Rocky
Excrescences, Mostly Covered With Wood, Which Grows, Or Overhangs, Down
To The Water's Edge.
Some of them are cultivated, but the mass are just
as nature left them, when - their broken and jutting strata having
settled into bearings far down below the stream, on the morrow of some
vast convulsion and upheaving of nature - the forest era was at last
established.
How long a time elapsed before the action of the weather
had produced, from the hard face of the stone itself, soil enough for
the lichen and the moss, or for these, in their turns, to become the
receptacle of the seeds of forest trees, blown from some distant
region - is a problem. In threading these islands, sometimes our vessel
passed through tortuous passages apparently blocked up at the end, and
within a few yards of land, but by a sudden turn emerged into fine
large basins, and so wound and twined its way along. As the sun
declined, every island made a full, clear reflection in the glassy
surface of the water; and the boughs and branches, the flowers by the
water's edge, the very marks upon the rocks, were repeated upside down,
as if in a perfect mirror. The whole scene bore an air of such complete
seclusion, that our noisy passage through it appeared like a rude
intrusion into some fairy realm, before time uninvaded by mortal
visits. The birds were disturbed from amongst the trees, and the wild
ducks and other water-fowl skimmed away, scared at the splashing of our
paddles and the panting of our engine.
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