Again the scene became wondrous
wild:—
“Full many a waste I’ve wander’d o’er,
Clomb many a crag, cross’d many a shore,
But, by my halidome,
A scene so rude, so wild as this,
Yet so sublime in barrenness,
Ne’er did my wandering footsteps press,
Where’er I chanced to roam.”
On either side were ribbed precipices, dark, angry, and towering above,
till their summits mingled with the glooms of night; and between them
formidable looked the chasm, down which our host hurried with shouts
and discharges of matchlocks. The torch-smoke and the night-fires of
flaming Asclepias formed a canopy, sable
[p.146] above and livid red below; it hung over our heads like a sheet,
and divided the cliffs into two equal parts. Here the fire flashed
fiercely from a tall thorn, that crackled and shot up showers of sparks
into the air; there it died away in lurid gleams, which lit up a truly
Stygian scene. As usual, however, the picturesque had its
inconveniences. There was no path. Rocks, stone-banks, and trees
obstructed our passage. The camels, now blind in darkness, then dazzled
by a flood of light, stumbled frequently; in some places slipping down
a steep descent, in others sliding over a sheet of mud.
